Best Tortilla Soup Ever!

I’ve been making this soup for years and it is one of my go-to simple recipes that I absolutely love! I originally got it out of a Food Network cook book and I still use it as a guide but I have made some changes to it. I’m bad about not following a recipe exactly lol. I love that book, though, I’ve gotten several great recipes out of it!
I posted a picture of the soup on Facebook for a friend who also loves it and I got lots of people asking for the recipe, so here it is:

2 Tblsp Vegetable Oil

1/2 a medium onion, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 chipotle chile en adobo sauce, minced

1 Tblsp chili powder

2 tsp salt

6 cups chicken broth

1 cup frozen corn kernels

1 can diced tomatoes

1 whole rotisserie chicken, deboned

cilantro, shredded cheddar cheese, avocado, tortillas, tortilla chips for garnish

 

Stir-fry together the oil, onion, garlic, chile pepper, chili powder, and salt until onions are soft.

Add the chicken broth, corn and chicken.

let it come to a boil and it is ready to serve!

I think my favorite thing about this recipe is how quick it is and how versatile it is. I LOVE cilantro and cant have too much (as you can see in my picture, I load my bowl up with it).

Tip: the chipotle pepper is where the heat comes from and is the key ingredient to this recipe! I like spicy food so I like to add a little extra splash of the sauce with the pepper. if you are sensitive to heat, just add a little sauce or only do half a pepper. This is the kind I like to buy:

I hope you enjoy this soup as much as we do!

Jackson’s Newborn Photos

Here are the newborn photos I did of Jackson this weekend. He was such a great model and would fall asleep in every pose I put him! I really wish I had more props and backdrops. Maybe one day I can invest in all of that. I have a few more poses in mind that I would like to do with his sisters but for now, I have some great pictures. That is the real point, right?

Welcome Jackson Max!

Our third child and first son was born on June 1, 2013 on his actual due date! I woke up that morning feeling some contractions but went about my business since they were not too hard and I had been having contractions off and on for days. At this point I was already 4 cm and 80% effaced. After about 2 hours of timing they were averaging about 3 min apart and lasting about 40 seconds. Still not terribly hard but we decided to go in and at least get checked. This time around I was NOT wanting to deal with false alarms so I was even hesitant to go in at this point. I had one false alarm with Avery and several with Norah so I was not in the mood (being his due date and all) to be sent home. We had a plan to tell the nurse and doctor on call that if I was at least 5 cm I wanted to stay.
Sure enough I was about 5 cm and the nurse told us that since this is my third baby and had a history of short deliveries, she was going to do everything she could to let me have that baby that day. I was on board and they admitted me right away.
I got the epidural a few hours later but my contractions never picked up. I figured I would go ahead and get it before everything got too bad. My water finally broke shortly after that and we thought for sure we would be holding him very shortly. My body had different ideas though! It never wanted to kick into active labor. According to the monitors, my contractions never got harder (with the exception of a few here and there) and they even seemed to be subsiding. I was getting so discouraged! I really didn’t want to have a super fast labor where I couldn’t get the epidural but since I had the pain meds I was really not wanting this to drag on any more! after about 4 hours we started to request some Pitocin. The doctor on call did not want to give it to me just yet so we waited a bit longer.
**side note: I don’t understand why some doctors wont listen to the patient in situations like this. I was obviously not in a critical situation so I could think rationally. I knew that as soon as I got just a tiny bit of Pitocin I would have the baby almost immediately! I had done this twice before. I think I know my body! She wasn’t even my actual doctor! sheesh
Anyways, sure enough as soon as I got the Pitocin, I had the baby an hour and a half later at 6:15 pm. Could have been about 4 hours earlier if they would have just listened to me and Jeff. Oh well!
We had a healthy big boy weighing in at 9lb 6 oz and 21.25” long!! I knew this whole pregnancy he was going to be huge! I could feel every little ounce of him; I was in so much pain at the end!! Here are some pictures from the hospital:
Waiting and waiting…

Finally here!

We are so excited about having a son! The girls are adjusting greatly. Avery is a little momma to him. She is OBSESSED with babies right now. She is a great helper holding his bottles, changing diapers, baths, etc. She loves to sing to him and gives him kisses any chance she can get. Norah is a little jealous but only here and there. Having Avery around to play with helps with that I think. I was feeding him a bottle the other day and she came and sat next to me, took my hand from his bottle and put it on hers and she took her hands off the bottle. She wanted to be fed like a baby too. It was very cute and I knew right there that she is watching every little move I make and does not want to be forgotten about! Of course, she could never be forgotten but I know that I need to make a conscience effort to give her lots of extra love right now.
I can not believe some times that I have been blessed with 3 beautiful children! It is so surreal that I am at this point in my life. I could not be happier and thank God for Jeff and my babies every day! I could not love anyone or anything deeper and stronger than I do right now. My cup overflows!

Here we go again

Hello! Ive been going through another blogging slump lately. I have plenty I could talk about but finding the motivation sometimes is the hardest part. Why? I have no idea. Hormones probably. I have not had much motivation to do anything. We decided to get real bedroom furniture so that has taken up a lot of my mental capacity. It’s amazing how much energy it takes to to just simple tasks when your 9 months pregnant and chasing 2 toddlers. I think I can say good bye to energy for at least the next year.
I am 2 days from my due date and at the end of my rope. As of 3 days ago I was already 4 cm and have been having lots of contractions, just not regular enough to time, so I am praying something happens very soon. This boy is getting big (and momma is getting HUGE) so I can’t take it much longer!
Ok, done complaining….
I was able to get one quick maternity picture done this time around. I really was not worried about doing a whole session with someone since I really only want a belly picture for a future project I have in mind. Thanks to my sister who came over to help, I was able to set the camera up and guide her through shooting one for me. I think it turned out pretty cute!

