No Frills Manstyle Peanut Butter Popcorn

Hey. This is Katie's husband, so if my post is sparse on words like 'cute' and 'cuddly' and 'frilly', you understand why.


I'm hijacking Katie's blog to bring you a movie-night treat that's easy but tasty. To give you an idea of how easy this is, you need to understand that the 3 things I make best are instant pancakes, cereal (Cocoa Puffs is my piece de resistance), and Five Guy's.


So whip out your old fashioned popcorn popper, and let's get started.


The ingredients you need are:

1/2 c light corn syrup

1/4 c sugar 

1/2 c super chunky (or not) peanut butter

8 c popcorn

Light up your stove with a medium sized sauce pan. Combine the light corn syrup and sugar and bring it to a slow boil while stirring it constantly. Constantly is the key word here. If you aren't stirring, it means you're burning. Keep stirring until the sugar dissolves. At that point, you can turn off the heat on the stove and add the peanut butter to the sugar mixture. The peanut butter will thin out so it's easy to pour. Spread it out over the popcorn and stir it up. The whole process takes about 10 minutes. If you're feeling exotic, you can add nuts or candy pieces. Katie says it's not complete until chocolate is involved, so you can also drizzle some melted chocolate over the top if that's what you crave.

Free Cone Day

Tomorrow is Ben and Jerry's Free Cone Day. If you are in Salt Lake they have a location at the Gateway. I think we'll go check it out this year.  Click Here for more info.

Gap and Old Navy Coupon

Here is a coupon for 30% at Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Gap Outlet, and Banana Republic Outlet. You get 30% off and 5% goes to Feeding America. I'm going to use it to get Addie some cute clothes for her birthday. This coupon is only good until Saturday.

Click Here for the coupon.

Vocalpoint is Awesome!

Look what I got in the mail today.......

And when you open it up......

A full bottle of Pantene Pro-V Shampoo! I love mail days like this. If you haven't signed up for Vocalpoint yet do so now! I love all of the free coupons and products they send. Click here to sign up.

If you want info on other companies that send you free coupon check out this post.

Oops

At least it's just the Q, right? In other news: Addie has a new bruise on her forehead that makes her look like she has a unibrow.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, make your milk green!

Cupcake Topper

Cute free cupcake topper download from TomKat Studio.  Click Here to download the file.

Color Career Quiz

Take this fun color quiz to see what it says your career should be. It says I'm a creator, I agree. I was surprized to see that is also worked for my husband. Try it out, let me know if it's right about you.

Thanks How about Orange.

Samantha Who?

 If you watched Samantha Who when it was on ABC, and you loved it like I did, you need to get your hands on Samantha Who?: The Complete Second Season. It has three episodes they did not air with a final episode that is amazing. How could they have stopped right when Todd finally asked Samantha out! It always seems like they take off my favorite shows like Pushing Daisies and Samantha Who?.

Easy Homemade Baby Bib

Here is a really easy and cheap way to make baby bibs, use an old vinyl tablecloth. I bought this tablecloth from Walmart for like $4 about a year ago. It had its fair share of hard use and when it had one to many gross spots we took it off. I love the bright color so I wanted to do something with the extra material that still looked good and a baby bib was perfect!

I traced out my favorite bib making it a little bit longer and wider. I like it to cover Addie's shoulders, she always turns her head and gets her shoulder all gross.

I pinned up the bottom to make a little "pocket" for fallen food and sewed it down.

I then just used this bias tape to go around the edges to give it a more finished look. Finished it off with some Velcro and there you have it.

Here is the finished bottom pocket. I do not sew straight, that is about as straight as it's going to get.

It's really hard to get a picture of the finished project, even if you tempt toddlers with fruit snacks.

I love this because you can make SO many out of one tablecloth. You also don't even have to add the bias tape. To make it even simpler just cut out the bibs (the vinyl material doesn't fray) and safety pin them on. I'm going to do that with the rest of the tablecloth. I'm a very lazy crafter.

