PB and J will ALWAYS be my favorite!!!

The other day I was looking for something sweet to make. I actually stumbled across this recipe on accident. I was looking for a cupcake recipe to use up some leftover speckled bananas that the snobs of my palace my children would walk by and turn their noses up at! 

..and what did I happen to find on the left hand side of the page that had the Banana Cupcake Recipe?? Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes of course!! Everyone knows that you always eat PB&J with bananas right??? oh and cheese!! You have to put a slice of good ol' American Cheese on your PB&J!! You do that too! Right?

Okay, maybe not! but I would suggest you try it and then you won't believe what you have been missing out on!!

Back to these Delicious Cupcakes!!

I found the recipe on foodnetwork.com and it was courtesy of The Neely's.

This was a really fun recipe to make! I mixed up the cake batter and baked the cupcakes. Then the fun part began!! I used my icing bags (ziplock bags work great too!) and tips to squirt some strawberry jelly inside the cakes after they had fully cooled. I then iced them with the amazing peanut butter icing!!

Let me know if you give this recipe a try!!

I can't stop eating them!!!



Fairy Party Continued....

Lots of pictures ahead! I hope you enjoy them as much I as I do!

I had soooo much fun planning this party!! I cannot remember the last time I was able to just let my creative juices flow? Now that I am out of the 'baby stage' with my children, I'm starting to find that my thoughts are a little more clear than they have been during the past 5 years!

So, if there are any other 'mushy-brained' mommies out there?! Don't lose hope! You will think a little more clear again after your youngest is about 3 or so! :)

I challenged myself a little with this party. Most of my items came from the Dollar Tree and Sale items at Hobby Lobby. I was trying to make this a Budget Friendly party without it looking like it. In my opinion, I think I succeed very well! Please let me know what you think! I would love to hear your feedback!

I'm going to start with the TuTu's. These are very simple to make and I figure I didn't spend anymore than $1.50 per tutu!

Only the Birthday Girl's Tutu (and little sister) had a flower on it and those came from DT as well!

I didn't make the wings. :(  I try to be supermom but the wings just weren't worth it. I ended up ordering them from HALOHEAVEN a

Easter Egg Cakes!

I hope everyone is enjoying their Easter Weekend! I know we are here in the Old Fashioned House!

My five year old seems to be the MOST excited and it's not just because of all the candy she thinks the easter bunny will be bringing. She keeps telling me how nice it was that Jesus died for our sins. and that she LOVES HIM so much for doing that for us!

A Fairy Perfect Party! Let's Eat!!

I don't think I have ever had this much fun planning a party before?!?

I started scouring blogs for ideas four weeks ago but nothing really grabbed my attention until a week before the party.  I'm thinking I work better under pressure.

For now, I'm just going to show you what the little fairies nibbled on while they were here. My next post will be about the party. So get ready for some pictures!! I took over one hundred but I scaled them down to about 30 so we will see if I can do a post with less than that!

Per Fairy Dakoda's request we had Lavender cupcakes with Strawberry icing. (The different colors in the cupcakes are from the Funfetti cake mix I used!)

Since I used the white non perils I had left over from THIS FUN TREAT, D thought they looked like 'flower-cakes'!

And then the Strawberries!!!! We LOVE Strawberries over here at the Old Fashioned House!!

Squirt a little whipped topping in the tops and those beauties did NOT last long at all!!!

D went shopping with me Friday night before her party for some last minute things and picked out some pink marshmallows. I remembered I still had some Almond Bark left and pink sugar sprinkles. It didn't take long to melt and drizzle that over the pink puffs and sprinkle more pink on them!

We also ate some little bunnies, gasp!, crackers!! if you can't see them very well in the next picture, never fear, they will pop up again in the next post!!

During one of my Goodwill trips I picked up 15 different saucer and dessert plates for the Fairies to use!

I also grabbed 15 glass punch cups from Goodwill too! I think they had a Great time using 'breakable cups'!!

In which we served Pink Strawberry Lemonade!!

Can you tell we have a slight obsession with pink and strawberries??

I hadn't noticed before how bad this was!!



And what kind of party would it be without sending everybody home with a SUGAR HIGH?!?!?!

and EXTRA candy??

Have a Great Day Everyone and

Stay tuned for Part 2 of A Fairy Perfect Party!!

I see Butterflies!!!

I just had to share with ya'll right quick, what I have been up to!!

So I thought I would give you a little sneak peak!!

Since Dakoda is going to a Mother's Day Out program this year she has made some friends.

