Buffalo Chicken Dip

This is one of Jamie's favorite dips. It's his first request when it comes to party foods.

Buffalo Chicken Dip

Ingredients:

1 large can of chicken

1 8oz cream cheese (softened)

1/2 cup wing sauce

1/2 cup ranch dressing

1/2-1 cup cheddar cheese

1/4-1/2 cup panko bread crumbs

Break up the chicken pieces with a fork. 

Mix chicken, cream cheese, ranch, and wing sauce together. Spread into the bottom of a dish. I've used an 8x8, a pie plate, and several bowls and dishes I have on hand. (9x13 is too big) 

Mix shredded cheese and bread crumbs together. I really just eyeball this part and change up the amount depending on the dish I'm using. It needs to cover the top of your chicken mixture. 

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. 

Serve with tortilla chips or corn chips. 

Nutella Crescent Rolls

This is a yummy easy breakfast or snack. I couldn't get Jamie to try nutella until I made these. He loved them! I think I've finally convinced him that nutella is amazing! :)

Nutella Crescent Rolls

Ingredients:

1 can of crescent rolls

nutella

powdered sugar

Unroll your crescent rolls and separate. Spread Nutella over them. I did mine pretty thick so it would ooze out a little bit when you bite into it.

Roll the crescent rolls up from the wide part to the smaller part like you would normally do. Spread out on a cookie sheet.

Bake according to the directions on the crescent rolls.

Sprinkle with powered sugar immediately after removing from the oven. 

Pumpkin Dip

This is a great fall dip. It's sweet, but not too sweet. I just served it in my Pampered Chef cool and serve tray, but I saw it here served in a little pumpkin. Too cute!! I actually had a pumpkin to put mine in, but I didn't get around to carving it with everything else I had going on. I think I'll make the time next time because nobody knew what it was in the tray. 

I served it with graham crackers, nilla wafers, ginger snaps, and teddy grahams.

Pumpkin Dip

Ingredients:

1 large cool whip

1 can of pumpkin 

1 box instant vanilla pudding mix

3 Tbsp powdered sugar

1 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice

cinnamon

Mix everything together except cinnamon in a large bowl. Cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours before serving.

Put your dip into your pumpkin or serving dish and sprinkle cinnamon over the top. 

Peanut Butter Ball

I saw one of these on pinterest and knew I had to try it. The recipe from Nestle said not to use all natural peanut butter, but that's all I had. It worked out fine for me, but I had to add more brown sugar than the 3 tbsp it called for. I made it into two smaller balls since I had parties two nights in a row. They went over great. I think Woody liked it the most. He ate it on graham crackers. I liked it better on apple slices.

Peanut Butter Ball

Ingredients:

1 8oz package of cream cheese (room temp)

1 cup powdered sugar

3/4 cup peanut butter 

1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

chocolate chips 

peanut butter chips

A big stand mixer would be ideal for this recipe, but I don't have one. I almost burnt up my hand mixer with this recipe so I think I'll just use a spoon and some elbow grease next time.....there will be a next time!

Mix together cream cheese, peanut butter, brown sugar, and powdered sugar.

Spoon onto plastic wrap. Tie together forming a ball...or two :)

Freeze....the original instructions say for an hour and a half. I had a full day scheduled so mine were in for about 4 hours. They did fine. 

Place chocolate and peanut butter chips onto a flat surface.

Remove PB balls from freezer and roll in chips to cover. Rolling didn't really work for me...maybe because I left them in the freezer longer? So I ended up taking handfuls and pressing them into the ball. It was a little messy, but it got the job done. 

Cover and freeze for at least two hours before serving. I wrapped them back up in the plastic wrap and then put both balls into a ziplock bag. One stayed in the freezer overnight. It was just as good as the one we ate on the day of preparation. If you freeze overnight, be sure to take it out of the freezer about 30 minutes prior to your party. It will need to defrost. 

Enjoy!!

