Crockpot creamy Italian Chicken

New recipe time!

With fall in the air and days seem to be getting shorter with daylight, I wanted to get the most out of my day and not standing in the kitchen.  So out comes the crockpot!  

This is a super easy recipe that has 5 ingredents - that is right 5.

Crockpot Italian Chicken

• 4 Chicken breasts
• 1 packet Zesty Italian dressing seasoning
• 1 8oz cream cheese block 
• 2 cans cream of chicken soup
• 1 package of fresh sliced mushrooms

Place the chicken breasts in the crockpot and spread the Italian dressing seasoning packet over the chicken breasts.

I then poured the fresh sliced mushrooms over top of the chicken

Add the condensed cream of chicken soup over the chicken and also the cubed cream cheese

Place the lid on top and cook on low for 4 hours.  Serve over pasta and we are having with some veggies on the side.

This turned out YUMMY!  We enjoyed it so much that I forgot to take a finished picture before eating.  

~On a side note, if you don't like mushrooms then don't add them.~

But I have a few adjustments to make to the recipe - 

• Next time I will cube the chicken prior to placing in the crockpot; this would make it easier to dish out when the meal is complete.
• Also I think that I would combine the soup with the cream cheese (softened) in a separate bowl and then pour into the crockpot.

Fireplace makeover

Well we have been working on different things around our house; painting, changing light fixtures, and updating some things here and there.  One of the things that has been bothering me is our fireplace.  It is major focal point of our living room and I felt like it was this dark blob on the wall.  A traditional fireplace  - which is fine with us, but it just needed something new.  So between checking out things at Lowes, the internet and Pinterest; I decided to paint the brick and give it a "facelift".  The people in the paint department at Lowes are a wealth of knowledge; I often wonder how much training people get prior to working in their departments.  Anywho, Abigail and I ventured off to Lowes to see what they told tell me about painting bricks.  They were able to supply me with a nice primer and some useful tips.  Now painting with a 1 year was not going to be happening here so I was able to tape off the area around and await for nap time.  

before

Once I got Abigail down for a nap, Anna and I went to work on the fireplace.  I had to put 2 coats of the primer on the brick, as you can see from the picture above it was a rather dark red brick.

I sanded the wooden mantel with a very fine grade sandpaper.  Then I painted over the already painted mantel, it was the same color as the rest of the trim used to be prior to the room redo.  It was more of an antique white and we went with a "white" white.  And I also got to down to business with painting the brick too.  Again I did two coats of paint over the bricks.  

Ta Da!  the finished look

Now what to do about the brick on the floor...