Anyway, I thought it would be fun to do a giant Christmas update. I’ve been dying to share all of the projects I tackled. I really, really love making gifts for as many people as I can. It just takes a lot of time. Some Decembers, Christmas almost feels like a full time job. But I still love it and as long as I’m able, I’ll hand make at least some part of our Christmas every year. It’s just part of who I am.

Christmas Pajamas

I made Christmas pajamas!! I make them some years, but not all. I have been dreaming of sewing matching Green Bay Packers pajamas for all of us. I’m pretty sure this is the only Christmas that I will do this, though. NFL fabric is not cheap! I also wanted coordinating t-shirts to go with them, but not matching. So, I bought some blank jersey shirts off of Amazon and used heat transfer vinyl cut on my silhouette to make the designs. Now we all have comfy clothes to sit and watch our favorite team play (too bad they had such a bad season this year.)

I bought the flannel fabric to sew the pajama bottoms from Joanns. I realized after starting to pin that I accidentally ordered 1 yard short. I was pretty devastated when I realized that Joanns was out of stock with no estimated restock date.  I ordered 12 yards originally, so I decided that I could probably squeeze that extra yard out. Instead of doubling the fabric over like the instructions on the pattern stated, I just cut each piece individually and puzzle pieced them all in. It took my HOURS to get everything cut out and I was sore for days afterwards. All that kneeling down and bending over just about did me in. I think I’m getting old! Haha! But I cannot even tell you how relieved I was that everything worked out!

Ornaments

I also made a ton of ornaments. I think I counted 56 in total by the time I finished. I made some for all of Dave’s teachers, our kid’s teachers, cousins, and my visiting teaching sisters. I started with clear glass ornaments and glittered and put vinyl on them. I’m still finding glitter around the house from this giant project. But they turned out so pretty! I was sad to give them away!

These are the ornaments for Dave’s teachers. I ordered custom vinyl from Sparkleberry with the school mascot on it. Then I added each of the teachers names and 2017 on the back.

I wrapped them up with a couple of bars of handmade soap (that I also made). A lot of work, but I think they were a very personal gift that hopefully all the teachers loved.

I also made Dave’s secretary this wreath. She is a HUGE Chicago Bear’s fan. I took process photos so I’ll share a tutorial very soon.

These are ornaments I made for my visiting teaching sisters. I may have to make more of these next year. I ran out of ornaments so I didn’t get one for myself and I love how they came out!

I also made personalized ornaments for my nieces and nephews.

And my favorite ornaments by far were the ones I made for our kids. They were tricky and none of them came out perfectly. But I wanted ornaments that represented something that each of them loved during the year. I haven’t jumped on the ornament a year bandwagon for my kids, but I’m thinking that it may be a new Christmas tradition at our house…

Custom t-shirts

Okay, this is the last thing I’m going to share, I promise! I know this is a photo heavy post. But hopefully this explains why it seems like I dropped off the face of the planet during the last month or so! Haha!

I obviously didn’t get enough of the heat transfer with our Green Bay Packers t-shirts and decided to make each of the kids two more. I tried to find something personal for each of them.

These are Bria’s. Bria LOVES music. The first one is kind of an inside music joke because technically you need to read music to get it. It says “Without music, life would BE FLAT”. Get it? The second shirt I made for her is kind of a running joke in our family. It fits Bria’s 14 year old personality perfectly!

These are Max’s shirts. He was the hardest to design something for. I wasn’t sure if he would get the reference in the first t-shirt, but I finally decided he would be happy with the MAXIN part either way. So far he’s worn this to school a few times, so I guess I didn’t miss the mark completely! The second one I made for him because he loves, loves Phineas and Ferb. He is always quoting from it and talking about Dr. Doofenshmirtz -inators. It will be a sad day in our house when either Netflix stops carrying Phineas and Ferb episodes OR Max decides that he’s too old to watch anymore.

These are for Logan. He will eternally be our Stitch fanatic. He dreams of living in Hawaii and I think he’s seen the movies at least 100 times each. I love it! I also made Logan a Batman shirt and it may just be my favorite of the entire lot. It just cracks me up! I won’t take the credit for coming up with the wording myself. I think I saw about a million different versions on Pinterest when I was searching for t-shirt ideas.

Anyway…that’s in for our homemade Christmas last year. I promise I’ll be around more regularly going forward. I have a few tutorial posts that I want to share very soon!

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I can’t go any further without first thanking OXO for sending me the kitchen tools to create this awesome dish! OXO products are really the BEST and if you’re still looking for Christmas gifts for anyone who loves cooking, you can’t go wrong with OXO! Even though they sent me their products in exchange for this blog post, I am completely being honest when I say that their quality is unmatched!

For this recipe, I used the OXO Non-Stick pro Half Sheet Jelly Roll pan. It is AWESOME and bakes very evenly. It’s great for a dinner like this, but also Christmas baking! I’m sure I’m not the only one with Christmas cookies on the menu in the coming weeks!

