Fresh and Easy Chicken Pasta Salad

I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their client.

It's getting warmer and the days are getting longer, yay!  It's time to start getting more healthy, working out and eating lighter foods.  I don't about you, but when it's super warm outside, I don't want to have to do a lot of cooking.  I don't want to spend an hour over the hot stove or have the oven going.  I also don't love having really big and heavy meals.  I love having a nice and light meal.  And of course I like nice and easy meals that don't take much time to cook.  Here is a great, healthy meal.  

The chicken that I used in the pasta is Tyson Grilled and Ready chicken.  This stuff is awesome.  It's comes in several different flavors, refrigerated or frozen.  All of them looked so yummy, I decided to get the regular, southwestern and chicken fajitas.  For my whole Walmart shopping experience, go here.  

I love pasta salad, it's so yummy, fresh and easy to make.  These are the ingredients that I used:

Regular Tyson Grilled And Ready chicken

 Pasta.  I used Rotini.  I mixed the garden and whole wheat.  I used about a full box

Grape tomatoes

1 cup Italian dressing.  I used fat free to make it more healthy.

1 cucumber, diced

1/4 red onion, diced

1 can olives

The chicken is so easy to cook.  Just throw it in a skillet and heat it up for 3 to 5 minutes.  I love that it's #GrilledandReady.

I cut up all of the veggies and then mixed all the ingredients in a large bowl.  Chill for an hour before serving.  

I put a little Parmesan cheese on it.  

It was so great!  It was great to leave the dinner table full but not feeling like I ate too much.  I love eating well and healthy!  

I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias®  and Tyson. #cbias #SocialFabric #GrilledAndReady. All opinions, content and ideas are 100% my own.

CTR towel

My oldest son turned 8 this year and in our church, that is when they get baptized to become a member of the church.  I wanted to make him something special with his name on it but I didn’t want it to be something that he wouldn’t use.  So I decided that it would be fun to make him a towel to use on him baptism day. 

This is how I made it:

I took some heat bond applique material and fabric.  I cut them the same size and then I ironed the fabric onto the rough side of the heat bond. 

Using CCR, I designed the towel.  I couldn’t find a image that was the CTR shield, so I made one myself.  I did find a shield and then I used the CCR basics fonts to make the letters.  Using the little arrows, I adjusted the size and slant of the letters.

This is how it looks when I got it all rearranged.  I then separated the two and just cut out the shield.

I placed the fabric onto my cutting mat (taking off the paper on the back) and then cut it using my Cricut and the settings of blade 4 and depth 4.  Just to make sure it cut, I had it cut it twice. 

Next for the heat transfer vinyl, I flipped the letters horizontally.

I cut it out of gold heat transfer using the setting 3 and 3.  Then I peeled away the excess heat transfer. 

I ironed the shield onto the towel.

Then I sewed the sewed onto the towel. 

I then ironed on the CTR onto the shield.

Next I ironed on the name.

To make sure that it didn’t fall off in the wash, I sewed the heat transfer onto the towel 

I did the same thing to CTR.

And that’s it!  It was super easy to make.

I wrapped it up with a ribbon and it’s all ready for his baptism.

Here is the reaction my son gave when he saw what it said.  He just thought it was a regular white towel.  I’m so glad that he liked it!

I would love it if you followed along.

Best 4 Flooring

Back when I live in Kansas a couple years ago, we bought our first house.  I was super excited about owning a house and had a lot of FUN making it into our own house.  One of my favorite things that we did was changing the flooring a couple rooms.  It made a world of difference.  Our first home improvement project was putting laminate into the dining room and replacing the carpet.  I mean, seriously, who has carpet in the dining room?!  

 

And one the last projects we did was replace the flooring in our boys' bathroom.  It was so disgusting and probably had been there for 20 years.  

 

It is so great that now there are online flooring stores to help make the big changes and updates.  This is great for me since I live so far away from a home improvement store and don't own a truck so buying supplies can be challenging.  

Best4Flooring is an online company based in the UK.   

They have a variety of flooring options, including Amtico flooring.  

  

They also have vinyl, wood and laminate flooring.  

  

If you're in the market for some new flooring, so check out Best4Flooring.

Disclosure: This post was written in behalf of Best4Flooring.  All opinions are 100% my own.  

Springtime Fun with Tyson Nuggets

• I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their client.

Dinner time can be a big hassle at our house.  Whenever I cook a new meal, I know that it's going to be a hassle to get my kids to eat it or even try it.  I'm sure you've all been there. Counting to three.  Playing airplane to get the food into their mouth.  Telling them that they have to go to bed hungry.

  Sometimes it's fun to have a fun meal that I know that everyone will enjoy.  Chicken nuggets are one of those meals.  The only chicken nuggets that I will eat though (I'm picky when it comes to meat) are Tyson chicken nuggets.  They actually use good white meat and they taste super good too.  I am all for creativity and for my kids to use their imaginations and create things.  Sometimes it good to play with our food.  :)  This is is what I created with my #SpringtimeNuggets.

I bought the chicken nuggets at Walmart in the freezer section.  For my full shopping experience  go here. 

I had to get both kinds because I knew that my kids would love both of them!

I love how easy it is to make them.  You can pop them in the microwave or bake them. 

And what's makes them fun is all the things you can dip them in!  My kids love ketchup.  I prefer a special sauce, BBQ sauce and mayo mixed together and my husband likes ranch. 

We made some homemade curly fries to go with our nuggets and then I let the kids just create.  They really liked and had fun.  Dinner time was a huge hassle and it was great being able to just sit and talk with the kids and have some great family time.  I had fun decorating my nuggets too. 

My oldest boys really enjoyed creating.  One made a house with a dinosaur plant on top of it.  And the other one made a ship that is getting hit by meteors (the ketchup on the plate). 

Drawing faces on the dinosaurs was a hit and having them be in the yummy fry grass.

If you want them to have a little less messy time playing with their nuggets, check out Tyson's facebook page where they can decorate them over and over again. 

I have a super yummy recipe that uses Tyson nuggets too!  Sweet n Sour chicken. 

1 1/2 pounds of Tyson chicken nuggets, cut into chunks

1 green pepper sliced

1 small onion, sliced

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 can 20 (oz) pineapple, save juice

3 Tbs vinegar

2 Tbs ketchup

2 Tbs soy sauce

3 Tbs cornstarch

1) Mix brown sugar and cornstarch in skillet.

2) Add enough water to the pineapple juice to make 2 1/4 cups

3) Stir liquids into skillet and cook until it boils

4) Stir in vegetables and pineapple and reduce heat

5) Add chicken, cover and simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve on rice.

To keep up with what's happening, make sure to follow and like Tyson on Twitter and Facebook.  

I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias®  and Tyson. #cbias #SocialFabric #SpringtimeNuggets All opinions and content are 100% my own.