Holy shredded chicken, Batman!

In the Enright house we have a lot of favorite recipes that require shredded chicken. The only problem is that I HATE shredding chicken!! It's such an annoying, tedious process that I absolutely dread. Well fear no more! I have found the most wonderful solution, thanks to Pinterest, and my mom's Kitchenaid mixer that she gave me. So here's the simple, two step process. *Disclaimer* if you are super picky with your meat like I am, there will be a third step which involves examining every single bit of chicken for yucky, veiny bites that need to be cut off. If not, these are your two steps:

1. Put chicken in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat and let simmer until chicken is no longer pink.
2. When done, take chicken out and put into the kitchenaid mixer bowl, let cool for a few minutes. When cool, use the paddle attachment, on medium speed for about 25 seconds and VOILA, perfectly shredded chicken!

You don't ever have to touch the chicken is the best part! Here are some before and after pictures:

Before:

After:

Chicken roll-ups, chicken enchiladas, chicken salad, chicken tortilla soup, here I come!!





Freezer Food

For awhile now I've been wanting to try cooking meals to be frozen and heated up at a later, busier date. I really wanted to do this when I was pregnant with Ellie, but the last few weeks of pregnancy for me consisted of the recliner, food, and my DVR. Fast forward six months later, and I decided I'd give it a try. I did all my grocery shopping Saturday, along with cooking and shredding the chicken, which is a whole other post in itself. This morning I began the task of preparing ant freezing several meals. I would say I spent about three and a half hours, but I'm really happy with what I got from it (luckily Daddy was home to entertain Ellie!). I ended up with the following:

1. Southwest Chicken (shredded chicken with salsa and seasonings to be put in wraps)
2. Two pans of baked ziti
3. Bird's Nest Pie (spaghetti with buttered noodles and meat sauce)
4. Pasta Milano (bow tie pasta with sun dried tomatoes and a cream sauce)
5. White Chicken Chili
6. Beef Stew (just assembled ingredients in a freezer bag to be cooked in crock pot.)
7. Two bags of ingredients assembled to make Beef Dip Sandwiches with Au Jus
8. Potato Soup
9. Ham and Cheese Sammies on Hawaiian rolls. (wrap them in foil and they go from freezer to oven).

I even had some leftover chicken and was able to make some chicken salad for my lunch this week! I'm anxious to see how everything tastes re-heated, but I look forward to having all these options for some of our busier nights.

Here's what I ended up with, minus the potato soup, which is still in the crock pot:

Forget-Me-Not

I take a lot of pictures. I mean, A LOT. Because of this, it usually takes me awhile before I get the motivation to upload and print all of them. Sometimes by the time I have them printed, I have forgotten when the photo took place. With some photos it's not a huge deal, but with some, it's an event I want to remember. For example, we took Ellie to the zoo on Sunday for Zoo Boo, and I wanted to make sure I remembered her first trip to the zoo and how old she was, etc... So when we got home I took this picture:

Now when I print the pictures, probably a few months from now if I'm being realistic, I'll know exactly when we went! I can either stick this photo in the album with the others, or write down the info on a sticker for one of the photos from that day. Like this one,

As I was thinking about this, I had another dilema/solution. I don't always have the time to run into Ellie's room, find the appropriate page in her baby book, and jot down milestones everytime one happnes. My solution is to put a Post-It Note pad on my kitchen counter, so anytime I want to write something down I can just jot it down and stick it on top of her baby book. Then every so often I will go through each separate note and fill in the baby book!





Pinterest Inspired Laundry Room

Anyone that is facebook friends with me knows that I've recently become obsessed with www.pinterest.com . I could spend hours browsing recipes, hairstyles, DIY projects, and other inspirational ideas. This fall break, I decided I would use some of my renewed interest in crafting and organizing to spruce up the laundry room. It's been somewhat of a disaster for several months now, and I always knew it had potential. I obviously didn't want to spend a ton of money, so I tried to fix up items that we already had. I will highlight some of the changes I made, but unfortunately I forgot to take before shots of most of them.

The first unsightly part of the laundry room was the water heater and all the copper piping leading from the top of it to the ceiling. I decided to bring down a room divider that we had up in our bedroom. I'm not really sure why I ever bought it, I never really needed to divide a room, but we had it and I knew I could make it work! I painted it white and put fabric on the back side so you couldn't see through the top section, and set it up in front of the water heater and voila! Above it you will see a $2.00 goodwill frame that I painted white and also added fabric to, and hung from the ceiling to hide the copper pipes. I wish I had a before picture, because it really does look so much better!

Up next was the ironing board. I basically just used the same fabric, recovered it and made a "curtain" to hang in front of it. The purpose of the curtain was to hide the litterbox and extra litter. Here's how it turned out:





Next, I had a three part hamper that I really liked, it was just ugly and in no way matched my new bright color scheme! More new fabric and my favorite tool, my glue gun, and it was covered. I made a lid with some more fabric, cardboard, and of course my glue gun. I love how this turned out! Before:

After:

I also added a shelf with some cheapo wal mart baskets above the hamper to keep random items that otherwise had no designated place in the room.

Now I just need my dad to finish framing the door and that's it, new, cheery laundry room! I only spend $19 on the fabric, $20 on the 5x7 rug, and about $15 for the shelf and baskets. Next up, is the office, which has now become the "catch-all" room.