Happy Easter!

Happy Easter From Our Family to Yours

Hope you have a wonderfully blessed day. 

He is Risen! 

Creamy Chicken Casserole aka "Chicken on the Ritz"

This is one of my Southern Living recipes that we love. My husband has renamed this "Chicken on the Ritz." This is an EASY recipe. So fast to make and so yummy! All you need are 6 simple ingredients. 

6 cups cooked, chopped chicken breasts

2 cans cream of chicken soup

16 ounces sour cream

2 T. poppy seeds

2 pkgs. buttery crackers (I use Ritz)

1/2 cup butter

Mix together the first four ingredients and spoon into a 9x13 baking dish . Crumble the crackers over the top and spoon the melted butter over the crackers. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. 

How easy is that? Perfect for a busy day when you really don't have time to "cook." 

Check out these link parties! :)

Southwest Dressing and Cobb Salad

Remember the dressing that I referenced here? It's a favorite in the house and I've got to start doubling this recipe because my husband goes through it so fast I can't keep up. We use it for not only this and other salads, but as a veggie dip as well. I got this dressing recipe from my Pampered Chef Casual Cooking Cookbook. Here's what you need...

 1/4 cup milk

1/3 cup mayo

1/3 cup sour cream

1 T. lime juice

1 T. Southwestern Seasoning

Mix all the ingredients thoroughly and voila!

For the cobb salad, I cook 3 or 4 chicken breasts seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper in a little bit of oil in a skillet over medium heat. 

Chop romaine lettuce and keep in a separate bowl. 

Here are the toppings for the salad: 

Hard-boiled eggs

Avocado

Red Bell Pepper

Black Beans, rinsed and drained

Red onion wedges

Bacon

Cherry or Grape Tomatoes

Pretty Salad and Happy Husband :)

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Southwest Seasoning

One of my favorite salad dressings (and my husband's VERY FAVORITE) is a Pampered Chef recipe that calls for their Southwest Seasoning. I didn't have their brand seasoning and I couldn't find it in my local store, so.... I turned to Google.

I tried this recipe and it was great. I've actually copied it into the recipe book that I travel with so that we won't be without it. :)

• 2 tablespoons chili powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano

Directions

Combine all ingredients thoroughly.

As you can see, I'm starting to get a little low. Just about time to mix up a new batch!

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Let's Talk About Food!

I thought I'd dedicate this week to a couple of my family's go-to recipes. These are some of my husband's favorites that tend to make regular appearances around here. 

My husband runs for a living, so the man can eat! When his runner friends come and stay with us for a day or two, you wouldn't believe the amount of food they can go through. We had one get in yesterday actually. We'll be plowing through the fridge and the pantry in short order, I'll wager. :)

I've started copying down some of our favorite recipes into this nifty little notebook. 

We travel ALOT - whether it be to races, training camps or to see family. This way, I have some of our favs on hand and don't have to travel to a two month training camp with ten of my cookbooks, etc. I can just grab this one and maybe one or two others that I want to try out. 

We'll be heading to a training camp here in the near future and I'll be cooking up a storm for my husband and one other runner. That, along with taking care of our little dude and trying to fit in a little exercise for myself, is going to be keeping me pretty busy! 

So get ready for a week of food! Some recipes are healthy (I'll post these to my fitness blog as well) and some, not so much (we'll NOT be posting those over there, :D LOL).  Let me know if you try any of them out and tell me what you think!

Front Door and Porch - Before and After :)

Well we finally did! I've been NOT lovin' my porch for quite some time. It was just so very.....

P-L-A-I-N

See what I mean? 

We finally got our slow as molasses HOA people to approve our new paint color for the door and shutters. Yea!! 

Then yesterday, we stopped by an awesome plant sale in Coronado (I DO love Coronado). Check out my smiling husband bringing it to the car...

And this is how we fit it into my little Honda mobil. :)

My little man thought it was hilarious.

He could see all the leaves in the mirror in front of him and seemed to think it was pretty funny.

We added this to the very empty corner of our porch...

and when it was all said and done, here's the finished product.

Much warmer and more welcoming, don't ya think?

Linking up to some of these great parties.

Because I'm A Coffee-Crazed Woman...

I couldn't resist sharing this post from Kassandra over at Coffee and Their Kisses. 

Check out her project! So cute. :)

Consistency Wanna-Be

I so want to blog everyday and share incredible projects that I've worked on while my sweet little man has been napping. The problem is, he doesn't really nap. I'm not kidding. This little dude can sleep 20 minutes twice a day and he's good. He's still waking up three to four times a night to have a little snack. This momma can't even remember what a full night of sleep feels like, much less two+ hours to call her very own. By the time he actually crashes in the evening, I'm doing good to get my kitchen cleaned up from dinner (oftenwhich was prepared while wearing him out front in the bijorn) and drag myself upstairs to maybe catch a snippet of news before falling asleep. I'm trying, ladies. :) Thank you for bearing with me. I have so many great projects swirling around in my head and piling up in my "to do" file. Just you wait til I can carve out a little time for myself and I'll be amazingly consistent. :) 

For those who have just recently joined me, I'm so happy you're here! Thanks for sharing my little piece of the blogosphere. Please jump right in and let me here from you. Here are a couple of pictures of our life the last week or so...

