chicken and noodle salad

        

One of my favorite go to meals is this pasta salad. You can serve it warm or cold {I prefer it cold!} and it makes great leftovers.  This is one of the many tasty recipes that has been handed down to me from my SIL.

1 16oz. box of rotini noodles

3-4 chicken breasts, cooked and chopped

1/2 bunch cilantro, finely chopped

1 diced red bell pepper

1/2 cup kalamata olives, chopped

1 1/2 Tbsp fresh basil

1 bunch of green onions, chopped

**optional- 1 jalapeno chopped

Dressing:

1/c cup balsalmic vinegar

1 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

3-4 cloves of garlic

dash of worchestershire

1/2 cup olive oil

dash of tabasco

In a large bowl combine green onions, bell pepper, olives, cilantro, and the basil. I love all these colors mixed together!

Add in the cooked noodles and chicken and set aside.  In a small bowl combine vinegar, olive oil, sugar, lemon juice, garlic, worchestershire, and tabasco.

If you are having friends over and you think you will eat all of this pasta in one sitting then you can add all of the dressing to the pasta salad. But if you know you will have leftovers then only pour the dressing over each serving.  The dressing is better if it is not refridgerated so just leave it out at room temp if you have some leftover. You can serve this pasta salad right away or save it for the following day. I prefer it cold so I just make the dressing the day of and add it to the cooled salad. It's SO good the hubby and I polish it off in two days.

We add the chopped jalapenos to the top of our pasta salad before serving. So if you like a little bit of a kick you might like it this way.  This salad is great paired with some yummy bread.

enjoy!!

linked to: foodie friday

grocery cart challenge

tidy mom

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North Carolina

Recently we went on a mini vacation to Asheville N.C. I can call it a vacay if we stayed one night right? I think about two days and one night is about the longest we can vacation for with two little people. We stayed in a suite and it was still a little rough considering a certain three year old barely slept all night.


Just to warn you, this post is heavy on the pictures and short on words.


We were headed to Asheville but decided to take the Blue Ridge Parkway up most of the way.  We drove to Cherokee were the parkway starts and stopped for a quick lunch.  They had a fun splash pad and a small wading river for kids near where we stopped.  Since we were in no hurry we let the boys play for a while before we jumped back in the car. We didn't have a towel with us but hubby was quickly able to locate one at a nearby souvenir shop. We all waded in to cool off a bit and the littles had the best time splashing around. 

"Mom! There's something down there!!"

After about an hour of playing in the water we hopped on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  It was such a beautiful drive and I can only imagine that it would be breathtaking in the fall.  Actually here is a picture I stole from the Nester so we don't have to imagine what it would look like in the fall!  Below is what the parkway and the mountains looked like when were there last week. Still pretty breathtaking.

There were lots of these tunnels on the parkway as well as lots of motorcycle dudes.

Graham was sleeping most of the time so Noah hopped out of the car with me to pose for a few pictures along the way.  Unfortunately about 30 minutes before we reached Asheville Graham lost his lunch {and a few twizzlers} all over himself and his carseat.  Let me just say that it is not so fun to have your car smell like throw up when you are on a road trip!  I guess we now know that Graham gets car sick.

The next morning we got up and headed to the Biltmore.  I was amazed at how large the whole Biltmore estate is.  I figured there would a lot of land surrounding the house but it was a lot larger than I was thinking.

Of course the Biltmore itself was fun to see.  This was one of the last places on our list that we wanted to visit before we left the South.  


You can't take any pictures inside the house itself so I decided to just bring the point and shoot with us.  Unfortunately I didn't realize that there was no memory card in it until we had already hiked down to the house. Oh well. I was able to take a few pics of the house but all of my garden pics were taken on my Iphone so the quality of those aren't great.

We left the gardens and drove over to Antler Hill where they have a winery, a petting zoo, several restaurants, and lots of outdoor activites.  The boys really liked the petting zoo and I loved the beautiful landscape we were surrounded by.