I also used two Silicone Roasting Racks. While these are great for baking meat or bacon in the oven, they would also work really well in a pressure cooker….just saying… I put the chicken on the roasting racks so that they would be separated from all the veggies.

For this recipe, you’ll want to get about 1 1/2 – 2 lbs of chicken. Season with salt and pepper if you’d like. Place the chicken on the roasting racks.

Meanwhile, start the sauce. I melt 1/2 butter in a saucepan on the stove and sauté about 2 teaspoons of minced garlic in the butter for a couple of minutes. Once the garlic is cooked, add 1 cup of pure maple syrup.

If you want to take your chicken up about 5 notches, use an OXO Flavor Injector to add some of the butter/maple sauce straight into the chicken. YUM!!!

After injecting the chicken, I took the vegetables and stirred them up to coat them really well in the butter/maple sauce. I bought actual sweet potatoes for this recipe, so they are white….maybe it’s the variety I bought. But anyway, those are sweet potatoes, I promise! I also used brussel sprouts. If you hate brussel sprouts, you could always change them out for something like carrots. But, seriously, try them this way! There is something about the maple syrup that cuts the bitter flavor and makes them SOOO divine! Nestle the vegetables around the chicken that’s already on the sheet pan.

Chop up 1/2 a pound of bacon and sprinkle it all over the vegetables. The salty bacon makes this dish over the top! It it so, so good! Then take the remaining butter/maple sauce and drizzle it all over the vegetables, bacon, and chicken.

Roast at 400 for 30-35 minutes (depending on how thick your chicken breasts are. Then finish off by broiling it all on high for about 5 more minutes. Remove from the oven and let rest for 3 minutes. You can check that your chicken is at 165 with an OXO Chef’s Precision Digital Instant Read Thermometer. It is super fast and very accurate! And love it because the head tilts so you an easily read the temperature of your food from any angle!

And that’s it! It’s ready for you to enjoy!

Oh my goodness, I can’t tell you how much I love this dinner! I also love that I can cook everything all at once in one sheet pan.

And thank you to OXO for providing me with the right tools for the job!

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Maple Bacon Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lbs chicken breasts
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
• 3/4 lb brussel sprouts, chopped in half
• 1/2 lb bacon
• 1/2 c butter
• 2 cloves garlic (or 2 tsp minced garlic)
• 1 cup maple syrup
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mince the garlic and chop the vegetables.
2. Season the chicken and place in the center of the baking sheet.
3. Meanwhile. in a saucepan, melt the butter. Add the garlic and saute for 1-2 minutes. Pour in the maple syrup and set aside.
4. Using a slotted spoon, coat the vegetables with butter/maple sauce in the saucepan. Place the vegetables on the baking sheet around the chicken.
5. Cut the bacon into pieces and add on top of the vegetables.
6. Drizzle the remaining butter/maple sauce onto the chicken and the vegetables.
7. Place in the oven and bake for 30-35 minutes (depending on the size of the chicken breasts it is done when the chicken reaches 165 degrees). Broil on high for an additional 5 minutes to crisp up the bacon and vegetables.
8. Let the chicken rest for 3 minutes and serve immediately

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The weekend before Halloween was super busy! It felt like a whole bunch of big things were falling one right after the other. I don’t think I got very much sleep for a week straight.

It started with Bria’s big assembly. Bria is the the FCCLA (which stands for Family, Career, Community Leaders of America) in her middle school. It’s actually a really good program to teach kids leadership. Bria has grown a lot from it. And so have I! Bria is a very ambitious girl and chooses HUGE projects. Last year, she headed up a toy drive for the local Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Center. She collected thousands of toys and hundreds of dollars more to buy more toys and donate gift cards to the parents. It was amazing! This year, she wanted to do an assembly for her school. She contacted a company that comes in to do school assemblies on positivity and arranged for them to come. But she also presented part of the assembly herself. She took 15 minutes and got up to speak in front of 1500 kids at her school. I can’t even wrap my head around it because I absolute hate public speaking! Bria is amazing at it. As part of her assembly, she also ran a grade vs grade challenge to put stIt icky notes on a poster filled with positive messages and quotes. It was really cool!

She even caught the attention of the local news and was featured on the 10 o’clock news last week about the positive impact it had.

On the same day as her big assembly, we had family come to town to watch Bria in her band concert which was the same night.

Bria is playing the piano for Jazz band and the flute for Symphonic band this year. Jazz Band is extra curricular and she’s been going to school almost an hour early every day since school started to play more music. I love that music is her passion!

The band concert was right before Halloween and all of the kids dressed in their costumes to play (which is why Bria is wearing her fluffy tutu.

And I can hardly even believe it, but Bria turned 14! In Idaho, kids can apply to get their learner’s permit to start driving when they are 14 1/2, and that’s all we’ve heard about the last couple of months. Bria thinks we’re being extra strict, though because I’m making her wait to start driving until she is 16. I’m just not ready! I’m pretty sure I won’t be ready in 2 years, either. Why can’t they stay little?!?

We had to have Bria’s party a little early this year and I’ll tell you why in a bit…

Naturally while cousins are in town helping us celebrate Bria’s birthday, we had to go play together, too! That’s how the kids create memories, right? So, my sister and I loaded all the kids into the van and took them to a corn maze!

The weather was absolutely gorgeous! It’s been cloudy and cruddy every day since that weekend. We’ve even had a few little snow storms a couple of times.

We always love it when our out-of-state cousins come to hang out, even if it’s only for a couple of days!

After family left and just in the nick of time, we finally go the chance to carve pumpkins right before Halloween!

Max found a Green Bay Packers template on the Packer’s website, but it didn’t work out really well. I think it was too detailed and the pumpkins we bought at the pumpkin patch were really thick and hard to cut through. He compromised really well, though. You can’t even tell that where he was trying to carve the word PACKERS is now the mouth to his Jack-O-Lantern.

For Halloween, Max dressed as a Packers player (he’s our super-fan!)

Logan dressed as a Ninja.

Bria dressed as The Flash (which is her very favorite show!)

Bria actually dressed up as a scarecrow for school. The Flash tutu we made for her was pretty fluffy! It may have caused some maneuvering difficulties walking in the middle school hallway.

Dave and I are not big Halloween people. I know that some people love it more than Christmas, but we really just tolerate it. But for the church trunk or treat, we both put on Packer’s jerseys and called ourselves fans (you know, since our son was dressed up as a Packer’s player). That is my kind of costume – almost a non-costume! Haha!

On Halloween, I got to go help out at Logan’s class party! And you guys, I am terrible at helping at class parties. When Logan was in 1st grade, I did a Halloween craft and it used hot glue. I mean, I know that hot glue is, well, HOT. But for some reason it didn’t cross my mind that it might actually be inappropriate for a group of 1st graders. It was a disaster. This year wasn’t quite as bad, but it still wasn’t great. I planned an art project where the kids drew with chalk on construction paper. In my mind, I thought they would really love it because kids hardly ever get to use chalk. But what was fun in my mind turned into a bunch of kids wiping their chalk-dusted hands all over their beautiful Halloween costumes. Oops! At least chalk washes out easily and hopefully not too many moms were mad that their kids costumes came home dirty because of me. I’m pretty sure the crash test dummy who had on yellow gloves (that couldn’t be taken off because they were part of his costume) and who decided to use red chalk went home to an upset mom. His gloves were covered in red chalk!  Please remind me to sign up for the treat next year! Haha! #momfail

Halloween is always super busy, but things didn’t slow down for us afterward either. We had more family come to town to visit because Logan got baptized!

In our church, kids get baptized when they are 8 years old.

I cried a little bit watching him. Mostly because I am so proud of Logan! But also because he is our youngest and the last one in our family to get baptized. I know that there are going to be lots more big milestones, but this felt like the passing of one phase to the next in raising our kids.

His special day was so beautiful! The weather was kind of stormy and it was snowing a little bit, but lots of family and friends came to help celebrate. Even Grandma from New Mexico came all the way up to watch. We had a huge luncheon at our house afterward. It was a lot of fun!

Grandma got to stay for a long weekend and our kids soak up every minute they get with her. Max even talked her into a game of Monopoly and it lasted 4 hours! I can’t believe she stuck that one out.

Grandma also got to be here for Bria’s actual birthday. I had Bria celebrate early because her birthday was the same weekend as Logan’s baptism. I wanted both to be special and to be completely honest, there was no way I had it in me to pull of two parties in the same weekend. It was already tough enough to do two parties in two different weekends!

Even though we celebrated early, we surprised Bria and picked her up from school and took her to get frozen yogurt. She was so surprised because she thought we wouldn’t do anything to celebrate. Being a mom is so fun!

Well, if you stuck through this entire post, you deserve a reward! And  this is really a condensed version, too. I’m just going to push publish and not proof read because I feel so late getting this out. I said that I was going to publish my Week at the Websters posts on Saturday, but Sunday seems to work better for me. Especially if I haven’t had time to get the post written earlier in the week. Sundays are an easier day for me to catch up on a post like this. So thank you for being patient with me as I get this figured out!

I’m really wanting to blog a lot more and I’m still trying to figure out how to fit everything into my schedule. There’s a huge part of me that feels like I can’t blog until everything on my to-do list is done and the house is clean. But, clearly, things are never going to happen to that kind of a perfectionistic standard. I’m working on finding a good cleaning schedule that I’m committed to sticking to so that I can work on blogging tutorials more often without feeling so overwhelmed with keeping up with the every day. I want to do at least a few tutorials and projects a week like I used to. I loved it so much and I’ve missed blogging as a regular part of my life.  I do have a fun project I’m sharing this coming week for sure! Yay!! But truly, thank you for being so patient with me while I stumble through my dream of being a blogger. ;)

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Logan got his Bobcat in Cub Scouts this week! If you’re not familiar with Cub Scouts, that is the first rank all the boys have to earn. He’s got fabulous den leaders and they helped him do almost all of it except for the Youth Protection that we did at home. I love the Cub Scout Youth Protection program. Even if you don’t participate in scouts, you can google the youth protection and go over it with your kids. It is an excellent tool for teaching kids simple safety guidelines.