Halloween Party

We don't celebrate Halloween....never have. I've never been trick-or-treating, and I turned out okay. We just don't believe that Halloween and what it stands for is something to be celebrated. I do however LOVE fall and pumpkins and I think that's something to celebrate. I don't want Caden to miss out on the fun of the season so we do fall festivals and I let him dress up. We just don't do anything scary and "halloweenish". He was a cowboy this year. I want him to participate as much as possible so that he's not alienated, without compromising our beliefs. I understand that most people don't have the same convictions we do.

One of the things we are trying to figure out is how much to explain to a three year old. I don't want him to know about ghosts and witches and demonic things. I want him to be innocent and carefree for as long as possible. I believe that those things really do exist and I don't think it's all fun and games. So for now we just don't talk about Halloween; we just talk about fall and the fun of the season. When anything that we don't participate in comes up, I just tell him that we don't play that because it's not very nice.That's okay right now, but I'm sure we'll have to explain a little more about why we believe the way we do next year. He's getting very inquisitive....

I took him to his daycare for their halloween party. We took slimy wormy jello cups for the party and gave out robots for the favors. I took home all of his goody bags filled with halloween treats and just trashed all the things I didn't want him to have. He's still young enough that I can get away with that. Here's a few photos from his class:

This is Caden's pumpkin. All of the kids help decorate pumpkins/jack-o-lanterns at school the week of Halloween. They are so sweet to help Caden decorate his pumpkin with something he loves so he doesn't get left out of the fun.

Slimy Wormy Jello Cups

Caden and I made jello cups to take to his school party. I wanted to do something different and I figured they would have way too many cookies and cupcakes anyway. It helps that Caden loves jello!

Slimy Wormy Jello Cups

Ingredients:

2 boxes of different color jello

water

gummy worms

small clear containers 

We used plastic punch cups and got seven cups out of this recipe. We made two batches since there are 11 kids in his class at day care. 

Make one box of jello according to package directions. Pour into cups evenly. Get your little helper to add a gummy worm into each cup. 

The worm will fall the the bottom.

Refrigerate according to package directions. We refrigerated overnight and finished them the next day.

After the bottom layer of jello is set, mix up the other box of jello and distribute among the cups. Add worms. I draped some over the sides of the cups too...that really added to the cuteness of the snack :)

Weekend Recap

I was running....all weekend!
We have been working for the past week getting our bonus room into a livable space. It used to be Jamie's man room. Then it was Grandma's bedroom when she lived with us, but it has steadily become a junk room. We have way too much junk in our house!! It's quite an ordeal to weed out though....especially for a pack rat like me. We filled a truck full for Goodwill and put a ton a stuff on the street for the trash men. I think we did pretty well. I would show you photos, but the before was so embarrassing I would never photograph it. I'll get some photos of the new space once I get my side finished. Our bonus room now has some great leather furniture on loan from my in laws (Thanks y'all!), a tv and Jamie's sports memorabilia on one side of the room completing his new man cave. The other side is going to be my craft room. Right now everything is in boxes on my side. It looks a million times better than it did though!
I worked a little Saturday morning, then went to watch some city league football. After the game, I started food for the parties and finished cleaning up. Then Lynn and I took Caden to the Jr Bullriders rodeo that afternoon. Jamie and a couple of his friends were delivering stuff to Goodwill and getting the furniture for the man cave while we were having fun. :)
Caden decided he wanted to be a cowboy this year for Halloween. It was great because he went all decked out in his attire to the rodeo. Caden rode Charlie, his stick horse, over to our neighbors' house before we left for the rodeo. They fussed over how handsome he was and we had a little photo shoot :)

He had SO much fun at the rodeo! We got to see bull riding, pole bending, and even some little ones riding sheep. Caden wanted to get in on the action, but he settled for riding the pretend bull. I wish I had a picture of him riding it with his little hand up in the air, but my phone died and I didn't' take my camera. I only got one photo, but I think it's a pretty good one.

We had some of Jamie's work friends and some family over to watch some football and UFC Saturday night. All of Jamie's hard work paid off because most everybody sat in the bonus room. Caden loved having "new friends" come over.  Thank God for the playroom! All in all it was a good party. I made lots of snacks so recipes will be coming soon.

Sunday night we had a costume party for the youth group at our house. Good times! I was a lady bug, Jamie was a coach, and Caden was of course a cowboy. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of us together. Here's some photos of the night....