Monday, February 19, 2018

American Cancer Society Fundraiser Idea: Pamper Your Princess

acs fundraiser

The Chicken Creek Cancer Crushers held their annual American Cancer Society (ACS) Fundraiser this past Saturday, February 17, 2018. The event, Pamper Your Princess, is an exciting and successful fundraiser in our close-knit small hometown. A close friend of mine became passionately involved with the ACS after she lost her husband to the disease. Pamper Your Princess may be the idea you've been searching for to help support a cause dear to your heart.
  • Tickets are prepared and sold prior to the event. Each ticket designates an appointment time for your princess to be pampered. Your fundraising committee should decide ticket price prior to advertising your event.
princess ticket
  • The event is advertised by word-of-mouth and facebook. A facebook event is used to invite and communicate to participants.
princess advertising
  • Princesses are pampered by getting their hair styled, nails painted, dressed up in a gown and having their pictures taken. Princesses range from toddlers to teenagers!
princess cups

oriental trading
I donated the products I received free from Oriental Trading to the Pamper Your Princess Event.
You'll also find backdrops for decorating your Pamper Your Princess event space as a "castle" at Oriental Trading. Oriental Trading has everything you need to make your event a fundraising success. So much fun for a great cause! Let Oriental Trading help you prepare for your event soon.

Praying for a Cure 365 Days a Year,
Tammy

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Doritos Chicken Casserole

chicken casserole
Doritos Chicken Casserole
Take my word for it. The Doritos Chicken Casserole is yummy! A dear friend gave me this recipe 30+ years ago. Yes! I am still making it. Yes! My family still loves the delicious creamy taste of cheese and mushroom soup paired with the unique taste of Doritos. Click the link above or click here for the recipe. You won't be disappointed.

As usual, I made a few substitutions to the recipe. They are listed below:
  1. I bake my chicken for 15-20 minutes seasoned with Pampered Chef Southwest Seasoning
  2. I use Progresso Mushroom soup (gluten free)
  3. I omit the Cream of Chicken (because it contains gluten)
  4. I prefer Sharp Cheddar instead of Velveeta
  5. I bake it in my beautiful Pampered Chef Rockcrok Everyday Pan
Please! Leave me a comment. I want to know how you like the recipe for Doritos Chicken Casserole.

Could eat it 365,
Tammy

Monday, January 15, 2018

Organize your Pantry for under $10

Y'all! My pantry is like my pantie drawer and my refrigerator! There's just a few things I keep secret. Strictly off-limits to anyone other than my IMMEDIATE family. If you've ever wondered why my pantry has a door, it's to keep people out! Same goes for my fridge. If you're thirsty, tell ME! Please don't go opening up my refrigerator door to help yourself or you may get really embarrassed if I get embarrassed by you seeing my lack of cleanliness. Shew! Now you know the rules if you're ever at my house. But right now....I'll proudly take you to my pantry so you can have a look around!
unorganized
Unorganized pantry
Can you relate? Does this look like your pantry? This is my actual pantry. Before. Before you organize our pantry for under $10!

BEFORE I organized my canned goods, snacks, sauces & seasonings, plastic wraps & baggies and everything else that gets thrown into the pantry. Things kept going missing in my pantry. I went to the grocery store, packed my pantry and when I needed something I couldn't find it. One of my problems was disorganization. Another problem is flat-edged shelving. My trash can resides in my pantry. Stuff, being multiple things at once, kept getting knocked off the shelves into the trash!

Others must suffer the same problems; stuff falling or getting knocked onto the floor because most pantry shelves are just like mine.  LIP-LESS!
lipless shelves
My goal during the Christmas Holidays 2017 was to organize my pantry to save money:
  • save money from throwing away so many expired groceries
  • save money from dropping so many groceries in the trash without realizing it
  • save money from being able to see the stuff in my pantry and use it
  • save money by minimizing my grocery list after taking a quick scan of my pantry, and
  • be proud and unashamed of my pantry
A quick trip to the Dollar Tree yielded exactly what I needed. Plastic containers for $1 each. I bought seven of them thinking I may need more but I didn't. I didn't put everything in my pantry in a container, just the stuff that needed some shelf-sitting assistance. This is my pantry now...
organize
The is the "after 3-weeks" picture. Booyah! Still looking great!
before and after pantry
Not the Chesterfield Inn. Actually my house. I got tired editing photos! lol



organized plastics

An added side note....Notice this handy dandy wrap organizer I bought in 2013. Psssst, I'm still using it! That's a good thing. Click the link below to get yours on Amazon for only $12.87 and free shipping with Prime. Thanks! I receive a small commission if you buy from my link.


Leave me a comment or better yet a picture and let me see your pantry, unless of course, it's sacred or you're scared!