I loved his hair-do!

Although it was a very quick vacation filled with a sleepless night and a smelly car ride we all still managed to have fun.  Hopefully our next family adventure will involve a road trip up to Rhode Island. ;)

We just put one of these in our yard so hopefully that will help.  This sign sits right next to our "for sale by owner" sign. I am sure the neighbors are loving us right about now!

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how we organize our toys+ a thrifty find

Welcome to our playroom/den!  The littles and I spend the majority of our day in here.  Mainly because it is where most of their toys are and it's the only carpeted room in our house.  Along one wall we have two metal cabinets from Ikea.  The gray one on the left we have had for over a year now and the white one we just purchased recently. Unfortunately they only sell the longer cabinet in white and red now. We would have totally opted for gray if it was still available but felt like white was the second best option and will actually probably be the most versatile color if we ever move it into another room. 

Why do I love these cabinets so much?  They are heavy duty, the paint has held up really well {no scratches at all!}, they are reasonable priced and my most favorite part? They lock!!

We opted to have a piece of glass cut for the white cabinet.  We didn't want the top to get scratched if our super fancy slim as all get out flat screen t.v. was moved around or if the boys were driving their cars back and forth on it.  My husband's aunt actually has this piece {in red} in her guest room with a piece of glass on it and we've always thought it was a good idea. Kind of fancies up an otherwise ho hum piece of Ikea furniture.  We might eventually get a flat screen to go on top of this cabinet but probably in like 10 years.  ;)

Remember my inspiration photo for the boys future joint big boy room? You can see they have the longer cabinet in gray on the far right wall.

Want to know what we keep in our metal cabinets?

The top half of the gray cabinet holds our art supplies. Crayons, paint, markers, play-doh, colored pencils, coloring books, white paper, stickers a splat mat, a smock {on of my old t-shirts!}.  It also houses most of the boys wooden puzzles.  

The lower half of the cabinet houses some wood blocks {in the cream bag}, some random smaller toys, army men, and the red bucket contains all of our Mr. Potato heads and their 4,000 arms and accessories.

We have several of these red totes, which are also from Ikea {one of mine is from a yard sale though}.  We use them in our metal cabinets and other places around the house. You might recognize one from my "bills, mail, and recycling post" and one from a recent post about water play.

Now on to the white cabinet. One side holds some larger puzzles, a doodle pro, a Noah's ark, and a red tote full of wooden train tracks. 

The other side of the cabinet houses some shape sorting toys, animals, small cars, another red tote for trains, tunnels, and bridges, a Dr. kit, and a tool kit. 

 Don't think I am a total meanie and I have all their toys behind locked doors.  Both of the boys do have toys in their rooms and they also have toys stored under their train table in the playroom that they can get to at any time. I like to rotate the toys in their closets and the toys in the playroom cabinets so they don't get bored with things.  In each of their rooms as well as the playroom we have large baskets on the floor that each hold lots of books. We also have a few baskets or totes with toys in them. 

 Some days I throw caution to the wind and open up one of the metal cabinets and leave it open most of the day.  That way they can just get out whatever toys they want.  I will say it is very nice to be able to have a place to put most of their toys so that they are out of sight if need be.  It has helped tremendously for showing our house and just my overall sanity! I like when things have a place. 

The globe was a yard sale find from last spring. See that red tray on top of the gray cabinet? It holds a small case of the boys dvd's, the remotes for the t.v./dvd player, and the keys to the cabinets. I got it recently at a flea market for 5 cents.  Talk about a bargain!

I love the wooden handles on this tray and that it only cost me a nickel!

I know I will get a lot of use out of it whether I use it for decorating purposes or for a serving piece.  My friend already borrowed it for her little girls birthday party and I took some yummy blueberry muffins {adapted from my blueberry coffee cake recipe} in it today to MOPS.  Looks like I've already gotten my monies worth out of it!

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