Not Your Mama's Chicken Salad

To be fair I suppose I have no idea what kind of chicken salad your mama makes. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even tell you what kind of chicken salad my own mama makes! But I am going to go ahead and assume (and yes, I do know what they say about people who assume thank you very much) that since I threw this together out of the randomness of what had in my kitchen and have never actually had this particular mix of salad, your mama probably wasn't serving this to you on a regular basis.

Enough mama talk, let's get around to making this salad shall we? I am going to give you the gist of what I did since I was just winging this and not measuring as I went. If you are someone who needs exact step by step instructions, this probably isn't the post for you. But don't be afraid to go crazy and give this a try nonetheless. I am sharing a lunch that turned out good for me simply as an inspiration, I promise you can make it work too!

You are going to need:
- Shredded chicken (I always buy chicken on sale and throw it in the crockpot at the beginning of the week so that I can have shredded chicken on hand - so many uses! For this salad I probably used about 2 cups)
- Mayonnaise and sour cream - probably 2 parts mayo to 1 part sour cream, make it as creamy or as dry as you like it
- 1/4 cup chopped red pepper
- 2 Tbsp each of pepitas and sunflower seeds
- Sea salt, freshly ground pepper, garlic powder and roasted red pepper flakes - season to your hearts desire
- A vehicle for your salad - I made tortillas (this recipe from The Happy Housewife is the one I used), you could use pitas, bagels, bread, lettuce....you get the idea.

Throw the above mentioned ingredients into a bowl and stir.

Lay out your vehicle of choice.

Spread some chicken salad on along with anything else you want with it (we put some shredded cheese on top, lettuce would have been good too if I would have had some on hand).

That's good stuff!

Making Bean Bags

Let the 1st birthday related posts begin! We are going pretty low key when it comes to presents, seeing as he is only turning 1 and his brothers already own 75% of the toys on this planet. I did want one of his gifts to be homemade. I have been so good about doing that for my niece and for other friends and family but not so much with my own boys. So I decided to make him some bean bags...nice and easy but lots of fun for a 1 year old!

What you need:
~ Fabric
~ Beans. I used small white beans (no really, that's the name on the bag!) and it took about 7 1/2 cups worth.
~ Something to cut with
~ Something to sew with

Let's get started:
You'll want to start by cutting squares out of the fabric(s) of your choice. I wanted 10 bean bags made from 5 different colored pieces of fabric so I cut 4 5inx5in squares out of each piece of fabric for a total of 20 squares. I used a rotary cutter just because it made cutting nice and easy but good ol' fashion scissors work just as well:

I decided to make my bean bags a different color on each side so I matched up my color combinations and begin pinning squares together (the right side of the fabrics should be touching):

Now to begin sewing. You could easily do this project by hand but it is of course much faster if you have a sewing machine. You are going to want to sew along 3 sides of your square, leaving one side open so you can fill them:

Flip your square right side out and fill it with beans. I used 3/4 a cup, you can adjust that based on how full you want your beanbags:

You ready to finish 'er up? Fold down the open side and pin it shut. Then sew across the top and voila...you have yourself a beanbag!

I love this project because it took minimal time and very few materials. I am hoping that Isaiah loves them as much as I do!

Aren't they pretty?

If you are wanting something a little more elaborate, check out these counting bean bags.

This project was featured over at The Happy Housewife, Attempting Aloha, and Play Pennies: