swagbucks!!

I love swagbucks! If you haven't heard about it, it is a search engine that gives you the opportunity to win "swagbucks" for doing things you probably do anyway:search, shop, answer polls and more. Your points are tallied up and you can redeem them at anytime for items in their swagstore. The best thing I have found is the amazon gift card. I have redeemed points for amazon and smilebox gift cards and am currently saving up for another $25 gift card from amazon so I can get a new gps that they have on sale for 67.00. I have heard of a few people adding up their points all year and redeeming them in october for amazon gift cards and using them for all of their christmas shopping. I think I may try to do that for a few months at least.


Another great thing about swagbucks is that you can refer people and when they sign up, you get points as they win points. Imagine if you got even 10 people to sign up. Ive racked up almost 3,000 points in just a few months. It is basically free money for something you are going to do anyway. It is free to sign up and they will award you 30 swagbucks to get started. http://swagbucks.com/refer/momof3intn

creating a banner

So as scatterbrained as I am, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I sat down two hours ago to write a post and ended up getting sidetracked when I decided to change my banner really quick. I created this blog over a year ago and the design is pretty generic. I have been wanting to personalize it for some time but I just haven't got around to doing it.


As I mentioned before, I started to just change my "about" info and decided to look up a quick tutorial on designing a banner and here I am two hours later with no post and no changes to my blog. SO frustrating. I found a few different tutorials that seemed pretty straightforward but try as I might, I just am not any good with reading code. I tried over and over again to cut and paste new code into my html but I kept getting an error message.  Am I seriously just retarded or have any of you had problems with this as well? I actually think I may have found a site with a step by step on creating a banner and plugging it into the header section. Hopefully it won't involve reading any code. Hopefully it will look something like one of these pics below.

I think the bottom right is my favorite!

I watched The Social Network again this weekend and it is amazing to me to think about sitting and writing code for hours upon hours. I took a web design class my junior year in college and somehow managed to create a website from scratch. I remember bits and pieces of what I learned but I think it was mostly just copying from the book and plugging in a few words here and there. Maybe its time to dig through the book shelves and see if I can find any of the books from my class. I think I am going to give it one more shot. Hopefully before my next post I will have a pretty new personalized banner. Once I figure it out, I will share what I learned.

Kristy

Favorite Dinner Ever!

A friend of mine shared a recipe with me the other day for bruschetta chicken and I decided to go ahead and give it a try. I am not so good at picking winners when it comes to new recipes so I was a bit nervous but oh my goodness. It was amazing! This is probably one of the best meals I have made in a long time. I was thrilled because, for once, everyone liked it. 

Bruschetta Chicken. Yum!

I have had soo many requests for this recipe already so I thought I would pass it along to all of you. I served it with Ronzoni garden delight fettucine and asparagus. If you like bruschetta at all you will love this dish. I actually doubled the topping and used it for traditional bruschetta tonight. I am so excited for you to try this.  It actually is a really quick and easy meal that is sure to impress. The recipe calls for traditional bread crumbs but I use panko because it stays really crunchy while baking. Let me know what you think!

BRUSCHETTA CHICKEN

• 4 Servings
• Prep: 10 min. Bake: 30 min.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup egg substitute
• 4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (4 ounces each)
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
• 1 tablespoon butter, melted
• 2 large tomatoes, seeded and chopped
• 3 tablespoons minced fresh basil
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions

• Place flour and eggs in separate shallow bowls. Dip chicken in flour, then in eggs; place in a greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking dish. Combine the Parmesan cheese, bread crumbs and butter; sprinkle over chicken.
• Loosely cover baking dish with foil. Bake at 375° for 20 minutes. Uncover; bake 5-10 minutes longer or until a meat thermometer reads 170°.
• Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. Spoon over the chicken. Return to the oven for 3-5 minutes or until tomato mixture is heated through. Yield: 4 servings.

Nutritional Analysis: One serving (prepared with 1/2 cup egg substitute) equals 358 calories, 13 g fat (5 g saturated fat), 86 mg cholesterol, 623 mg sodium, 22 g carbohydrate, 2 g fiber, 36 g protein. Diabetic Exchanges: 4-1/2 lean meat, 1 starch, 1 vegetable.