Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Growing up this was my mom's go to recipe for chocolate chip cookies, when I tried making them years ago they always turned out flat and just didn't have the perfect flavor I was looking for. Well, after testing out dozens of chocolate chip recipes over the years I've found that this really is my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe! Especially once I tweaked it slightly, a little baking powder and less shortening made it a keeper in my book. I hope you enjoy it too!

Chocolate Chip Cookies:

1 cup butter

1/3 cup shortening

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

 3 cups flour

1-2 cups mini chocolate chips

3/4-1 cup mini m&m's

**if you use unsalted butter you'll want to toss a dash of salt into the recipe, no more than 1 tsp. If you don't have any m&m's you can use a bag of chocolate chips, I like to use half a bag of mini m&m's and half a bag of chocolate chips, if you like a lot of chocolate use a bag of chocolate chips and some m&m's.**

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Cream together the butter, shortening and sugars, add in the eggs and vanilla till well mixed, then add in the flour and chocolate. The recipe says that you can add an extra 1/2 cup of flour for a softer, rounder cookie, I always use my small pampered chef scoop, all my cookies turn out pretty much rounded without adding the extra flour. Just wanted to add it though in case someone does prefer it with the extra flour! Bake for 8-10 minutes (i normally bake for 8 so that they're nice and soft).

Hope you enjoy these cookies as much as we do!

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Baby Girl Onesies!

Remember my friend I posted about the other day, that was having a little boy? Well she has a sister just younger than her and is pregnant with a little girl! How cool is that, their babies will be super close in age (I think 2 months apart or close to that). So they had a combined baby shower! I went to work "researching" again for cute little girl onesies, and decided on these:

Some close ups:

Rocking horses are classics!

I'm sure she'll be as sweet as a cupcake!

Some daddy love, and...

My favorite! This cute little princess, mommas girl onesie! Again, I did 2 or 3 different sizes so they can spread the love! Hope you enjoyed these! I sure loved making them!

- Cassie 

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Baby Boy Onesies!

I have a sweet friend that I grew up with who is pregnant with her first little cutie! So I wanted to give her a super fun gift! I loved the idea of making some cute little boy onesies for her (and yep, she's having a boy)! I "researched" Pinterest, etsy and Google and decided on these cute shirts!

Now for some close ups:

This one is self explanatory, super adorable!

Who doesn't love rocking horses?!

And of course, he'll be a cute "little stud muffin"!

And then I through in some pacifiers and a set of pants, and Bam! Cute gift done! (The onesies are 2 or 3 different sizes so they can use them over time)

Hope you enjoyed these as much I did!

-Cassie 

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I found something AWESOME!

A few months back I talked with an amazing lady who was selling Thrive, I loved everything about it and signed right up! It's pretty much changed eating for us! Anyone that knows me well knows that I LOVE to bake, but I'm not a big fan of cooking. Over the last few months I've started enjoying cooking much much more! I've started to "thrivalize" our meals, from breakfast to dinner it has made cooking so much easier and better! Thrive foods are freeze dried, have long shelf life's, are convenient, easy to use, get rid of my prep time, save me money because I'm making less trips to grocery store (come on, you know every time you go to the store you buy way more than you need because something looks good or is on sale! If you don't do that you are my hero!), save me from throwing away so much rotten food (again, just because all that yummy produce is on sale doesn't mean it's going to be eaten. It might just sit in your fridge and go bad in a matter or 4 days just because you didn't find the time to wash it and chop it.), AND I'm saving so much time not having to chop foods! I absolutely love that I can make delicious meals in 20 mins! Meals that I would have been missing one or two items to make so I would feed my kids junk food or pick up take out! Ha! See, another way I'm saving money, less takeout! 

Here are just a few pics of some yummy meals we've enjoyed with thrive! 

20 minute Breakfast Hash, I was out of potatoes but I had my freeze dried diced potatoes, plus the eggs, green onions and onions are Thrive as well! The only thing I added was the bacon and cheese! The bacon was some that I cooked up and froze so I didn't have to take the time to cook it.

A quick quesadilla for lunch, I topped the cheese with freeze dried green chilies, freeze dried green onions, freeze dried chicken and freeze dried retried bean flakes! Was so yummy topped with salsa!

Plus I've put together some meal jars full of freeze dried foods, then all I have to do is dump it in water and cook, bam! Dinner done in under 20 mins! Pretty darn exciting!!!

Probably one of my most common uses of the freeze dried blueberries and strawberries is throwing them

into the blender, turning them into a powder and throwing them into our pancakes and waffles! The kiddos get some healthy fruit while eating their yummy breakfasts! And as my oldest always asks, "there's no chunks right!?", right! No chunks when it's blended into a powder :)

Okay, that's my spiel for now! I'm sure you'll be seeing many yummy thrive foods posted here in the future! If you would like to try some samples or order something, I'm happy to ship samples! Or my website is cassiefuller.thrivelife.com

Trust me, you'll love it! It's revolutionary! Like a food revolution! Be excited! We are :)

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Baby Shower Candy Guessing Game!

