Taylor, Author at TaylorMade

Southwest Chicken Salad & Cilantro Lime Vinaigrette

September 8, 2014 By Taylor 1 Comment

Y’all, something happened… I found the world’s best salad dressing. I don’t even need to call it a dressing, it can be a dip or you could put it on meat or I might just drink it with a straw. I present: Cilantro Lime Vinaigrette, it’s not my recipe I found it HERE. If you love cilantro half as much as I do then you will love this dressing (seriously cilantro is my favorite food!)

Anyway I found it a few weeks ago and I have made it every week since. To go along with it we made a Southwest Chicken Salad the other night. You know, cause eating dressing with a spoon might be weird so it needed a vehicle.

For the Southwest Chicken Salad:

-marinated grilled chicken

-green leaf lettuce (my personal favorite lettuce)

-celery

-carrots

-green onion

-black beans

-english cucumber

-bell pepper

-avocado

-corn

-cojita cheese

Toss all the ingredients in a bowl and top with the best dressing ever :) Speaking of a bowl, how cute is this one? The nice people at Red Envelope sent it to us because we make a ton of salads at our house! I love the feel of it, its really thick and feels “hearty”… perfect for a chicken salad. I also just love looking at it. Now I need open cabinets because it’s too cute to be behind closed doors. I’m like the mouse from “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”!

You can find the bowl HERE.

Let me know if you make this dressing and if you like it as much as I do. I wont judge you on how much you consume, after all it’s healthy :)

Peach Punch Popsicles

August 25, 2014 By Taylor 1 Comment

This shop is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group® and Del Monte, but all my opinions are my own. #pmedia #DelMonteBTS http://my-disclosur.es/OBsstV

It’s the end of August so you know what that means… Back to School time! I’m having some serious mixed emotions about it this year. My boys are still in a pre-school program that I love and they do to. Last year they went 2 and 3 days but this year they will both be in school 4 days a week. Don’t get me wrong, they need it and I do too, they are starting to get a little stir crazy and we are ready for the routine. But, I have loved this summer and I will never forget the summer baby sister was born and we spent time learning all about our new baby… we are going to miss our crazy boys around the house, it might get too quiet.

I know that one thing will stay the same… the need for an after school snack. My boys always come home so starving! They wear them out at school :) It will be warm here in Texas for a few more months so we love to make homemade popsicles as an after school snack. My secret ingredient? DelMonte fruit squeezers! My kids LOVE them and ask for “squeezers” daily (and because they can’t read yet they don’t know they have hidden vegetables hehe).

These popsicles are so easy that my 3 and 5 year old boys can pretty much make them! Peach happens to be our favorite flavor around here so I picked up the peach mango DelMonte Squeezers from WalMart and a box of the strawberry too. For these Peach Punch Popsicles I used:

a whole peach mango squeezer

about 3/4c 100% real fruit punch

a little fresh squeezed orange juice

And we froze them to perfection :) My oldest son has declared these his new favorite flavor…. they are so, so good!

Fruit squeezers are also an easy and healthy favorite inside their lunches so we stocked up this past weekend! Right now select Walmart Superstores are running a back-to-school photo special. You can bring in or upload any photo and receive a free 5×7 photo. When you pick up your photo you will receive a coupon for $1 off the purchase of (2) Del Monte 4-pack Fruit Cups or (2)Fruit Burst Squeezers. The offer is available from 8/1 to 9/13 while supplies last.

Is anyone else feeling bittersweet about this school year? I know that in no time we will have the hang of it and it will be the new normal but sometimes this growing up thing is hard… especially for moms ;)

Living Room Tour

August 4, 2014 By Taylor 13 Comments

Hi Guys! I don’t really have a lot to say about these photos other than here is our living room, where we spend all of our time :) I picked up (a little) last week so I thought I would take so pictures to have it documented.

It’s pretty small compared to the rest of our house but it’s so cozy!

Here are the answers to the most common questions we get on Instagram and in real life…

1. Our paint color is Colonnade Grey by Sherwin Williams

2. Our couch is from Ashley Furniture – It’s called the Loric Smoke Sectional

I love our Built-Ins… there were here when we moved in. We have a basket of shoes on the fireplace because the boy’s room is far from the garage and the wicker basket on the mantel is full wipes and diapers. I want to do something about the red brick fireplace but I haven’t figured out what yet. Any ideas?

The built-ins house our project life book, old baby books, yearbook and photo albums. Those colored books are my grandmothers LIFE books from the 60’s-70’s.

There you have it. Short and sweet, and well loved. I have a million ideas in my head but this room works for now. It’s hard when you have really little kids to put anything super nice in your house haha. Let me know if you have any questions about anything in here!

Gleeful Summer Baby Dress

July 27, 2014 By Taylor 1 Comment

Welcome to the Taylor Made stop on the Gleeful Fabric Blog Hop :)

A few months ago my friend Caroline made me insanely jealous and designed her own fabric line! Kidding… I’m so happy for her, and her new line, Gleeful is just that. So happy, bright and fun… perfect for summer. I asked for a fat quarter bundle because there is no way I could just choose one of these fabrics!

Caroline sent the fabric a few months ago and I knew I wanted to make a baby dress. I thought the Summer Baby Dress by Kate and Gleeful were a match made in heaven. Also a perfect match… these buttons!!!

I actually didn’t have enough of any one fabric for the skirt part of the dress so I just used two different fabrics which I thought looked really cute for this pattern.

I LOVE the fabric on the straps. I also love this pattern from Kate! So easy and so cute. I did add the buttons but other than that I stuck to the pattern.

I even pulled out my double needle for the hem, so you know I meant business :)

I really wanted to have pictures of her in the dress but she is still too tiny… I’m thinking another month or so, thankfully (or not thankfully) it will be hot here for a while so she will get some good use out if it!

Thanks for having me Caroline! You can check out the full Gleeful line HERE