This recipe is absolutely amazing. It was introduced to me by my friend Kim Nelson at girls' night last fall and I've craved it on a regular basis ever since! I wanted my parents to try it, so I made a crock pot of it for them one day to share with my grandparents. My sister, Joy, happened to be over there just as it was ready and gave it a taste. She loved it so much that she immediately called me from their house to get the recipe so she could make it that night for dinner!
White Bean Chicken Chili
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 & 1/2 lbs. chicken, cut in small pieces
OR the meat from a rotisserie chicken (my favorite way to go)
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
Cook the above together in a skillet until chicken is cooked through and the onions are translucent. (If using rotisserie chicken, just cook onion & garlic. Also, I like to cook the onions untill they start to brown.) Add this to crockpot along with:
2 (15 oz.) cans great northern beans
1 (14.5 oz.) can chicken broth
1 (4 oz.) can diced green chiles
1/2 tsp. tobasco
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. cumin
Stir to combine and cook at least three hours on low. Just before serving, mix in:
On June 29th we had the most awesome Eclipse party evah! Faith really wanted to make the movie premire a big event, so we threw this soiree two nights before we went to the movie. We looked at a bunch of party ideas online and picked our favorites that we could copy on an extremely limited budget (I think we did the whole thing for under $25! That's including decorations, food, games, & favors.)
Faith loved all the homemade signs we saw all over the internets, so I made our own versions: this one reads, "For your safety and the comfort of our other guests, please cover any cuts with a band-aid. Thank you." It has a picture of Jasper (who nearly ate Bella in New Moon because she got a papercut) and some band-aids attached.
I told Faith to hang the signs with masking tape so that the paint wouldn't be damaged. I didn't realize that she would slap it onto the front :)
I had everyone bring a food item for our buffet, so I thought this line of James' from the first movie was fitting:
We just thought this Edward line would be funny, but Christian really did start about six hours before the party asking how long until everyone would arrive!
Faith decorated with red crepe paper streamers reminiscent of the Eclipse book cover's red ribbon. Also, it's cheap.
We also decorated with mini Christmas lights which, thanks to Tony's obsession, we have a zillion of. We were going for a "Twilight prom gazebo" kind of look:
Uncanny! (It really was more impressive in person.)
Now, on to the food. I made little tags to make things more fun, and this one reads "We made Italliano for you" (In Twilight Renee tells Bella they're making Italliano for her). There was a choice of pasta - mini farfalle, penne rigate, or linguine; and choice of sauce - marinara or my homemade alfredo.
"Anti-vamp garlic bread"
Here's the island with the majority of the food. We decorated with fake red rose petals (from the dollar store), clear glass gem scatters (that Tina gave Faith from her wedding centerpiece years ago), plus a mini pine tree. We were going to get more creative with decorating and just ran out of time. Some snacks that aren't individually pictured are - "cold vampire kisses" (Hershey's kisses in a bowl over ice), "wolf pack treats" (graham cookies in the shape of dog biscuits, Nabisco's Scooby Snacks), and "blood suckers" (red vines liccorice in a crystal vase). We used our china to eat on, but had Edward and Jacob desert plates.
"White as Edward fruit dip" (my favorite, just whip together a block of cream cheese and a small jar of marshmallow fluff)
"Rosalie's smashing salad" (Because Rosalie crushes the salad bowl in Twilight when she finds out that Bella's not hungry enough to enjoy the meal she helped prepare.) Faith really wanted us to get one of those bowls that looks like crackled glass, but I couldn't find one.
"Blood punch"
Thank you so much to all of our guests for bringing food assignments--you guys rock!
We enjoyed a great dinner together . . .
Then we did some games! While still at the table we did a get-to-know-you game, an alphabet game and filled in words for a mad-lib. Next, I had everyone cut and paste their own bingo card. Here's what I made up:
I just cut the character squares out of mine and used them to call the game. Our budget didn't have room for decent prizes, so we kind of did without! It was still a lot of fun.
Our next game was "pin the kiss on Jacob". We thought about having Edward there, and maybe Bella for the boys, but we stuck to just getting Faith's favorite. We told everyone in advance to bring their lipstick, so we had them apply, pucker up, and kiss some lip-shaped papers! Here's my mom and Faith's cousins, Celeste & Alaura, with their game pieces ready.
Chelsea & Tina
Buddy!
I put plastic over the top to keep Jake safe.
Tammy & Lana
Go Tam!
