Salisbury Steak

I don't know about you, but I love Salisbury steak! When I was in college and working I didn't have a lot of money, so I would buy those frozen dinners that would always go on sale, 10 for $10. I loved getting the Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes or with macaroni and cheese. It was great for lunch breaks. This is just as hearty and delicious, but it's healthier to make it at home. Especially since it's so easy! From start to finish, with photographing it, it took 40 minutes. Hope you enjoy!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cheerio Squares

Nothing beats a no bake treat that uses up extra ingredients. We buy Cheerios from Costco, which means two giant family size boxes. After a while Isla loses interest in eating them as a snack, and the majority of the Cheerios get stomped on and then vacuumed up. I wanted to use up some Cheerios and I had marshmallows in the pantry, and figured a Rice Krispie Treat inspired snack would be a hit!

Chicken Enchiladas

These are so delicious and filling! Best part is you can have two enchiladas and a side of beans (or salad? anyone?) and it can be a meal for under 400 calories! Which leaves room for dessert, you're welcome. If you have a bunch of bell peppers on hand and no tortillas, then you could easily turn this recipe into enchilada stuffed peppers. Which would be so delicious, cut calories, and definitely cut carbs. 

Mommy Mondays: Toddler Favorites

After nearly 20 months of parenting, I've really got the hang of it! Haha! I always love to see what other people like for their kids, and I've noticed as Isla grows the list gets smaller and smaller. Here are some of the basics and things that really make life a lot easier.

Vegan Artichoke Veggie Dip

I made this years ago, six years ago actually, when I was eating a vegan diet. It's easy to make, fast, delicious, and full of nutrients! What's not to love? Now that it's football season it's good to have a few dip recipes on hand. This is great alternative for those of us who love spinach and artichoke dip, but have no self control. 

Baked Boston Cream Donuts

I have a lovely and easy recipe to share with you, now you can treat yourself to homemade donuts this weekend. I enjoy watching YouTube because there are some really amazing cooks/chefs/bakers that share wonderful recipes. Two of my favorites are Laura Vitale from Laura in the Kitchen and Gemma Stafford from Bigger Bolder Baking. I recently tried Gemma's no fry donuts and I was inspired! Laura has shared her custard filling multiple times on her channel whether making a fruit tart or filled cupcakes, and I've always wanted to try it. I figured since I was trying out a new donut recipe, I would make some Boston cream donuts. They have definitely become my favorite. After I filled the donuts with the custard, I seriously licked the bowl clean. It's the most heavenly custard I have tried.

My variation for the recipes was using the Truvia baking blend to help cut down on some of the sugar. Unfortunately for the glaze you do need to use powdered sugar. On a brighter note, using a chocolate glaze instead of a chocolate ganache does help cut down on fat and calories. But hey, it's up to you! You cook for you, and do whatever makes you happy. If you aren't making donuts very often, you can definitely go all out. And that also means you can fry these donuts.

Keep reading for the recipe, and a recipe for two other donuts too!

Vegetable Lo Mein

Something I've always ordered when we get Chinese takeout is either lo mein or chow mein, I will always choose noodles over fried rice! Here on the west coast chow mein has fried noodles, but they are not super crunchy or crispy. At least not anything I've had here in California. The chow mein here has the same noodles as lo mein, but they are stir fried separately instead of tossed in at the end. The noodles do have a slight crunch and more chew to them, but I would still consider the noodles to be soft. Especially since they soften over time and when you get takeout there's some time between when it's cooked and when you get it home. The main difference other than the crunchier noodles is chow mein tends to only have a couple of vegetables like celery and cabbage. Lo mein generally has a plethora of vegetables, which is why I prefer to make lo mein at home.

This recipe was a bit of an ordeal, it took over a week to perfect and six attempts total to get the right sauce. The short story is I started with a stir fry sauce recipe from another blog, combined that with a yakisoba sauce recipe to make a sort of hybrid sauce since I love that spice that yakisoba has. It was all wrong. So I started to try other recipes I saw online, and come to find out I don't really love hoisin in my sauce because of the five spice, white pepper isn't as good to me as black pepper, and I don't really like using sherry in the recipe either (most recipes call for Chinese cooking wine but say sherry can be substituted). I also found that while I love a bit of light colored soy sauce, having more than the amount of dark soy is just too salty to me. So when it comes down to it, this is a very basic sauce. I can't believe how many attempts it took, but there you have it. The flavor and type of lo mein I had been wanting to achieve. I will include my little list of tips at the bottom of the page if you're interested, but otherwise enjoy the recipe!

