Foodie Tutorial Tryout: Chicken Broccoli Bread Braid

Have you seen all of the braided stuffed bread deliciousness happening on Pinterest lately?? I'm not quite sure why, but I'm loving this idea. Delicious carb goodness, no? It's just cool to me that people came up with the idea to shove whatever they want to eat inside bread and then bake it all together. Plus, the braids are pretty!

I keep finding new ideas to try out.

 (Links are to original websites with recipes!)

There's the Ham Breakfast Braid... no longer must I shovel my omlette on my toast and have my husband look at me like I'm crazy!

The Taco Bread Braid... which uses cream cheese. Could be fabulous.

 There's Braided Spaghetti... no need for extra garlic bread! NOM!

And finally, the one that looked really good to me.

 The Broccoli Cheddar Chicken Braid. Because when you put cheese and brocolli together, magic happens. 

So I had to try that one first. Verdict? DELICIOUS. I must now try ALL THE BRAIDS.

I did fiddle the above recipe a bit. I made it even better. Ha. Instead of mayo (blech!) I used ranch. I also used an Italian herb mix instead of just rosemary and put fresh Parmesan cheese and minced garlic in my egg wash. 

So you'll notice I didn't braid my bread. Two reasons.

 1) I had a toddler who was beating my leg with her plastic spoon. It's her way of saying "Feed me!!!" Even though she had just eaten blueberries, string cheese, and some pasta noodles. When there is food about, Sage Muffin will sniff it out and demand a bite. Apparently, I was starving her by making her wait 30 minutes between meals.

2) Whoever said that doing these braids with crescent roll dough was easy must have been entirely too optimistic. The perforations in the doll did not simply "press together." Also, it took two rolls of that stuff. I don't know how anyone could have enough dough using one roll to lay ingredients on and then braid. In the future, I'll use a bread dough.

One other thing I did and you should too. Buy pre-cooked, shredded chicken in the deli section of your grocery store. Because seriously, who has time to cook chicken, shred it, and THEN make dinner!? Not me.

It made a huge loaf and it was soooooo good. Braided (sort of) Breaded Chickeny Cheesy Broccoli goodness. I've also made the Spaghetti Braid, but gave it away as a meal for a family, so I haven't taste tested that one yet. Maybe for next week. I've also heard that if wrapped in foil and plastic wrap correctly, these freeze very well. 

I'm participating in my first freezer food exchange next month and I think this will be one of the three dishes I use. Is it weird I'm excited to do a food exchange? School is only a month away, so I need to start stocking pre-made, easy food now so that my kids don't end up eating hot dogs every night for dinner. 

Let me know if you come across any other braided recipes! I'm obsessed! 

Crochet Puppets are quite possibly the best thing ever.

I had this great idea earlier in the summer. Crochet. Puppets. 

Despite my ever growing crochet skills, I hadn't quite made the brain jump to make this idea work out. I tried about five different times.

Too big. 

Too small.

Mouth is too weird. 

And so on. Picky, picky.

Finally, I figured it out. A big part of that was due to this wonderful pattern from Stitch 11. I searched for hours trying to find a pattern just like this one. So then I tried it and that huge help to me led to these adorable little friends!

I kind of took the snake puppet idea and ran with it. These two puppets were for some of my friends of the shorter nature. A pair of 6 year old twins who were very particular when placing their orders. Twin #1 requested a blue and green puppet with an orange hat. Twin#2 requested a pink and purple puppet with yellow hair. I think I did pretty good. Aside from the basic idea of Stitch 11's pattern, the rest of the puppet such as the hat, eyes, hair and tongues were all my own. I even added eyelashes to the girl puppet! 

I wanted to also try playing around with crochet letters, and I had a lot of fun doing that part! 

The first letter of their name on their puppets was the icing on the cake for the twins. I was so cool for doing that part. There are some great letter tutorials out there and pattern diagrams, if you are interested. Each letter took less than 5 minutes to make and look how personalized of a detail it is! 

Lily and Sage were my product testers. About thirty seconds in to testing, I got the approval. I had to immediately promise Lily that I would make her a girl puppet. And a dragon. And a fish, because Sage likes fish. 

I have since started on Lily's list of puppets and I'll post more pictures of those later! I think these are my new favorite thing to crochet. I know, I know, I always say that. But look at these happy faces! There was no counting stitches, no worrying about perfection. These puppets are more charming because they aren't perfect. I think we all need a little less perfect in our life.

Now Lily is wanting a puppet show. She wants a stage and chairs and of course, an audience! So if you randomly get invited to a puppet show and the invitation is in crayon, you'll know where it came from! 

If you are interested in a pattern for the hat, eyes, hair, etc. please let me know. I can write those up if someone needs them! Also, for yarn buffs: I used Lily  Sugar and Creme 100% cotton yarn (you can guess why I picked this yarn I bet). These puppets can go on adventures and get wet and go in the wash. I wanted them played with after all! The colors I used were: Hot Blue, Hot Green, Grape, Hot Orange, Hot Pink, and Sunshine. Lot's of hotness up in here...

I loved making these and I am so proud of how they turned out! I just can't seem to stay away from making toys. Although, husbandy face even mentioned that he wants one of these puppets. HA!

If you use my puppet idea, please make sure to thank Stitch 11 for her pattern and also to link back here to my blog! I would love to see how you come up with some adornments and puppet friends! 

I have linked this post to: Hooking on Hump Day Frugal Friday Hooking Up with HOH Inspiration Gallery

30 Days Makeup Free.

Monday, July 8th, 2013.

That's my 30 day NO MAKEUP anniversary.

No face powder. No mascara. No blush (not that I ever wore it). No. Makeup.

I guess it was an unconscious decision to try this out. I have nothing against makeup. It's fun, it makes me feel pretty, it's quite often sparkly.

It's also a way for me to think bad thoughts about myself. Those sneaky, pesky "I can't leave the house because I haven't got makeup on!" thoughts. The kind of thoughts that make me think I'm ugly when I look in the mirror because my makeup is messed up or because I haven't put it on for the day. That's just not mmmkay with me. I didn't want to feel like I HAD to wear it anymore. When you HAVE to do something, it's no longer fun. It's something you're required to do. It's a pressure on your chest that makes your heart beat a little faster. It's an excess that we've come to believe is a necessity.

Over the past year, I've worn less makeup. That's a pretty dramatic shift for me. I used to wear tons of eyeliner. I used to wear foundation AND powder AND bronzer. I used to put on eye shadow in three different shades and then put glitter on top of that. I did do exactly that the last time I wore makeup. I had on more makeup than ever. I was in a wedding line and had my makeup professionally done.... it was fun... but I felt like I was wearing 10 pounds of crud (beautiful crud!!) on my face. I didn't like it.

The day after the wedding, I couldn't bear to put on makeup again.

The week after, I still couldn't do it.

Two weeks later, I stopped carrying my makeup bag with me everywhere I went.

Three weeks passed, I didn't even think about putting on makeup as part of "getting ready."

Now a month later, and I'm pretty much okay with idea of saving makeup for special occasions. For the days when I want to play with makeup. Night out on the town or feeling sassy? Add a little mascara, sure. Going to the grocery store? Fuhgetaboutit.

I have no idea if this is something I should be proud about. I'm always fighting a war against negative thoughts. They tend to creep in on me if I don't actively work on stopping them. Body image is something we all struggle with, so you can easily guess that's a sore spot for me. Letting go of the mascara is an experiment I'm trying out to see if I can be happy with the naked face I see in the mirror.

It seems to be working.

Anyone else ditching the face powder? Loving it or hating it? I'm thinking the best part is that it's been so damn hot and if I was wearing it, I'd be sweating it off anyway. ;)