Less frazzled and more flattered about my pantry,
Tammy


Saturday, January 13, 2018

Marriage Challenge #2


Everyone has heard the phrase "Love Conquers All". Most people probably think the adage originated from the Bible, from the love verses in Corinthians 13. Love is patient. Love is kind. The phrase actually originated shortly before the start of the first millennium, the Roman poet Virgil wrote "love conquers all things, let us too surrender to love". Marriage challenge #2 centers around the words we may have said and certainly all have heard "It'll all work out. We will live on love!" Until.  You find yourself married, things aren't working out and it's time to divide and conquer.
I remember Marriage Challenge #1 on being unified and we're still working on that. Now I'm gonna say divide and conquer? Well, yes. In my marriage, I had to figure out when love does conquer all and the reality of .... 
  • If you sit around all day on a snowy Monday making googly eyes at each other, you may feel all warm inside but your outside is probably freezing because you can't pay the electric bill. Reality is love will not conquer the bills. 
  • Your spouse may agree with you most of the time but rest assured, love will not conquer all your disagreements. Expect arguments.
  • Assign work during the engagement..Love will not conquer the dirty dishes, the tall grass, the laundry or taking off the trash.
So what do you do? You divide the bills. Pay some this week and some next week. Conquered. You discuss your disagreements like civilized married people. You may agree to disagree. Divided, yet conquered. Women wash the dishes and laundry. Men mow the grass and take out the trash. Or vice versa. Divided and conquered.

I could go on for days with examples of things in marriage that love will not conquer or will almost conquer but not quite. There are tons of them. Please share some examples of your own with me. It may help some of us old married folk. Newly engaged, newly married and other delusional types let go of the mindset that you will live off love. You will not! I don't mean to be a bubble buster, well, maybe a little but #truthisreality. Don't get too discouraged. There's always hope. There is a situation when love conquers all and improves everything in a marriage.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. The kind of love that conquers all is the love God has towards us. There is nothing we can do that his love can't conquer if we believe in him. As much as I want my marriage to thrive in a Godly fashion, my husband can never love me, nor I him, the way God loves each of us. God's perfect love he shares with us through Jesus is amazingly overwhelming! His love for us...
  • pays the bills, we are debt-free
  • settles all disagreements between our soul and our savior, and
  • never requires work
Romans 8:37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

Unified and conquering,
Tammy

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Marriage Challenge #1

I have been married 32 years. Eleven thousand seven hundred twenty-eight days to be exact. My parents are working on year 60. I hope Steve and I make it that long. The marriage will. I'm worried about our bodies. Thirty-two years has a lot to say. Many days of lessons with lots of learning and many days of fun with loads of laughter.  I named the lessons first because without them there isn't much fun and if you don't learn from the lessons, there isn't much laughter.

Marriages have different challenges. The challenge I found to be most difficult is becoming one.
Mark 10:7-8 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.

I've never read in the scriptures where a woman should leave her father and mother. If you know the verse, please tell me. I'm an only child. Not leaving and living 50 yards from my parents pleases me. That's the truth. Luckily, my husband likes it too or he's grown to like it! Some may say distancing myself may have made the "twain" easier? We will never know.

Now for the twain part, becoming one flesh. The Bible teaches me to submit to my husband. I'm good with that but what if it's simply hard to do. Some of the main things I noticed early on:
  •  His Christian thoughts aren't exactly mine. Differences in beliefs is confusing and frustrating.
  • Family traditions and values don't all align.
  • He feels like I give my family more time than his.
  • My ideas are more important to me than his.
  • I don't listen to him. 
  • I won't let him help me.
  • He don't want to help me.
  • He expects to eat my cooking every day.
  • He thinks I should be able to manage the bills more effectively.
  • He watches too much Georgia football.
  • And, I'd rather not mention the three-letter-word that begins with s
Early on? Did I say early on?  I still deal with a few of these. We are twain.....now. After 32 years. My experience and longevity begat patience. Unity does not happen overnight. Brothers and sisters born to the same parents with everything exactly the same rarely achieve unity quickly if at all.

I'm never too hard on myself or my spouse because we're  both giving the union our best. Forgiveness then forgetting. We allow each other to make mistakes. More importantly, we give each other time to learn from our mistakes. We give each other room.  We TALK to each other. My spouse still can't read my mind.

If things weren't working, we despised a plan together to try something new. Above all, we are forever committed to making our marriage work. If you're always giving 200% and getting 25%, you'll be exhausted. God purposed marriage as an equal partnership. You should never feel alone. Unity is not singular.

How have we made it 32 years? Improving one's self. Keeping each other accountable without blame. Working together.  Serving God and each other. Being humble and kind while steadfast and strong. LOVE. God created marriage. His grace is what helped us through the last 32.

Honestly, sometimes I didn't think unity was gonna happen. Presently, some days I wonder where it went. Others days, we finish each other thoughts mid-sentence. When discouragement comes (although not often anymore), I look at the word "unified". It does have two i's and no we, but.....

"U" and "I" come first.   


Working on Marriage 365,
Tammy