Crunchy Baked Chicken Nuggets

Tonight I tried a recipe for chicken nuggets that I found. I've been wanting to make chicken nuggets for a couple weeks now, but just never got around to actually doing it. I haven't gotten into the "little wifey cooking dinner every night" mode yet, and my husband and I usually fix up something together. I know.. I need to get workin' on this part of my role.. I know. The chicken nuggets turned out to be a winner with us tonight! After the first bite, my husband said, "MMM, this is my new favorite." They were pretty YUMMY, so I thought I'd post the recipe.

What you need:
1 1/2 cups of bread crumbs finely crushed
1 tsp. of salt
1/2 tsp. of black pepper
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 pound of chicken pieces (I used 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts)
canola or vegetable cooking spray

1. Preheat the oven to 375*. On a plate, combine the crushed bread crumbs with salt and pepper, dump into a bowl and set aside.

2. Put mayonnaise in a bowl big enough to hold all the chicken pieces. Set aside.

3. Cut chicken breasts into 2 inch pieces and toss them into the mayonnaise and stir it up.

4. Toss chicken pieces in bowl of bread crumbs, coating them well.

5. Put the chicken pieces on a baking sheet (lined with tin foil) 1 inch apart. Then spray the pieces with the cooking spray and bake for 15-20 minutes.

I cooked a box of White Cheddar Mac 'n' Cheese (aka Kraft Dinner for Canadians) and steamed some broccoli and cauliflower to go along with our yummy chicken. Great meal!

Oh ya! And I made some sweet and sour sauce too! I absolutely L-O-V-E sweet and sour sauce with my chicken! Here's the recipe for that:

1/2 cup chicken broth
4 Tbsp. white vinegar
4 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
1 Tbsp. tomato ketchup
1 Tbsp. cornstarch mixed with 3 Tbsp. of water

1. Mix cornstarch with water until dissolved. Set asside
2. Place remaining ingredients in saucepan
3. Mix together and heat over medium heat. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly
4. Once the sauce begins to boil reduce heat and add cornstarch mixture while stirring continusouly
5. Continue to simmer and stir until thickens

Now put on your apron "little wifey"

 Enjoy!

Greeting Cards Made with Love

Tragedy struck our apartment the other night. We lost the near-by internet connection that we had been "mooching" from the past few months. So instead of the usual spending all hours laying on the couch reading super cool decor and craft ideas I decided to make some birthday cards for my husband's family. He has about five April birthdays in his family and we just had a little get-together for everyone tonight. I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with myself for making such cute cards. I thought they were too cute to give away after I made them! I made a couple more so I could keep the others.. and decided those were too cute as well! (Don't worry, I did make some that I actually gave away.)

Here's a photo of my adorably cute cards.

Using my acrylic paints to make cards was so fun, and the pictures are so simple! It's neat how something so simple to do can turn out so adorable. Ribbons and twine are fun to use too!
SO if you've recently found yourself in a sudden crisis (aka no internet .. *laughing*) or you're in the crafty mood, then pull out your overflowing craft box and get to work fun! You never know when you'll be needing a greeting card to brighten up somebody's day.

Jessica

Door Sign with our Name

The other night I decided to make something new for the outside of our front door. For the holidays I had made up some winter-ish looking thing to hang.. Well the snow has been gone for about a month now and the warm weather has started arriving! I L-O-V-E spring time and sunshine.. means I get to bust out my flip flops! .. Though .. it's been raining the last two days. Anyway! Here's a picture of my little winter concoction

So now you see why I must change it! Not that it's ugly .. just time to kick those snowflakes outta town! And so I did. I had a picture frame stuffed in my closet (which came from a dollar.. when I still lived in California) , still in the wrapping. The matting in the frame had squares to hold 4 small photos. I took out the matting and picked my pretty piece of scrapbook paper and some black paper for the background. For our name it would have been lots easier to just print out the font I wanted and cut that, but my husband's printer was out of ink and I'm extremely impatient so I just free handed our name and tediously cut it out and pasted it to the scrapbook papered background and put the frame back together. Done with that, I looked at it and I just wasn't satisfied so I took some white acrylic paint and with the wooden point of my tiny paint brush dotted white polka dots along the frame. It was much more satisfying. 

The camera caught a reflection in the glass on the frame.. so that little vertical line on the left side on the black paper is not some extra thing I did.. it's just the reflection of our neighbors' door.

Ahhhh, a nice fresh look to our lovely apartment door. .. As I was taking the photos my husband was spying on me through the peep hole! And then pretended to lock me out...

Jessica

My Little Easter Eggs

The Dollar Store was calling my name last week (actually, it does every week, but most of the time I have a little more will power). I was picking up some cute things to put together a little something for my husband for Easter. Picked up some simple plastic eggs, came home and put his little Easter basket together and then decided I would be random and paint the rest of the eggs. Sometimes I get so bored I do anything just for something to do! They actually turned out pretty cute. I just used some Acrylic paints that I got from... (chuckle) the dollar store and after I put a couple coats on I used something called Varathane (a clear finish) over the paint.                                               
                        Before...

After

What a center piece. I thought it was cute! (actually the fish bowl was the only thing I had here in the apartment to place them in) I cut up some of my scrapbook paper into skinny little strips and folded them in several pieces to make straw.