Chicken Pot Pie

I used to LOVE Chicken Pot Pies when I was younger but somewhere along the way my tastes changed. I don't think I've had one since I was in Jr. High. Sad. I know. But the other night I decided it was time to try it again AND make it myself! So I looked up a few recipes and finally found one to go along with mine and my families tastes. I did make a small change to it but nothing huge. So this is what I came up with. I hope you like it as much as we did! :)

Chicken Pot Pie

1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
2 cups frozen mixed vegetables
2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, boiled
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 can condensed Cream of Celery soup
1 can condensed Cream of Chicken soup

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Line a 9 inch pie dish with pastry. Blanch frozen mixed vegetables for 3 to 4 minutes. Drain. Dice chicken and place in a large bowl. Add vegetables, thyme, celery soup and chicken soup. Stir together. Pour filling into pastry lined pie dish. Arrange top layer of pie crust, seal and flute the edges. Cut slits in the top of the crust to allow for steam to escape. Place pie on cookie sheet. Put aluminum foil around the pie crust edges. Bake at 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) for 30 minutes. Remove foil and continue to bake for an additional 30 minutes until golden brown. Remove from oven and let stand for 5 minutes and then serve.

Hot Chocolate

My husband LOVES making his own hot chocolate! So for Christmas this year I made him a canister full of homemade hot chocolate mix for him so he didn't have to keep mix it up one mug at a time :)

Hot Chocolate Mix

Single Serving
1 Tbsp. cocoa
1 1/2 Tbsp. Sugar
1/4 tsp. Vanilla or Vanilla powder
8 oz. milk

You will want to mix the cocoa & sugar (and powdered vanilla if you choose to use that) in a separate dish. *Heat milk up. Then mix powder mix with milk, stir well and ENJOY!

Canister
1 1/2 cups of Cocoa
2 cups of Sugar
6 tsp. of Powdered Vanilla
8 oz. Milk

Mix all ingredients well in a bowl then pour into empty canister. Then *heat up milk and use about 2 heaping tsp. of hot cocoa mix (more if you like your hot chocolate EXTRA chocolaty!) into your mug of milk. ENJOY!

*It's best to warm up the milk first and then add the mix. I feel that it dissolves much easier that way.

As for the can I used an old Stephen's hot chocolate canister, you can use anything with a lid. the Canister recipe above is to fill a Stepen's Hot Chocolate canister though (good way to recycle!) and peeled off the wrapper on it.



Then I measured out the width between the metal rims on top & bottom so I could cut my designer paper to size.



And then decorate and embellish to your taste! I printed off a little tag for my husbands and covered the outside with contact paper to protect the paper and tag from any spills or sticky hands ;)

Tu-Tu's

I looked around in the stores for different fairy costumes but didn't really find much I liked. The fairy costumes I found seemed a little skimpy especially for this cold weather and to be right honest $20-$30 for a Tinkerbell costume did NOT appeal to my finances! :) So I went home and started looking around on the internet for ideas and found some instructions on making my own Tu-tu's! I immediately fell in love with the idea, especially at how simple they were to make! I found a youtube video to provide me with instructions this is the one I used: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7aSPMEn7S0

Here is a picture of one of the tu-tu's I made. I made two, one was green and white and then this one pictured- black & purple.