Logan was so, so excited to get his award presented at Pack Meeting! And I got to add another Cub Scout mother’s pin to my ever growing collection. I sure love my boys!!

We’ve actually done a lot with scout stuff the last couple of weeks! I don’t have pictures of all of the things that Max has done. He’s a Boy Scout now and so he’s been working on earning merit badges. His troop got invited to a Pow Wow a few weeks ago and that got Max started working on his Community in the Nation and Community in the World Merit Badges. Those are both required merit badges for his Eagle and they are both pretty time consuming to earn. But Max and his friend Peyton worked really, really hard and met all of the requirements to earn both badges at their next court of honor. It was seriously hours and hours worth of work! So now, Max, who is 11 years old, has earned 11 merit badges. Phew! He is almost half way to the total he needs for his Eagle. I’m so grateful that he’s such a driven kid. It also helps that he likes scouts for sure. But he’s always working on passing something off in scouts.

The big thing that we did this week was get new family pictures! Woohoo!! We were supposed to get them done last weekend, but we postponed and did them Wednesday night instead. And I am SO thankful because Logan ended up being really sick with the stomach flu and the last thing I wanted was a repeat of our last family picture experience. 

I like to get some kind of family picture every year, but most years we don’t hire a professional. We have hired someone a few times, but overall, we just all pose together at some kind of event or trip and call it good for the year. This year I wanted nicer updated pictures for our living room. But I still didn’t really want to hire a professional.  So, I talked one of my friends into taking her family and we could take each other’s family pictures. That way we could both save a little bit of money.

We took over 500 pictures between both families. With that many pictures, we got a lot that weren’t very good – like kids pulling weird faces or someone blinking. But, we also go a lot that were amazing! These are my very favorite of our family. Sorry for the picture overload, but I just had to share! I love them so, so much!!

I know this might sound weird, but it’s very surreal to me to see how much our kids are growing up in family pictures. Bria is actually taller than me now (only by an inch) and the boys are both growing up so much! I don’t actually see that when I’m with them but when we’re all posed together as a family it’s more apparent to me.

I love this stage our family is at right now. We are well past the diaper and toddler stage and our kids are getting old enough that we can do a lot more fun things with them. And yet they are still young enough that they still love to be with their family. I’ve heard some people describe this as the parenting sweet spot and I truly believe that’s what we have. Now to just learn how to slow down time…. I love this family of mine!

Now that our pictures are taken,  I need to decide which pictures should get printed to go on our family wall and on our Christmas card. I’ve got several favorites and I want to get them all printed. But I don’t have nearly enough frames for all of them.

I’ve also been working this week to update our Christmas card address list because that always seems to be my hangup for getting cards mailed out. But not this year. I’m determined to mail out Christmas cards and even though it’s still October, I’m going to get a head start on it!

We’ve got lots of fun planned in the next couple of weeks and I can’t wait to share it all with you! I hope you all have a really wonderful week.

The post Week at the Websters appeared first on Love and Laundry.

Also, I have social media accounts all over the place, but Instagram is my favorite these days. I hardly post on Facebook anymore because only about 5-10% of my followers even see the posts I share. So, if you want to see social media posts from me more often or even just more that’s going on, my Instagram handle is love_and_laundry. I also share on Instagram every time I post on my blog (plus extras), so you can get updates that way if it’s easier for you. Instagram is mostly how I follow my favorite bloggers anymore.

So, this week….

We bought a new minivan! Well, it’s a new to us minivan anyway. For us, this is a pretty big deal. This is only the 5th vehicle that we’ve bought since we got married 17 years ago. 2 different cars for Dave to drive around in, and 3 minivans for the family (okay, me to drive, really, but I drive the kids most of the time). We’re the type of people that buy a car, pay it off, and drive it for a long time afterwards. We drove our first minivan for over 10 years before I got crashed into outside of our house 2 1/2 years ago. (If you want to read about that crazy story, you can click HERE.) This is the first time that we have looked for a better vehicle when the one we already owned was fine.

We actually weren’t really planning on buying anything different right now, but we have been talking about it since the summer. When we bought our last minivan, we were in a pretty big hurry to find one after the wreck and we grabbed the best one we could find at the time. But it was lacking in quite a few things that we really wanted, like a backup camera and leather seats, which are much, much easier to clean with kids. We looked at several minivans in back in July, but nothing seemed to fit right, so we gave up on the idea of getting another one for the time being.