I've thrown several baby showers, and at each one I've hosted I absolutely LOVE this game. Why is this game so awesome you ask? Well for starters, everyone gets to earn candy bars from it! Plus, it's pretty funny figuring out which candy bar goes with which phrase! I had a gal ask for a copy of it recently, so I figured I'd go ahead and post it here in case anyone else would love to have fun with it in the future. 

Just right click on the image and save to your computer, then you can print as many as you want.  It's great too because it prints 4 to a page so it shouldn't use up that much ink! I found all of these candy bars except the zero bar at Walgreens. I found the zero bar at Quik Mart! That's right, you have to buy all of these candies to hand out as prizes for the game.

I normally hand one out to everyone and give them 5-10 minutes to fill it out (up to 10 since it's a baby shower and we all love chatting and catching up with each other even while filling out a game). Then you can go around and have each person answer one, or you could just have people call out answers. Since there are so many, everyone is normally pretty nice about making sure everyone wins a candy! Once someone calls out the answer, they get the candy they just answered. So if the word was 'twins' and someone calls out 'mike and ikes' then they get the 'mike and ikes'. Get it? Hope so! The answers are listed below in case your not sure about some of them :)

Twins - s - mike & Ike
Triplets - o - 3 musketeer
Conception - p - skor
Breastfeeding - e - Milky Way
Picking a name - g - watchamacallit
Boy - f - almond joy (boys have nuts, this normally causes some giggles)
Girl - i - mounds (same candy as almond joy, just without the nuts, yes, everyone normally laughs at this one)
Epidural - d - lifesavers
Hospital bill - c - 100 grand
Contractions - n - whoppers
Baby poop - j - rolos
Baby giggles - u - snickers
Umbilical cord - a - twizzlers
Pregnant belly - h - chunky bar
Parents - k - nerds
Preemies - b - runts
Delivery doctor - t - butterfingers
Nurses - r - sweetarts
Grandparents - l - smarties
Sleep - q - zero
Nap time - m - take 5

Let me know if you have any questions! Enjoy! -Cassie

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Double Chocolate Banana Zucchini Muffins!

Last week I was looking for a tasty chocolate muffin recipe similar to the amazing Costco chocolate muffins! Only to realize that all the "copycat" recipes require a cake mix, I'm not exactly a cake mix person. Growing up my mom always made delicious baked goods from scratch, so I blame it on my childhood. So grateful she shared her love of baking with me!

Okay, so back to searching for a delicious muffin recipe that didn't include a cake mix. I found this yummy Double Chocolate Banana Muffins recipe, BUT I didn't have enough bananas, I did have frozen shredded zucchini! So I did part banana, part zucchini, it turned out amazing! But they were a little denser than I wanted, and I wanted to add more zucchini, so I tried it again and changed it up some. I've already made it with the changes a few times, woohoo for a good freezer recipe! Love making baked goods, especially breakfast foods that I can easily pop in the freezer easily. I am SO not a morning person, so these are perfect to pull out of the freezer the night before! Fed happy kids makes for a happy mom in the morning!

Double Chocolate Banana Zucchini Muffins: 

3/4 c. Melted Butter (1.5 sticks)

2 eggs

1 c. packed brown sugar

1/2 c. sugar

1 1/2 c. Mashed bananas

1 1/2 c. Shredded zucchini (i used shredded zucchini that i had frozen, I pulled it out of the freezer and let it thaw a little, but not completely, so it was still a little icy when i threw it in)

1/4 c. Buttermilk 

1/2 c. Cocoa

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

3 tsp. cinnamon

3 c. flour

1 1/2 c. Mini Chocolate Chips

1/2 c. Mini chocolate chips to top the muffins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. I melted the butter in the microwave for 90 seconds, stopping every 20-30 seconds to stir, so it doesn't bubble over. Mix together butter, eggs, sugars, banana, milk and zucchini until well blended. Add in cinnamon, soda, powder, cocoa, flour and 1 1/2 cups mini chips. Make sure it's blended well. Drop into muffin pans, I use the large pampered chef scoop - LOVE it - it's the perfect size for muffins and cupcakes! Oh and once you drop it in the muffins pan or cupcake liners top the muffins with mini chips before popping in the oven. It makes them even yummier! Bake for 18 mins, makes about 40 muffins (so then you can share them with a friend or freeze them for future mornings.

You just top a few chips on top of each one before baking like so!

See how much yummier they look with chips on top!

Chocolate muffin perfection! PLUS, they're totally healthy right (wink wink)! Being packed with fruit and veggie, impossible to resist!

Hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

~Cassie 

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Necklace Giveaway!

CONGRATS BRITTANY FREEBAIRN! YOU"RE THE WINNER!
I have an AWESOME Giveaway for you guys today!

My Charming Treasures has offered to Giveaway one of her Personalized Charm Necklaces with up to 3 charms (a 58$ Value)! The charms are sterling silver and come on an 18 inch sterling chain.

 How cute are these! This would make such a fun gift for yourself or a friend, and right around Valentines Day! Be sure to check out her etsy shop and facebook page to see the other cute stuff she has to offer!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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