I told her we could have a little party and invite a few girls from her class.

She decided on a Fairy Party! (with a little help from Mommy of course!)

Here are the Butterfly headbands I made that the FAIRIES will be putting on when they arrive!

Can you believe I made EACH one for under a $1??

I am in LOVE!!!

So is Dakoda!

She wanted to 'model' her headband for you!

As I get more of the decorations and food done I'll try to give you all a couple more sneak peeks!

I just hope this ALL comes together like I'm seeing it in my head!!

On a Whim......Funnel Cake!

I had some 'free' time yesterday after the kids got home from school. Instead of working on some things for Dakoda's Birthday party what do I do??

Decide to make Funnel Cakes of course!!!

I cannot even remember what gave me the idea to do this?!?! I don't know if it was the LaLa Loopsy

commercial with the Ferris Wheel? or what? All I can say was it popped into my head and I was on a mission to find and make a Funnel Cake recipe.

I searched on a couple of my favorite sites and came up empty handed. So I immediately went to PW's site and did not come up empty handed!!

In turn she lead me to HeatherD's recipe Here!!

Another Year Under my Belt!!!

I'm sorry that there hasn't been too much going on around here lately! I have been letting some other things occupy my time the last couple of weeks!

The rest of Spring Break went quite well if we don't count three of my four children getting sick a bad thing!

And ALL of us were only TOO HAPPY that Sean came back Friday night!!!

Now, back to the point of this post!!

GIRL SCOUT COOKIE SEASON!!!!!

We all LOVE those cute little cookies right?

I do too but only 9 months a year!

But they are only sold for 3 months a year you say??

That is right!!!



Spring Break 2011

Really? It's only Tuesday??

I promise I'm not saying that as a bad thing, but I am a little surprised!!

Sunday afternoon Mr. Old Fashioned left for California for work. Of course he will

 be gon ALL of Spring Break!!

Unlike other times that I have been 'Home Alone' with my children for extended periods of time,

I had a Plan!!! Plus I think it's been a little easier because they are older!!

The last time hubs left me, it was for 2 weeks!!!! and the girls were 7, 6, 3 and 1!!!

I can tell a HUGE DIFFERENCE this time!! I actually have some little helpers here!!

Sunday after Daddy left the girls cried!!! ALL 5 OF US!!!

Then we went to Wal-Mart and I didn't want to cry when we got back!! They were that good!!

Yesterday morning we cleaned up the house and went to the Library and Kroger yesterday

afternoon. Again, I enjoyed it!! No crying from anyone! Especially me!!

A couple of hours later we had our last Girl Scout Cookie Booth from 6 to 8pm.

The girls had been so good I ended up taking them to Cici's for pizza.

Yes we did have a coupon and waters, so our total was $12 for 5 of us!!! 

Today we did our morning chores after reading some of our Library books! of course!

Oh and I just have to tell you this because NOTHING like this EVER happens to me!!!

I was looking for a book too, and I had grabbed a couple of new cookbooks I was

going to look through. The Librarian asks me if I would like the NEW James Patterson book TOYS?

She was surprised nobody had scooped that up yet?

Did you all know that it went on sale yesterday? I didn't until I SWAGBUCKS'd it just now!!!

IT IS GOOOOOOOD!!!!

Okay so back to what else went on........

we did our quick chores! ate Brunch! lol

and headed to the DOLLAR MOVIE!!

which happens to only be 50 cents on Tuesdays!!!

Yay!!!

We watched Gulliver's Travels!

All 5 of us for 2 dollars and 50 cents!!

Way Awesome in my book!!

The movie was over at just the perfect time! 2 pm!!

Do you know what that meant?

Time to cruise right across the parking lot into Sonic!!

Half price Drinks!!!

As you all know, miss cheap here and $3.90 for 5 drinks? Way cool!!

So, now we are home just hanging out!

I pulled an extra Chicken Pot Pie out of the freezer and that will be our quick dinner this evening.

I really do miss my husband, BUT things are a little more relaxing!!!

The rest of the week is Eye Dr. appointments and painting baseboards!!

A Successful Copycat and the winner of the CSN Giveaway!!

I might as well just admit it now, I AM SUPER CHEAP!!! I try to say that I am frugal, but if

I can make something for cheaper than I can buy it? I WILL!!!