Last week, I scheduled to have our minivan detailed to get it deep cleaned before the winter and I was coordinating with Dave on how to drop it off. We kind of questioned if it was worth getting it detailed right before winter when things are so messy and muddy a lot of the time. So, I suggested we get it detailed and then try to sell it so we could find another minivan that we liked better. It wasn’t really something I planned to say, it just kind of came out. So, Dave got on Craigslist and right there was our PERFECT van! It had all of the extras we were looking for and was within our price range. But it was not as new of a model as we were hoping for. Our current minivan was a 2009 and this one was a 2010, so it didn’t seem like that much of an upgrade. Did I mention that we were looking for another Chrysler Town and Country to replace the one that we had. So, one year newer of the same make and model almost felt like getting the same minivan but with added debt. BUT, the 2010 surprisingly only had 39,000 miles on it. How a minivan could be SEVEN years old and only have 39,000 miles on it seemed almost too good to be true! So, we went to the car dealership and gave it a test drive.

Not only was this minivan low in miles, but it was stocked with all the extras! I’ve heard the term “fully loaded” thrown around a bunch of times, but this was the most fully loaded I had ever seen any vehicle. Also, I should mention that I don’t know very much about cars, so that could be my naivety, but to me it seems like it really has everything that we wanted plus a lot more! And we couldn’t beat the low mileage. After test driving it and seeing the immaculate condition, we were sold! The only problem is that it is red and so now we are back to owing all red vehicles. I do not know what it is with us and red vehicles. It’s definitely not intentional, but that seems to be what we always end up with. First world problems, I know. But I am so, so excited about getting something we love so much more! We’re hoping this will be the minivan that we finish raising our kids with and intend to add lots of miles and LOTS of memories! Oh, and if you’re wondering about our other minivan, I cancelled the detailing appointment and we ended up trading it in for our new one.

It’s football season pretty much everywhere. We don’t have any high schoolers yet, but we do go to one of the local high school games every week. Dave runs a videography company on the side and they hired him to film the games for them every week. Max begs nearly every time to go with his dad. He LOVES football! We don’t always let him go, but we couldn’t resist when the high school Dave films for was playing against the high school our kids will eventually go to last weekend. I texted Dave and asked him to send me a picture so that I could use it in our 2017 family book. This is what he sent. I love it so much!

We also had Parent Teacher Conferences at our kid’s schools this week. With one in elementary and two in middle school, it was no small feat getting to see every single teacher. We only had a little over an hour on one of the two available nights to go. I don’t know how we did it, but we made it everywhere we needed to be! Not without some dividing and conquering, though. Of course I am proud of all of my kids, but I feel especially proud of Logan. He’s in 3rd grade this year. He is an August baby, so he is one of the youngest in his grade. And I don’t know if it’s this way everywhere, but where we live, it seems to be popular to hold kids back at home an extra year before starting kindergarten. So, Logan who just barely turned 8 right before school started has a lot of 9 and 10 year olds in his grade.  His age difference has really been apparent in the past, but this year, he is doing so, so well! His reading has improved the last several months tremendously and he is really loving school. It makes my mama heart so happy!!

The only thing we really need to work on is his handwriting. He holds his pencil wrong and his teacher asked me to help him learn to hold it right. She said fixing that should improve his handwriting. But the problem is, I hold my pencil wrong as well and Logan does it the exact same way I do it. Have any of you had experience teaching a child to have better handwriting? I’d love any suggestions!

Anyway, I hope you all have a happy weekend! We’ve got a lot going on with our ward primary program and family pictures. I’m so excited!!

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This is seriously my FAVORITE way to make chicken! Okay…truthfully, I like food a lot so it’s really ONE of my favorite ways to make chicken. It is so, so yummy!! It is a chicken breast rolled up with cream cheese and green chilies on the inside, then wrapped with 2 slices of bacon on the outside. It is finished off with a drizzle of barbecue sauce and baked to golden brown perfection. My boys LOVE this! Like love it, love it! It is so full of flavor and deliciousness. I never have any leftovers when I make this and I always wish I would have made a few extras (they actually do reheat really well).

While you can technically grill these, I like them better baked in the oven. The struggle with grilling them is that the bacon grease drips into the flames creating a pretty large and hot fire in your grill, which leads to easily burning the chicken. The nice thing about the oven is that you can control the temperature, and with the chicken baking in a pan, you don’t have to worry about creating a grease fire.

Another thing I love about these is that they are perfect for a summer dish, but are also a good fall/winter comfort food. You can even prepare them a day ahead and keep them in the refrigerator to be baked later – which to me equals a perfect company chicken. The less I have to do right before entertaining guests, the better!

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Ingredients

• 5 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 4 oz can green chilies, drained
• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 20 slices of bacon
• Barbecue sauce

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees
2. Slice each chicken breast in half from the side – you want them to be thin but still large enough to roll. It’s easier if you place onr hand on top of the chicken breast and slice from the long side using your other hand – just be careful cutting!
3. Pound the chicken so it’s even thinner
4. Mix the softened cream cheese, green chilies, and cheddar cheese.
5. Scoop one large spoonful of the cream cheese mixture and put it in toward one short side of each flattened chicken breast. There is a lot of cream cheese mixture, so you can be generous!