Easy DIY Crib Canopy

Recently I painted my daughters nursery and I've been working on the decor since then. When we bought the house her room was a bright blue, and I tried for seven months to like it but ended up painting it a dark gray. With the darker walls they felt a little bare, especially above her crib. I loved the name banner I put above her crib, but the walls still needed something special! When I was a little girl I had a canopy above my bed, just the kind you get on a hoop and it's called mosquito netting and meant to drape around the bed. It wasn't fancy, but it was really cool when I was little. I wanted to do a canopy for Isla so naturally I went on Pinterest. I started seeing that people were using bed crowns and shelves to make theirs, so I decided to give it a shot. This project cost $35 and took about an hour to complete. For not a lot of time or money I think it makes a major statement in her room.

Personal Review of Ting Mobile Service

This post is a little out of the ordinary for my blog, but this has been a huge money saver for us and it's good to share the wealth! In an effort to save money, my husband explored new options for our mobile service. We have iPhones for him, me, my mother in law and my brother in law and the bill was getting to be a lot every month. He looked into different options and found out about Ting, which is a reseller for Sprint service. We already had Sprint, so the phones were compatible and nothing really changed. The service is the same but most importantly we have saved a lot of money every month. With Sprint we had unlimited data, and with Ting you pay monthly based on your usage. With four iPhones our bill has averaged about $60 a month, that's included data, calls, and text messaging.

One of the downsides if that you have to buy your own phone. Most cell phone companies either give discounted or free phones with new contracts, but with Ting you buy your own phone. What we have done is just buy iPhones on Amazon.com at a discounted price instead of buying brand new in the store. You do have to be careful that the MEID is compatible with Sprint and make sure the purchase is verified and you aren't buying anything fake. You can also go through Ting's website to buy phones, which may be easier for some because you don't have to mess with verifying the phone it's already guaranteed to work with the service which is great. 

Ting is known for their excellent customer service. We have called multiple times and our calls have pretty much always been answered right away instead of going to a queue and having to wait 10 minutes. When we bought our house we noticed that we basically had one service bar in most of the house. Phone calls would drop, we would get voicemails without a missed call, text messages would take a while to send, and during calls sometimes I could only understand half of what people were saying. We called Ting to problem solve and we tried a few steps in an attempt to boost the signal. After living here for a while the problem wasn't getting any better. So again my husband called and mentioned that we had tried all the problem solving steps and that it was a safety issue since we have a small child, we definitely need to be able to make phone calls. Instead of suggesting any problem solving steps Ting sent us an Air Rave, which is a signal booster. Once we turned it on we had five service bars and have had no problems with phone calls or messages not going through. And they sent that to us at no cost, which is really awesome considering our service is so affordable.

If you are interested in checking out Ting you can follow this link to learn more and save $25 off a device or $25 of service credit. This opinion is 100% my own and not sponsored by Ting. This has been something my husband has been suggesting I blog about for months, and I'm glad I finally have. I try to tell my friends and family about Ting whenever I get the chance because hearing how much some people pay is crazy to me! I can't imagine paying that much for cell service ever again. 

DIY Farmhouse Tabletop

I am so proud of how our new dining room table turned out. I love all things farmhouse decor, and I wanted a farmhouse table for our dining room. The downside was definitely the cost. Instead of buying a farmhouse table I thought why not build a top for an existing table that would make it look farmhouse inspired. I've seen it all over Pinterest so it was really easy to get inspiration. I do plan on sharing as many steps as I can to help you build your table top. A lot of what I saw weren't actually tutorials. Some blogs had a couple of progress pictures but most didn't specify the size or type of wood used, what screws they used, and how to assemble the table top. This project took a lot of time because we had to do most of it in stages, but it's completely worth the time. My husband and I really love our table and it's such a great focal point in our dining room.