I remember back in 2007 when we moved from Missouri to New Mexico and I was first introduced
to Starbucks! Before I had a sip! I just wondered why everyone wanted to pay so much for a cup of coffee!?!?
And I feel bad, I never actually paid for one but I had some really GREAT friends who always showed up with a cup holder full of Caramel Macchiatos!!

Another CSN Giveaway!!!

This GIVEAWAY is now CLOSED!
Thank you to everyone who entered your comment,
I will announce the winner tomorrow!
GOOD LUCK!!!!




Hey Wonderful LMOF Family!!!

I was really hoping to put up my King Cake that I made yesterday but for whatever reason, none of my

pictures are uploading to my laptop.

Bummer for me but Good News to you my friends!!

Get ready for another CSN Giveaway!!

I am in-love with their stores!! It is amazing what all they have to offer!!!

It is literally one-stop shopping!!

You can buy a New Mattress!!

Pillows for your couch!

Heck! You can even buy a new couch for your pillows from their stores!!! Ha!

But my favorite is all of the Le Crueset items!

Boy would I LOVE to get my hands on all of that!!

And Guess What?? You don't even have to endure a Review this time! One of you lucky readers will

receive a $45 Gift Code all for yourself!!

Now that you know the EXCITING part of this post, let's get down to the nitty-gritty.

• I'm sorry but this giveaway is only being offered to USA and Canada residents for shipping purposes.
• If you are an Anonymous commenter PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! leave an email address.
• If you are a 'no-reply commentor' I would like to suggest that you change your settings so that I can email you back if you forget to leave your email.

It's simple! I'll tell you how!

1. In blogger.com, click on Dashboard.
2. Select Edit Profile.
3. Check the box for "Show my Email Address."
4. Save changes.

Easy Peasy!!

So, What do you have to do to be entered??

Leave a comment letting me know what is the hardest thing for you to cook! or what you are afraid to try to cook!

by 10pm CST time Thursday, March 10th and I will annouce the winner sometime Friday!!

Good Luck!



I'm still here!!!

Yikes!!
5 more days and it will be a month ago since my last post!
Where did February go???
I have to admit I took a little sabbatical from my blog.
I just became ALOT a little overwhelmed with life and I needed to regroup my priorities.
I was neglecting my family and my house to focus on this blog for ALL the wrong reasons!
Live and Learn, right?
and I haven't been blogging the way I WANT to blog. I feel like I've been hiding the TRUE ME and I'm
going to change that!

and GIRL SCOUT COOKIE SEASON is going on right now and I am the COOKIE MOM for the Troop that my Oldest 2 daughters are in. We are doing 5 booth sales this year and selling ALOT of extras between sales too!
Our Troop doing that Great has really kept me on my 'accounting' toes!

Next week sometime please be on the look out for another Giveaway!!
That should make my blogging return worth it!

Have a HAPPY DAY LMOF family!! I've missed you all!!

Parmesan Knots

These little gems are so easy to make!! But wouldn't you know I had to do it the old fashioned way because I was out of the main ingredient?!?! I didn't mind since I had the time. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed being stuck at home last week!!

Okay, I can tell you! I. LIKED. IT. ALOT!!! It made me remember why every year I try talking Sean into letting me Home school the girls!

Back to the Knots!
When I was a Senior in High School, alot of my classmates contributed recipes, and we had a Cookbook made that we sold to make money for either our Class Trip or Project Graduation.
Here lately, I have been looking through it alot and I've been wanting to share some of the Recipes with you.
Friday night we had our usual Pizza Night and Sean suggested we make the Parmesan knots.

Like I mentioned earlier, it took a little longer, but they were sooooo worth it!!

Spicy Beef Dip

Back when Sean and I were dating, his mom used to make this all the time when we got together. Sean then started requesting I make it for our little get-togethers we used to have. It is very simple and very delicious! Especially if you like putting cream cheese into just about anything you like to eat!!

Let's Make Some Crackers!!!

I almost find it silly the lengths I will go to when I want to eat something!!  Our family, besides my husband, have not left our house since we got home from Girls Scouts Monday evening. and honestly, I haven't minded one bit! I bought groceries Monday, so I knew we were pretty well stocked for the week. The only thing I didn't anticipate was running out of crackers!! I had everything to make some dips that I had found, but lo and behold NO CRACKERS!!

Chicken N Dumplins

I was talkin' to my Momma this mornin' and she asked me how my blog was doin'? and if I'd been puttin' up any good recipes. I told her I was kinda strugglin' cause I just didn't know what I wanted to make. I tend to cook in a circle over here. We repeat so much for dinner.