 Our little guy sitting in the grass for the very first time

 Our baby and furbabies chillin' together

First time in the pool! :)

Lots of home life goin' on around here. I'm loving every minute of it. :)

This coming week I'm going to share the story and the recipe behind these two pictures...

Lovely.

Leggings for the Birthday Girl

My friend over at MonkeyMomma's Crafts now has a two year-old and she is downright adorable. For a little birthday "happy," I made a couple of pairs of leggings for her. 

Here she is modeling one of them for you in an "action shot." :)

And here's a close-up...

I'm playing with the idea of someday opening an etsy shop and selling these. Do you think there would be much interest????  What do you think?

Linking up to some of these great parties.

LoveStitched Giveaway Winner

The winner of the LoveStitched $5 Gift Certificate is:

Kristen said...

10

i'd get some of the little lou hair clips for my little girl!

April 2, 2011 12:55 PM 

CONGRATULATIONS, Kristen! Please send me your email address so that your gift certificate can be emailed to you! Now you CAN get those hair clips. :D Enjoy!! 

Thank you to all those who participated in the giveaway! I hope to have another one soon. :)

Notice that I DID finally figure out how to post the results correctly. I won't even tell you how long I've spent today trying to figure out what turned out to be a pretty simple and painless process. If you have a blog and are new to hosting giveaways (as I am), let me save you a TON of time....

Check out this helpful post over at Resourceful Mommy to find out how to post a picture of the random.org results.  

And The Pendant Winner Is...

Comment #3: Corrie

Congratulations! Please email me at: cristanleigh@gmail.com and let me know what ribbon color you would like (brown or cream).

Thanks to all of you who participated in the giveaway! I hope it's the first of many. :) I'm sorry I've been MIA from the blog this week. It's been unintentional and so, so busy. I promise to play catch up soon and fill you on on what's been going on here. 

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a $5 gift certificate at the  LoveStitched etsy shop! The drawing is tomorrow. Good luck!

(I used the random number generator to choose a winner from the 11 eligible comments. However, I can't figure out how to post it to my blog without readers being able to change it and generate new numbers??? I would love some help if you know how to do that! :) 

Friday Feature: LoveStitched and a Giveaway:)

In case you haven't already discovered her, I wanted to introduce you to Brittany over at LoveStitched.

She has such a fun blog with lots of great and helpful tutorials. For example, I'm one of those gals who found this tutorial on how to hem jeans, quite useful! 

Check out the adorable laundry room sign she shares how to make.

One of my personal favorites is this burlap pom Christmas ornament. So cute. Can't you just picture your tree covered in these?

Brittany also has an etsy shop that is one of my favorites and guess what?!?! She's been kind enough to offer a $5 giftcard to her shop for one lucky Coffee Cups and Crafts follower. Yea!! She's also offerring a 20% discount through April 8th that you're sure to want to take advantage of. Just use the code: lovely20  at checkout! You can check out the LoveStitched etsy shop here.

She has things like this beautiful Ashley Lynn mustard yellow and cream rosette bib necklace. I heart this necklace and have been eying it for some time now. My birthday is in December. hint. hint. hint. :)

Beautiful rosette hair pins...

Two of the headbands I've personally purchased are pictured below. How cute are they?! :) 

I've also ordered these chrysanthemum necklaces and I wear them all the time! I get so many complements on them when I wear them. I think I need one in every color. :)

Here's the little guy and I about to leave to pick Grandma up from the airport last week. I'm modeling one of my LoveStitched necklaces. :)

So...you wanna win a giftcard to the LoveStitched etsy shop??? 

Here's how. 

First Entry (mandatory): Become a public follower of CoffeeCupsAndCrafts and leave me a comment letting me know.

Second Entry: Head on over to the LoveStitched etsy shop and take a look around. Come back here and let me know what you would use your giftcard towards if you won.

Third Entry: Blog, facebook or tweet about this giveaway and come back and leave a comment letting me know you've shared the giveaway with your friends. One comment for each of those! :)

Fourth Entry: Buy anything from the LoveStitched etsy shop (don't forget to use your coupon code) and get 5 additional entries!! Just leave me 5 different comments letting me know what you purchased! 

That adds up to 10 possible entries!!!!

Good Luck! The contest runs through Friday, April 8th and the winner will be announced Saturday!