Overtired Mama's Travel Tips and Tricks

Whether you're still digging out from the latest snowstorm in the Northeast, or whether you're looking for a simple recipe to get you through the mid-week slump, this recipe is a good one.

I am not a cook, so this recipe is one of my favourites, so simple, and my family loves it.

BBQ Chicken Pockets


Ingredients:

- Pastry dough - I usually buy the pre-made crescent dough, but even ready to bake biscuit dough would work, or, if you're more ambitious than me, make your own.
- 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
- 1 Bottle of your favourite BBQ Sauce
- 1 Cup of Your favourite blend of Shredded cheese - I use a triple cheddar blend

First pre-heat your oven to 400 F.

On your stovetop, bring water to a boil and add your chicken breasts.  Boil approximately 20 minutes (maybe more depending on the size of your chicken breasts), you may want to cut in to your chicken to ensure it's cooked through.

Remove the chicken from the water and place in to a bowl.  Use two forks to shred …

We start this episode with Chris telling the girls that Chris' 3 sisters will be deciding who goes on the "one on one" date.  In the meantime, the girls get a group date card for a "natural date", which, naturally, means... bikinis.

Remember when the scandalous outfit girls could wear was a low cut shirt?  I felt like Ashley"Kardashian" was wearing the opposite, high top that I felt like her boobs were going to pop out of the bottom of her top.  But apparently, that doesn't matter, because they start swimming, and Kardashian takes her top off to jump in the water.  Not to be outdone, Kaitlyn pulls her bottoms off.  Kelsey is horrified and doesn't think this is very dignified.

Back at the house, the sisters arrive and the girls are so excited... except Jillian who is sleeping by the pool.  When she wakes up, she has a black bar across her bottom half.  This girl obviously needs help picking out her bottoms.

The sisters chat with each of the g…

We open with Jimmy Kimmel waking Chris up, then going to see the girls where he teases the girls that Chris will pick the winner after sleeping with all of them.... Not far from the truth.  Then he leaves a date card for Kaitlyn teasing vaulted ceilings, a sweeping view and hors d'oeuvres, so naturally they end up at Costco.
Chris and Kaitlin head in with a list provided by Jimmy Kimmel, including enough ketchup to fill a hot tub.  Then they head back to Chris' place to get ready for dinner with Jimmy.  Personally, I don't feel chemistry between Kaitlyn and Chris.  It's like watching a couple of friends. But maybe she will  prove me wrong.
Jimmy Kimmel makes this entirely more interesting.  Jimmy brings up the fantasy sweet and asks Kaitlyn how she would feel watching the show back and seeing him sleep with a number of girls. She says she's OK with that.  Jimmy says Canadians are the best. That we are, Jimmy.
Date card!  Group date!  It references party animals. I…

I was inspired by folks at Urban Compass, a fantastic site that helps people find a space of their own, to share my experience putting our personal touch on our first home. Their primary location is in New York City, and they focus on apartments and houses matched to an individual's personality.

When we bought our home in 2006, it was everything we could have hoped for:  Great neighbourhood, on the bus route, close to schools, and the "perfect size" (for us).  We even loved the way the previous owners had decorated it.  Despite all of that, we wanted to make the house "our own" rather than feeling like we were living in someone else's house.
After moving all of our things in the house, we decided to start by changing the kitchen and the bathroom.  Not that there was anything particularly wrong with them, but we decided these would be our first "personal touches" for the house.
The kitchen had laminate counter-tops.  These weren't the "n…

I've written before about why I support the Canadian Cancer Society (click here for my previous post), but I've decided to raise funds in a different way that I wanted to share with you.

When my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2011, it was a scary time for many reasons: fear of the unknown, fear of losing my dad... but my dad remained positive through it all.  He fought hard.  If he was able to face cancer head on, I should be able to face my own fears.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a fear of heights.  To put my fear in to perspective, I used to work in tourism at a National Historic Site, and to reach the upper level of the site, I had to go up a set of stairs on the outside of the building.  These were good sturdy metal stairs, and we were about 2 stories, up, but it made me nervous.  Each time.  We had to give guided tours, and I would turn and look at the building each time I went up so I didn't see the ground.  Sometimes tourists would stand ou…

Welcome back! 
Let's jump right in to it!  Newsflash... the girl that went back in to the house after being rejected in the last show, Kimberly, is allowed to stay.  What?  I'm not even going to get in to that.
We learn Chris is staying next door to the ladies.... Evidently with an outdoor shower.   Seriously.  And Chris says there are no rules here.  I wonder how many times we're going to see desperate girls knocking on his door.
Anyway, the girls get a date card and Chris puts on a zip up sweatshirt with no shirt underneath, so clearly this is going to be an upscale date.  We get a little preview that shows us that during the date they will be having a pool party and racing tractors in bikinis. Oooh la la!
One girl describes herself as "more Kardashian than country".  So.... Self-centered and uninteresting? So the girls claim they know nothing about what the date will be but when he announces it's a pool party they all magically have bikinis on.
This next…

I never thought I would see the day that I would be posting a hair tutorial, but I decided to do it after receiving many compliments and questions about a particular hairstyle.

This is my "go to" hairstyle on days that I just need that extra 15 minutes in bed, or when I'm having a crazy hectic morning and need something quick to do with my hair.

I usually do this with wet hair, just because I find it easier to manage, but I think you could very easily do this with dry hair.

Begin by brushing your hair and parting it in your usual spot:

(Forgive my early morning, tired, no make-up, pre-coffee look)
Take an elastic headband like this one (or similar):

And put it around your head like this:

Then, take a small section of your hair, approximately 1 inch in width or so:

And wrap it around the headband.  With each wrap around the headband, grab a little more hair:

Here's a little video to better demonstrate:


Then, when you have just a little bit of hair left, tuck it up in…

Here we go everyone! Another season of crying, drama queens, crazies and the occasional likeable person. 
We get to begin with a live red carpet special with some of our "favorite" bachelor and bachelorette personalities. And by "some" Chris must be referring to the 5 likeable people we've met over past seasons..... Seriously.  Anyway, we get a token interview with one of the few couples who are still together, Sean and Catherine. 
I'm not going to lie, I tuned in and out to this red carpet special be cause hockey was on. Gotta love the World Junior Hockey tournament!  Anyway, I truly don't think I missed too much because each time I tuned in I was seeing shots of past contestants I was hoping to never see again.  But if you feel I missed out on something amazing, feel free to share your comments below.
So, on to the actual premier. We get to see some introductions to the girls and, of course, some clips of the dramatics too come on tonight's epi…

On to part 2 of our Florida vacation planning.  In my previous post (which can be read here ),  we booked our holiday vacation house.  In this post I'll talk about our park tickets.  I'll have another blog post to discuss flights and rental car and another about itinerary planning.

Park Tickets
Depending on what sort of itinerary you have in mind for your own trip, this will be, minimally, a significant cost in  your trip.  In our case, it's one of the highest costs in our trip.  It's very difficult to find low priced tickets for the major theme parks (Disney, Universal, Sea World, etc), although temptation is all over Orlando.  Several little stores and kiosques boasting $25 tickets.  I would caution it is definitely a "buyer beware" situation with these locations.  These vendors are often selling partially used tickets.  Keep in mind that many ticket vendors link your name to your ticket, and are sold as "non-transferable" or, in the case of Univer…