My mom still has dial-up! (poor gal) and she hasn't seen my blog yet, but she tells everyone about it!

She told me that they had met up with my Uncle's family to celebrate my (Paternal) Grandpa's birthday and she was asking the wives of two of my cousins if they read my blog. They said that they didn't but my cousin piped up that he had been!

The whole reason I'm telling you this is because one of my Cousins-in-law told my  Momma that she has been hungry for 'Chicken N Noodles'. Her Grandma used to make it and her Mom and her do not have the

Gooey Caramel Corn, Anyone???

During the school week there are three days that I keep a friends kids. I always try to come up with some kind of snack to feed the hungry monsters children as soon as they get here!!

I am the worst person to assign snack duty too!!! When I was growing up and we came home from school, Do you know what my snack was??  A bowl of cereal!! My brothers too!! and my kids think I'm crazy when I suggest that to them!! How dare I?

so today I presented them with

Caramel Popcorn!!!

Short On Time....

but you still want to feed your kiddos a filling breakfast or yourself, if you have that pleasure of eating something hot!!

This is a simple and quick meal that my mom used to make for us growing up! I have not had it myself, in years!! But Thanks to Pioneer Woman's cookbook!! I stumbled upon it again!!

I introduce or reintroduce to you

EGG IN THE HOLE!!!!

I'm going to apologize right away for not having STEP BY STEP picture instructions. I was so excited

to be making these again that I completely forgot to take pictures BEFORE they were frying!!

Have your skillet preheating on medium-low while you prepare the ENH.

All you do is use a cup or circle cookie cutter and cut a hole in the middle of your bread.

Winner! Winner! Maybe she'll cook a Chicken Dinner!!

The winner has been chosen!!
She was anonymous but left an email.
I contacted her and she responded!!

Thank you to ALL who participated and checked out my blog!!



I'm pretty close to 100 followers on facebook so hopefully there will be another Giveaway in the near future!!!

Skillet Pizza

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED!





I bet you all were pretty sure I had forgotten about THIS didn't you??

Surprisingly I hadn't!! I did, however have an EXTREMELY hard time trying to decide what I wanted to review!!!

and then!! What would I make?? so I could review the item.

I always seem to make things so much harder then they really should be!!

I made my decision, placed my order and recieved my item 3 days later!!! I couldn't believe how quick that was!!

It arrived in a very flat package!!

What was IT??

A 10 inch Cast Iron Griddle!!!

and one would think I would put a big ol' juicy steak on it right??

I decided to take a different approach!!

I made a PIZZA!!!!

Mixed-Up Pizza Crust

During the past 10 years Sean and I have made many pizzas from scratch!  I can remember when we

were first married and we thought our pizzas were THE BEST!! We would always talk about

opening our own PIZZA JOINT and how everyone would just love our pizza!!

Oh the sweet innocence of young people!!

I think back then we were using a crust packet!!

A couple of years ago my Mother-in-law gave me a recipe for Pizza Crust that a neighbor had given her twenty-some years ago.

It's a really good tasting crust, but I always had a hard time rolling it out into the pan.

The recipe said to pretty much 'beat it up' and so there wasn't much elasticity to it.

Last year my Bestie gave me Pioneer Woman's Cookbook and lo and behold, she had a pizza crust recipe in there!

PW's takes awhile to rise and I usually wouldn't start it soon enough, so I took from my MIL's recipe and PW's and put it together the way it would work best for me!!

Let's get your next Pizza Night started!!

This recipe will make 1 pretty good sized crust!

and it doubles very easily

You will need:

Active Dry Yeast, All-Purpose flour, salt, oil, warm water

Pour 3/4 cup warm water into a bowl. Sprinkle 1/2 tsp or 1/2 packet yeast over the water.

Combine 2 cups flour and 1/2 tsp salt.

With your electric mixer on low speed, drizzle the 1 TBLSP oil until incorporated.

Gently stir the yeast/water mixture and then drizzle it into the flour/oil mixture;

mix until the dough forms a ball.

Drizzle a little oil into the bowl and toss to coat.

Cover bowl with a moist kitchen towel. Set in a warm place and let set for 20-30 minutes.

While dough is setting, preheat oven to 425*F and get your toppings ready!

i.e. slice onions, black olives, grate cheese, fry hamberger or sausage

Lightly drizzle oil onto your pizza pan and spread your dough out onto the pan.

I like to pre-bake my crust for 10 minutes or so before placing the sauce and toppings

onto it.