Semi-Homemade Crayons

This was a Pinterest inspired project but it is not exactly a new concept.
I tell my sister all of the time that she needs to be the one with a blog since she does stuff like this all of the time, but she isnt really into the whole “blogging” thing. In fact, she doesn’t even read mine or friends unless I ask her to lol.
She was here last week and we decided to clean out my crayon box of all of the old broken crayons and melt them to make new ones. She had these silicone molds that were in shapes of vehicles (cars, boats, airplanes) so we thought it would be the best thing to use.
It’s really pretty self explanatory, but we simply took all of the crayon bits and pieces and filled the mold.

Put them in the oven on 350 degrees (I bumped it up to 400 after it was taking a while)

Once the were completely melted and all of the chunks looked like they were gone, we pulled them out and let them cool

Voila! new crayons that the kids LOVED! A quick, easy, “kid tested, mother approved” kind of craft that didn’t cost anything, cleaned something up, and made the kids very happy. Win-win for sure!
My sister remembers doing this as a kid using egg shells. I don’t remember this, but she said our dad would hollow out an egg (like making confetti eggs) and fill them with the melted crayons and then when it cooled, peel the shell off. Like I said, not a new concept, just a different way to do it. Oldy but goody craft, guess you could say.

Fabric Wrapped Photo Albums

I am tired of looking at these ugly photo albums sitting on my shelf! I hated them so much I really just wanted to toss them out but I couldn’t get myself to do that with all my childhood pictures in them! I had a kind of “light bulb” moment the other day and decided that they needed to be wrapped in fabric. GENIUS ! Why have I not thought of this before?! Here’s the before/after:

So, Here’s how I did it.
I first went through and decided if there was anything I could get rid of. It’s amazing how organized you can get just by purging!! I threw out my old scrapbooks from High School and college. I know, I might be crazy. I put a lot of time and energy into those, but they were falling apart and getting junky and I have digital copies of those photos so it wasn’t too hard to part with them. Plus, there were lots of pages of me with ex boyfriends so who wants to look at those?! lol I also threw out a lot of prints from elementary/junior high/high school that I just didn’t care to keep.
I was able to narrow it down it the 4 binders I had and kept the 3 scrapbooks of stuff  from my childhood. Luckily, I had gone through those and condensed that stuff several years ago. I found a binder laying around the house that I put some other photo prints into and replaced the fabric wrapped one that I had. Remember when this was popular?

I vividly remember making this in Girls Scouts in elementary school. yikes! Needless to say I threw it out and replaced it with another binder.

All in all I ended up with 5 binders full of childhood prints from my birth to my wedding.

I went to Hobby Lobby and got some thick canvas material. I originally wanted Linen but it wasn’t thick enough to cover the patterns of the old binders.

I cut strips of the fabric just about an inch wider that the width and length of the binder

I then coated the outside with spray adhesive, flipped it over and laid it on the fabric

I did the binding first. I cut a tab out of the fabric and glued it down first using rubber cement.

P.S. Clothes pins work great for this and I feel like a genius for thinking of this! lol

I then went around to each edge and glued the fabric down with the spray adhesive, clipping it until it dried. The spray is nice because it dries really fast  but you have to be ready to glue and try not to make a mistake! I messed up on one binder and was able to pull it off so there is some give to it, but if you have the super permanent kind, it is not as forgiving!!

There you have it. Pretty, clean line and simplified binders that don’t look like ancient photo albums.
The best part is that this project only cost me about $10 for the fabric! (would have been cheaper but the lady at hobby lobby fought with me over the fabric being on sale. I know it was 30% off but sometimes a few bucks just isnt worth the argument)

Homemade Play Dough

My sister is the leader on this little project but I thought I would take pictures and feature it on here.
She has been staying with us for a while now with their transition to move back to Houston, so we have had a house full of toddlers. We decided today that it would be fun to make our own play dough. I ran out of the store bought stuff since they let it sit out a few days ago and it all dried up. That stuff was never that great anyways, since it dries out fast and crumbles all over the place.
She found this recipe a while back and tested it out and really liked it, so that is what we used.
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 Tablespoons Cream of Tartar
1 Tablespoon oil
1 cup water
food coloring

Mix the first 5 ingredients in a sauce pan and whisk together.

Add food color of your choice and enough to make it as dark as you want.

Cook over medium low heat stirring continuously with a metal spoon until it just starts to come together into a dough ball.

Immediately take it out of the pot and onto a plate. At this point the dough should still be pretty sticky but still able to be picked up into a ball. knead the dough until it forms a smooth ball with the consistency of normal play dough.

Put it into a tupperware with the lid on to cool. I actually put the dough into a tupperware and left the lid off, thinking that the condensation would be bad and needed to cool without the lid, but Emily said that if you leave the lid off it will dry your dough out. You want to keep all of the moisture with in the container!
After it cools, it’s time to play! We made pink and blue (2 batches) but you can obviously do as much as you want and as many colors as you want. I am out of cream of tartar so once I can get some more, I will be making lots of other colors!

The best parts of this play dough is that it doesn’t dry out fast, doesn’t crumble, and the colors do not rub off on their hands!
PS. I love that my breakfast table is perfect for things like this! I don’t have to be paranoid the whole time about them scratching it up and making messes (to a certain extent, of course). I look forward to the day it can be refinished to be beautiful again, but for now, it gets lots of toddler “love” :)