   

6. Roll each chicken breast and place seam side down.
7. Take one piece of bacon and wrap it long ways around the each chicken breast – this covers the open sides to keep the cream cheese mixture on the inside.

   

8. Take another slice of bacon and wrap the opposite direction from the first slice of bacon.

   

9. Drizzle generously with your favorite barbecue sauce
10. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes. Turn the chicken breasts half way through to help them cook evenly.
11. After 30 minutes, baste with more barbecue sauce and turn the oven up to 400 degrees. Bake another 10 minutes to help crisp up the bacon.
12. Remove from the oven and enjoy! These are really addicting!

The post Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Chicken appeared first on Love and Laundry.

This week was wonderful! Dave and I celebrated our 17 year wedding anniversary. SEVENTEEN YEARS! That is a ONE followed by a SEVEN.  I can’t believe it’s been that long! How can we even be that old?!? I am so very blessed to be married to this wonderful man! He is so good to me. I used to think it was corny when I heard people say they were more in love than the day they got married. Yep.  I get it now. I love Dave so much!!

We have a tradition of going out of town for a couple of days to celebrate our anniversary. With the exception of only two years, we have stayed at the Anniversary Inn every single anniversary. We started by staying at the Salt Lake location one of the nights on our honeymoon and we’ve continued the tradition pretty strong ever since!  The Anniversary Inn is a theme suite hotel (really more like a bed and breakfast). We each take turns planning our anniversary and this year was Dave’s turn. He spoiled me and actually booked 2 nights this time so we got to stay in two different rooms for the first time! It was nice to have so much time away from real life. Our anniversary is really my favorite! I look forward to it all year long – even more than Christmas if you can believe it!

The last few years we’ve also added the tradition of the anniversary selfie! I wish we would have started that when we first got married. Wouldn’t that have been cool to do a collage of all of our different years? Too bad selfies weren’t a thing back when we got married!

Aww! Look at us on our wedding day! Seventeen years younger and seventeen pounds lighter (ahem…).

I’ve been working for the last year and a half to finally get all of our photos into photo books. It’s been a pretty daunting task! I connected my computer to Google Photos to have all of our photos finally get backed up and there were literally over 40,000 photos. Being married 17 years also means that I have that many years to put into family books. Well, not the entire 17 years. I have 2015 and 2016 finished already. This week we got our 2013 Europe Trip photo book in the mail, which checks another album off of my to-do list! I’m also very close to finishing 2014 and 2005 (I know, kind of a random order).  It feels SO good to have them put together and documented. My biggest fear in life is losing our memories!

Now that our Europe Trip Book is finished, I’m trying to duplicate the pages and make another book for my mom for a Christmas gift since we went on the trip together (don’t worry, she already knows. I need her to help me with some of it, so in order to give it as a gift, I had to spoil the surprise).

To make all of my albums,  I’ve created ALL of the pages on my iPad using the Project Life app. I’ve been contemplating doing a blog post all about how I do it. I’ve done almost 700 album pages in the last year and a half and it really hasn’t been that much work. Trust me, I definitely don’t slave hours over this. I honestly wish I worked on it more because I would have so many more pages done. But I find myself getting busy with life and putting this project away for weeks at a time. And still I’ve been able to accomplish 700 pages! If I worked on a blog post about tips and tricks and how-tos about putting these albums together, is that something you would read? I find myself wanting to share how to make them because I know how so many people feel overwhelmed.

This is a 12×12 album if that gives you some perspective. Seeing this album all put together really makes me want to go back to Europe! I think it’ll be several years before we’re able, but a girl can dream, right?!? In the meantime, I’m just going to binge on some good British TV to fill that void in my life!

We got our first snowfall this week and sadly I missed pictures because we were gone celebrating our anniversary! So I guess technically it wasn’t MY first snowfall of the season and it did melt within a few hours. But snow does mean that I have to finally take all of the flowers out of the pots. I haven’t watered them for a good month, mostly out of laziness, so they are already quite dead. But cleaning them up really means that winter is on it’s way.

Logan had his Fall Carnival at his school this week. It is SO weird to me to think that he is our last elementary kid! Bria and Max went to the carnival with us and Max even played the games. He ROCKED the dart throwing and popped balloons with all 3 of his darts. Bria is so awesome for tagging along even though she really didn’t want to participate. I guess the games were just a little bit too little kid. It’s hard to believe that we only have a couple more years of going to these things which makes me pretty sad. Kids grow up WAY too fast!

We’re going to have a pretty low key weekend this weekend, which is nice after our weekend getaway last weekend. We are definitely planning to watch the Packers stomp the Cowboys! And I went to the store today to buy the ingredients to make Dave’s favorite Slow Cooker Calico Beans to eat while we watch. Football is just better with good food.

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If you’ve known our family for any time at all, you will know that we are huge Green Bay Packers fans. In fact, when people call us fans, Dave will often correct them and clarify that we are actually OWNERS! We own 1 share of stock. Yep. ONE single share. We may just barely be owners, but we are most definitely owners! And if you know anything about the Green Bay Packers, that is a pretty big deal!

Last summer in 2016, we took our family vacation to Wisconsin just to visit Lambeau Field. It. Was. AWESOME! If you are a Packers fan and you haven’t been, GO! Even though it wasn’t football season when we visited, it was so cool!

We absolutely loved visiting Wisconsin. On the way home from our trip, Logan, who is our youngest, commented that we wish we were from Wisconsin, but we aren’t. Haha! It was a pretty fun trip. One thing that Wisconsin is super famous for is their dairy industry – specifically their cheese. And it is GOOD! We love cheese almost as much as we love the Packers, so we pretty much loved every part of our trip to Wisconsin. Ever since we got back (even though it’s been over a year ago), I have been digging around for some really good Wisconsin cheese recipes. This mac and cheese is so, so good! My kids kept going back for thirds and fourths because they couldn’t get enough.

It’s a bit different from regular homemade mac and cheese. First of all, it is made with a combination of 5 different cheeses, including creamy ricotta.  It also has some Italian Seasoning and Garlic added. The seasoning combined with the different cheeses gives this dish a lot of flavor depth. Another thing that I loved so much about this mac and cheese is that it is pretty fast to make. As much as I love to cook, I sometimes hate recipes that take hours to make. This one is fast! It is perfect for a main dish, side dish or something to take to a pot luck! I promise, whatever you make it for, it definitely won’t last long!

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Wisconsin Mac and Cheese

Ingredients

• 1 16 oz package of elbow macaroni
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1 cup shredded Swiss cheese
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup shredded provolone cheese
• 3/4 cup ricotta cheese
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 cup half and half
• 1 tablespoon fresh parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon Italian Seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
2. Cook the elbow macaroni according to the package directions
3. Meanwhile, grease a 9×13-inch baking dish.
4. In a bowl, mix together the Swiss, Parmesan, and mozzarella cheese. Set aside 1/2 cup to use for the topping later.
5. In another bowl, stir the remaining ingredients together until smooth.
6. After the elbow macaroni is cooked and drained, add it to the second bowl and toss together until all of the macaronis is well coated. Add the Swiss, Parmesan and mozzarella and stir to combine just a bit.
7. Pour into the 9×13-inch baking dish. Sprinkle the extra cheese over the top.
8. Bake for 10 minutes and then broil for an additional 5 minutes to crisp up the top.
9. Serve immediately!

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Before I get into my post, I have to do a shoutout to OXO for sending me the tools to make these amazing cupcakes! I’ll tell you more about them later. Did you know that September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month? I didn’t either! But when I found out that OXO was looking for bloggers to help promote the Cookies for Kids’ Cancer 4th Annual 50 State Challenge, I knew for sure I wanted in! Several years ago, I took our youngest to the doctor because he had some lumps on his neck. The doctor immediately starting doing tests to check for Lymphoma and I was scared to death that our then 3 year old had cancer! It was a real wake up call about how serious cancer is for kids. Thankfully, he didn’t have cancer, but it gave me so much more compassion for moms of kids who do have cancer.

Did you know that you can participate in the Cookies for Kids’ Cancer 4th Annual 50 State Challenge as well? It’s easy!! All you have to do is have a bake sale, run a race, or put together a fundraiser at your school and register your event HERE. And OXO is taking it a stop further by matching your proceeds if you chick that you were inspired by OXO when you register! So awesome!! I love working with companies that are so generous!

Want to know what I baked?

Let me start out by saying that these are my FAVORITE, favorite cupcakes! I’ve been wanting to blog about them forever, but I always eat them up before I have the chance to take really good photos. The reason that I call them Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate cupcakes is because it is a chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache filling and topped with the most creamy chocolate frosting. And these are seriously the most moist cupcakes you’ve ever had! They are so good that I often bake them and deliver them as treats to my friends for their birthday. Oh my goodness, just blogging about them makes me want to make them all over again! Haha!

OXO was so generous and sent me one of their famous Muffin Pan’s, some silicone Baking Cups, and a Baker’s Decorating Tool to put the frosting on (which was by far my favorite!). I put links to each product if you click on the name it will take you to more info. All I can say is that every OXO product I’ve ever used is dreamy!

What I love about this recipe is that you put the chocolate ganache right on top of the cupcake batter and it bakes inside creating a filling without the work of actually filling cupcakes. That can be a messy job when they’re all baked up! But the ganache filling also makes the cupcakes super moist. These are really as good as any cupcake you would buy at a cupcake bakery. I promise!

Seriously, SOOO good!!

So, without further ado, here is the recipe!