Recipe for Pizza Crust

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp or 1/2 packet Active Dry Yeast

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup warm water

1 TBLSP Oil, plus extra for drizzling

1. Pour 3/4 cup warm water into a small bowl. Sprinkle yeast over top of water.
2. Combine flour and salt in mixing bowl.
3. Turn electric mixer to low speed and drizzle oil into bowl. Mixing until incorporated.
4. Gently stir the yeast and water mixture.
5. Drizzle the yeast/water mixture over the flour/salt mixture and mix until dough forms a ball
6. Drizzle oil into bowl and toss ball to coat.
7. Cover with a moist kitchen towel and let set for 20 to 30 minutes.
8. Preheat oven to 425*F and prepare toppings.
9. Drizzle oil onto pizza pan and smooth the dough out to the desired shape.
10. Prebake crust for 10 minutes or lightly browned.
11. Place toppings onto pizza and bake until the cheese melts.

Mini Corny Dogs

I have been wanting to try and make the corn dogs over at Mommy's Kitchen for a very long time. But for whatever reasons, i.e. not having any hot dogs, or time in the evening, I just never got them made!

Last week was THE PERFECT time to make them!! All of the
 Christmas chaos festivities were over and the girls didn't have any evening activities we had to mess with attend!

It just happened that I WAS missing something very important!!! THE STICKS!! But I didn't let that stop me!! My kids ALWAYS loved the mini corn dogs we used to buy and Miss Tina said we could make them that way!!

Let's get started!!

You will need:

Hot dogs!!, flour, sugar, corn meal, baking powder, oil, salt, eggs and buttermilk

In a large bowl, mix together well the buttermilk, eggs, oil, sugar and salt. Next sprinkle in the baking powder, flour and cornmeal. Stir it up really good to make a slightly thick batter.

Make sure you dry the hot dogs off with a paper towel so the flour will coat the 'dogs'!!

Cut the hot dogs in half, place some flour in a bowl and line them up with the batter.

Coat each mini dog one at a time with flour and the batter.

Hold the corny dog vertical to let some of the batter drip off.

Carefully 'drop' the corny dog into the oil that has been preheated to 375*F. They will start to 'puff up'.

'Roll' the corn dog over to brown the other side. This only takes a couple of minutes. Cook 3 or 4 at a time, depending on how big of a pot you are using. If they get too crowded they won't fry right.

Remove the corny dogs from the pan with tongs and place on paper towels to drain the oil.

Place in a bowl and serve them with mustard, ketchup or my favorite.....mayo!!!

Here's the Recipe for Homemade Mini Corny Dogs

(taken from Mommy's Kitchen! and altered a bit)

1 - cup buttermilk, (I never have buttermilk so I make mine!

a little less than 1 cup milk and 1 Tablespoon vinegar, stir together and sprinkle a little salt on it!)
2 - medium eggs
1/4 - cup oil
2 - tablespoons sugar
1 - teaspoon salt
2 - teaspoons baking powder
1 1/3 - cups corn meal
2/3 - cup flour
1 to 1-1/2 - pounds hot dogs (I use whatever is cheap)
flour for dusting (about 1/2 cup)
Oil for Frying (Canola or Vegetable)

Start preheating the oil to 375*F.

1. In a large bowl combine the buttermilk, eggs, oil, sugar and salt. Mix it very well.
2. Sprinkle in the baking powder, corn meal and flour. Stir it all up to make a slightly thick batter.
3. Take your hot dogs and dry them off on paper towels.
4. Cut the hot dogs in half. 
5. Roll the hot dogs in the flour, coating them completely. The cornmeal batter won’t stick to the hot dogs unless they are coated in flour. The batter just slides right off.
6. Set the hot dogs aside.
7. Coat the floured hot dog with the batter.
8. Let the excess batter drip off.
9. Place the battered dog in the hot oil.
10. Let fry for a couple minutes and roll over to cook the other side.
11. When they are brown, remove from pan with tongs.
12. Place on paper towels to drain.

ENJOY!!!

Paula Deen's House Seasoning

Alot of Paula Deen's recipes call for her HOUSE SEASONING.

I made something one time without it and I'm pretty sure it didn't taste as good as it was

supposed to.

This is really is to mix up and keep in your cabinet until you need it!!

You only need three ingredients!!

salt, pepper and garlic powder

Mix 1 cup salt, 1/4 cup black pepper and 1/4 cup garlic powder

This makes 1/2 cups and lasts up to 6 months in an airtight container