Next, we played "Alice's Visions" which was just Pictionary with Twilight inspired clues, but we thought it brought to mind how Alice drew her vision in the first movie where Bella recognized her childhood ballet studio. Faith's card was "cliff diving":
Christian's card was "apple":
We also had a game of quotes (where you guess who said it and what book/movie it was from) and a trivia game. Christian managed to poop his underwear twice and have a huge tantrum where he ended up hitting me, but even his drama wasn't enough to ruin my good time!(He was really, really tired) I think everyone really loved the party. Faith couldn't even settle down enough to go to bed, so she stayed up designating everyone "Team Jacob", "Team Edward", "Team Jake-ward", and so forth on the dry erase board.
Two nights later we went to Eclipse with Tina, Chelsea, Lana, and Tammy. We first ate at Union Grill where Faith picked the salmon entrée and shared it with me.
Tony couldn't make it in time for dinner, but he got there for the movie! He crashed our girls' night because I put all the Twilight books on his iPod (somewhat against his will, but he ended up listening to them!) and now he's a fan, too. We all LOVED the movie and can't wait to see it agan!!! I'm just sad that we forgot to have someone take our picture at the theater like we did last time :( You would have gotten to see Faith's new Jacob shirt (she had a "diva costume change" after dinner), my new Jacob shirt, and even Tony's Bella shirt that he had me make for him. Here is the picture I photoshopped, printed onto an iron-on transfer, and put on a dark grey heathered shirt:
His requirements were that the shirt said "Team Bella", that it had Bella as a vampire (with red eyes), and that she was wearing something sexy. This is the original I decided to alter, I think I made it fit the bill!
We took the kids to see "Toy Story 3" on July 4th, but it was sold out. Instead, we got tickets for Monday since Tony was off work for the holiday and got pics with Jacob and Edward!
We completed the party favors a little late, so we delivered them on Sunday. I think they came out so cute! We used Hershey's miniatures and Dove Dark Promises.
This is what all the backs looked like:
If you would like the game and answer sheets, posters, food tags, or chocolate wrappers, you can download them HERE! They would have been better, but my computer had a catastrophic failure the week before and it took me all week just to fix my puter and restore my files. I'm pretty proud of myself that I got all this done in a few hours the day of the party!
With Tammy's 20+ years at the bank, she gets a bunch of vacation days. She always sets aside some of those for hanging out with the kids each summer. The fun started with a sleepover and pool party on June 18-19th. She buys a little three ring blow-up pool each year for the occasion and gifted them with new beach towels!
Later that day I had to get a better shot of Faith's mindblowingly neon bright shirt. My mom got her this cute outfit at Justice in Park City and the camera can not even come close to capturing the true color. Fluorescent colors take me back to the 80's!
On the 22nd, we decided to head to Thanksgiving Point and check out the Museum of Ancient History for the first time. WOW! It was so much fun that we spent nearly all day there.
Shortly after we got there, Tony stopped by in his work truck. Since he delivers in the Provo/Spanish Fork area, the kids hadn't seen his "big truck" in years. They loved seeing the cab and Christian even blew the air horn!
Tony was, as usual, hauling doubles (two trailers) that day.
Back to the museum--the kids loved all the dino bone replicas.
The favorite activity was the sand and water table that showed the effects of erosion. The kids built dams and islands and played with the little plastic dinosaurs and palm trees. We had to promise them more time here to get them to leave for the 3D movie!
We saw "Sea Rex" which was a really interesting film about sea reptiles during the time of dinosaurs. Christian got a little bored with it because it was more informative than "fun" and I told Tammy not to get snacks since we were going to lunch right afterward. Now I've learned, kids + movie = snacks are a necessity. Another fun activity was this buildable dino. It had velcro parts that you could interchange.
This head almost ate Buddy!
They also had a great sand area where you could excavate dinosaur bones.
The kids couldn't leave without a trip to the gift shop, and Grandpa Braegger had given them each $6 to spend there. I tried to talk them into scorpian suckers and chocolate covered insects, but they got stretchy glow-in-the-dark dinos instead.
Next, we visited the Farm Country center there at Thanksgiving Point. They had a few interesting things like a chick hatching out of it's egge in an incubator, some goats that you could feed through a fence, and pony rides, but overall we weren't very impressed with it.
I thought the neatest thing was that the kids each got to milk a goat. They usually have a cow to milk, but she had mostly dried up due to expecting a baby in a few weeks. Both Faith & Christian did really well!
The kids went with Tammy, Lana and Zach to the zoo the next day. Thanks Tam for all the fun!
On the 26th we went to Lagoon again and Tony even talked the kids into going on the Terroride on our way out. Christian told me afterward, "Mom, you know the spooky guys in there really are spooky!"