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Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes

Yield 12 cupcakes

Ingredients

Cupcakes

• 3 ounces baking chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 3/4 cup boiling water
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 6 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons white vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Ganache Filling

• 2 ounces baking chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Frosting

• 1 1/4 cups salted butter, softened
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 3/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cup chocolate chips, melted

Instructions

Cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and line a standard size muffin pan.
2. In a bowl, add the chopped chocolate, cocoa powder, and boiling water together. Stir until all of the chocolate is melted. Place inside the refrigerator to cool. (Make the ganache filling at this point – instructions below)
3. In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients – flour, sugar, salt and baking soda. Set aside until ready to combine.
4. When the chocolate has cooled, whisk in the oil, eggs, vinegar and vanilla until well combined.
5. Add the dry ingredients to the chocolate mixture and mix until it’s all smooth.
6. Divide the cupcake batter evenly in the muffin cups. You should use all of the batter.
7. Place a spoonful of ganache filling in the center of each cupcake.
8. Bake for 17-19 minutes. The cupcakes are finished when they are firm to the touch. Cool on a wire rack before frosting.

Ganache Filling

1. In a small bowl, add the chocolate, cream, and powdered sugar.
2. Microwave in 20 second intervals until the ingredients are warm.
3. Stir everything together until it is well combined and thick.
4. Place in the refrigerator until ready to add to the cupcake batter (see steps above).

Frosting

1. In a mixer, combine the softened butter, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder and mix for several minutes.
2. Add the corn syrup and vanilla and mix some more. Scrape the sides of the bowl as needed.
3. Finally, add the melted chocolate and finish mixing until smooth. Generously frost the cooled cupcakes.

Notes

• You can use different kinds of chocolate – milk, semi-sweet, or bittersweet depending on how dark you like your chocolate. I personally like to use 60% cacao baking chocolate for the cupcakes and ganache. Then switch to milk chocolate chips for the frosting. I think it gives the cupcakes a perfect amount of both dark and milk chocolate so the dark chocolate doesn’t become overwhelming. 
• These are rich cupcakes, but those are my favorite kinds of desserts. A little bit goes a long way! It’s not a bad idea to serve these with a glass of milk.
• Even my self professed chocolate hating son loves these cupcakes, so even if you’re a chocolate skeptic, you might like these more than you think!

The post Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes appeared first on Love and Laundry.

Summer at our house seems to be crazy, busy every year! This year, we’ve had swimming lessons, scout camp and girl’s camp, some house projects we’ve tackled, selling fireworks, and have spent lots of time as a family! Since Dave is a school principal, he has the summers off and we like to take advantage of every second we have together. Working in education is definitely demanding, underpaid, and often thankless, but you sure can’t beat the schedule! We love having so much time together every summer! But that also can make it super busy.

And with so much going on, cooking beautiful and nutritious dinners is such a challenge for me. I love to cook and during the winter it doesn’t seem to be a problem. During the summer, cooking heats up the house and truthfully, we’re often just too busy to have very many really nice dinners. I also hate the idea of sacrificing healthy food for fast food all the time so I’m always on the hunt for quick and easy dinner ideas that are also healthy.

When I found out how easy it is to whip something up with Simply Organic Simmer Sauces, I was sold! They are fast, nutritious, and organic – all things that are important to me when feeding my family. I used the Mild Taco Simmer Sauce to make these crazy fast street tacos. I love it because it is easy to use and tastes fantastic! Think lime, cilantro, onion and garlic mixed in a chili/tomato sauce! Yum!

To make my chicken street tacos even faster and easier, I picked up a rotisserie chicken and some pre-made pico de gallo at my local supermarket. It literally took us longer to eat dinner than it took for me to make it – perfect for busy summer nights! And the bonus is that since you heat the chicken and sauce together in a skillet, it doesn’t heat up the house!

After you heat up the chicken and the sauce, put it into mini corn tortillas and top with pico de gallo and a slice of avocado if you like that. I hardly ever share my avocados with my kids so they thought that was a real treat! You could even squeeze a tiny bit of lime juice on top of each taco, but you definitely don’t need to – the flavor of the Mild Taco Simmer Sauce is wonderful without adding to it. These make-at-home street tacos taste like the real deal, but much less expensive and super fast to throw together.

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10 Minute Street Tacos

Cook 10 mins

Total 10 mins

Ingredients

• Mild Taco Simmer Sauce, Organic
• 1 Rotisserie Chicken
• Pico de Gallo
• Sliced Avocado
• Mini Corn Tortillas

Instructions

1. Shred the rotisserie chicken and heat in the Mild Taco Simmer Sauce
2. Heat the mini corn tortillas for a few seconds in the microwave to soften.
3. Take 2 tortillas and fill with chicken.
4. Top with a spoonful of pico de gallo and a slice of avocado.
5. Enjoy!

Notes

• You can buy the rotisserie chicken in advance and store it in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use it. I bought mine the night before.
• These can be pretty addicting! We had them two nights last week and my kids devoured them.

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