Check out The Thrifty Home for more Penny Pinching Ideas.

Bistro Chicken

I found this recipe a long time ago and filed it away to try sometime. I file away a TON of recipes so pretty soon this one was forgotten. Then this week I was looking on This Week for Dinner and Jane had posted this recipe. We tried it tonight and I'm now sad it has taken me this long to try it! It was really yummy and easy, a winning combination. I think we'll eat it with rice from now on because we loved the sauce/rice combo.

Bistro Chicken

• Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts (there is enough sauce for 6 but I just made 2)
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1 can Campbell's French Onion Soup*
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• A few shakes Italian Seasoning
• Swiss Cheese

Brown the chicken breasts in a medium-high skillet in oil or butter. Remove and place in casserole dish.

Cook onions in skillet for 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, Italian seasoning, french onion soup and cook together to reduce liquid for 5 minutes. Pour sauce over chicken in the casserole dish, top with Swiss cheese and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

* I used the whole can of liquid in the soup but only about half of the onions.

Guest Posting

Hi everyone! I'm guest posting today over at Baby Cheapskate, an awesome blog full of great baby deals. Go check it out!

Buttermilk Pancakes

My mom used to make these pancakes when we were growing up. I'm telling you they really are the only way to go. I LOVE these pancakes! I can't eat the "just add water" pancakes anymore because they just taste so blah compared to these, PLUS these only take a few minutes to whip together. It's probably the 1/4 stick of butter melted into the batter that makes them taste So good.

Buttermilk Pancakes

1/4 C. butter
1 1/3 C. buttermilk *
1 egg
1 1/2 C. all purpose flour
2 t. sugar
1 t. baking powder
3/4 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt

Melt butter, set aside to cool. Combine buttermilk and egg. In medium bowl mix flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir until well combined. Stir in melted butter. Batter should be lumpy.

*I don't usually have buttermilk on hand so I just add about 1 T. white vinegar or lemon juice to a cup of plain milk.


Visit Life As Mom for more recipes.

Favorite Toddler Snack

Photo from Manolobig.com

We have a new (to us) snack that Addie has been loving lately. I just fill a sippy cup about half way with yogurt and fill the rest with milk, shake it up and it's good to go. Just don't use the yogurt with fruit chunks; they get stuck in the lid. That can only end in tears.

Does anyone else have any good snack ideas?

Irish Decor

Look at this cute St. Patrick's Decor. I want to make that Irish Board. Go to Lulu's Tiles for the tutorials.

Awards!

I've been given some awards that I have never posted. I'm so grateful to get the awards, it made me feel happy and giddy inside. This is exactly why I love blogging so much, you get to reach out and make someone else happy that you've never met. I haven't passed on the awards yet because I've been really lazy but here goes. I don't know any of the rules for these awards so I'll just pass them on.

First, Lori from Peterson St. Louis was so sweet and gave me some awards FOREVER ago. I've been procrastinating posting them because I could not only pick a few blogs that I love.

Give this to: Summer from Sumo's Sweet Stuff. I just love all of her fun ideas and links.

Give this to: Madison from Piece by Piece. Madison is a good friend of mine and I've enjoyed her comments on my blog.

Give this to: Jenny at Have Your Cake. She helps me get motivated to be healthier. I love to read her nutrition and fitness tips.

Ashleigh from Thankfully Thrifty gave me the Sunshine Award.

Give this to: Jessica from Utah Deal Diva. I look at TONS of frugal living blogs but this one is one of my favorites. Not only does she post about coupons and deals but she also posts about free activities and events going on around Utah. Love it!

Meredith from The Powell Pow Wow was so sweet to give me the Kreativ Blogger Award.

Give this to:
Bridget at Bake at 350. Makes some AMAZING cookies! I love to look at all of her yummy creations.

Lulu's Tiles She has some of the cutest St. Patrick Day Decor ideas!
Please visit all of these lovely blogs!

Annie from Annie's Eats. I love her blog, every recipe looks amazing!