Easy Summer Grilled Chicken

This grilled chicken recipe is delicious, and really you can have it all year long.  It just sounds good to call it "Easy Summer Grilled Chicken" because I love Summer. Plus it's so easy to make, you probably have all of the ingredients on hand, it's not unhealthy, and the leftovers {if you have any} are great too.  

Summer Grilled Chicken

3-4 chicken breasts 

{I buy mine from Costco and they are HUGE so I usually use just 3, cut into strips}

1/2 cup olive oil

1/3 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons garlic powder {or less, I really like garlic}

1 tablespoon dried oregano

Juice of 1/2 a lemon 

{if you have it, I've done it with & without... both times it was great}

Salt & Pepper to taste

Cut chicken breasts into strips, about 3 strips from each breast.  This way when you marinate the meat, it gives it all that delicious flavor.  Combine all the other ingredients in a medium sized bowl.  Lay the chicken flat in a 9 x13 inch baking dish {I use my big glass Pyrex brownie dish} and pour the marinade over all of the chicken.  Cover with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator until grilling time, at least 2 hours.  

You probably don't actually need to see a picture of this step, but I took one so here it is .

If you remember, flip the chicken once while marinating.  But I never remember and it still comes out great.

Grill on low.  Since the chicken is cut into strips, it will still cook quickly though.  Flip once to cook on both sides.  Juices should run clear and internal temperature of chicken should be 165 degrees.  Serve it up with your favorite side dishes and you've got yourself a beautiful, healthy meal that was quick and easy too.  My recipe is based loosely on one that I saw at All Things Thrifty.  Mine uses a different cut of chicken and a few less ingredients because I wanted to make this for the 1st time without running to the store.  Even still, it came out delicious.  So if you have some of the ingredients on hand, try it with those & see for yourself just how easy and delicious this recipe is.

  I'm sharing this at some of my favorite party places.  

Happy Summer Grilling! xoxo

Coffee & Crafting Pinterest Party with Gevalia Coffee!

Thank you to Gevalia and Safeway for sponsoring this post. Visit the Safeway website for more information about Gevalia and "Like" Gevalia on Facebook.


I looooove my coffee as much as I love my time with my girlfriends, so I was thrilled to be able to host a Gevalia House Party last weekend. I decided to go with a Coffee & Crafting Pinterest Party theme, so naturally Gevalia coffee was the perfect drink to sip on while crafting away on a Patriotic Wreath for our front doors, just in time for the 4th of July!

Gevalia coffee is great anytime of the day or evening, but it really goes perfectly with dessert, so I picked up this amazing Safeway Select Boston Cream Cake from the bakery at my local Vons grocery store. It tasted every bit as wonderful as it looked. The chocolate layer was so rich and thick, the cake was perfectly light and fluffy, and the creme layer was heavenly!

I also picked up some strawberries that I dipped in chocolate and displayed in a ceramic egg crate on top of these fun red suitcases,

and I also bought some iced lemon cookies to serve out of my vintage milk glass pedestal vase. Yum!

Have you ever tried Gevalia coffee?

I hadn't tried it before this, and I'm sure glad that I did because the Chocolate Mocha ground coffee is my new favorite coffee! For real, I'm a HUGE coffee lover and this is the ONLY coffee I've had since last weekend. I've had it every morning this week and it is a definite staple on my Vons grocery list from now on.

 And really, yes, there is always time for coffee!

I admit that I was REALLY excited to decorate for this because I love beautiful product packaging, and yellow and aqua just happen to be my two favorite colors together.  So I went to town setting up for my Gevalia House Party! 

I printed out some fun coffee sayings to display...

and I used a real burlap coffee bag as a tablecloth, decorated water bottles with scrapbooking paper, displayed sunflowers in pretty vases, and made little washi tape/twine banners to display.

No party is complete in my mind without party favors!

So to keep with the coffee theme I put some chocolate covered espresso beans in these cute little bags sealed with washi tape and attached them with mini clothespins to my chicken wire frame.

For the Crafting part of our night, I had pinned a cute Patriotic wreath a while back that was originally made by Landeeseelandeedo.com. After looking at many 4th of July/Patriotic crafts, I decided to go with this one because it was adorable, not too complicated and I knew that it was something that would not be overwhelming for us.  Even if you're someone who really loves and knows how to craft, part of being at a Pinterest Party is enjoying your time, relaxing, chatting, eating & drinking, and not stressing out about the craft!  I wanted to make sure that everyone brought home their craft completed. It turned out to be such a fun craft.  The ribbon parts were simple and quick, and none of us had ever made the paper "firecracker" decorations, so it was fun to learn something new.

We sipped on our Gevalia coffee, 

ate sweet desserts, 

and had a great time crafting together!

I think it's always fun to see everyone's little differences on the same project when crafting with friends.

 {My apologies for the poor quality of this late night iphone picture, but aren't those wreaths adorable?}

My friend Kari mentioned that she doesn't always drink coffee because it makes her feel weird and jittery. But when she was leaving that night she asked what was different about Gevalia coffee because she didn't feel any of that jittery-ness that she normally feels. Gevalia just tastes so smooth. I think that's because Gevalia coffee began brewing coffee in Gavle, Sweden in 1853, where traditional cast-iron roasting developed its distinctively rich, smooth taste that’s never bitter and because Gevalia is expertly made with carefully selected beans and ground extra-fine to produce a rich coffee experience. Seriously, this coffee is amazing- full of flavor and smooth, while still being rich and bold. Like I said, I'm a huge coffee drinker, and Gevalia stood its ground in comparison to any other "fancy" coffee brand out there!

I'm an old-school, coffee pot girl who usually is particular about my coffee and I always grind my beans fresh before brewing. Although this time I just couldn't pass up trying out the Chocolate Mocha and Vanilla varieties, so I bought them and they came already ground... so convenient!  But if you like whole bean coffee, Gevalia has whole bean options too, and if you've got to have your K-cups, Gevalia now comes in single serve cups for your Keurig® K-Cup® Brewer, perfect for a quick Gevalia fix. {Kraft Foods is not affiliated with Keurig, Inc. KEURIG and K-CUP are registered trademarks of Keurig, Inc.} 

And since I've posted a few pictures of our Coffee & Crafting Pinterest Party, I've seen a few friends on various social media outlets talk about hosting their own Pinterest Parties soon and making the same Patriotic Wreath that we made at this Coffee & Crafting Pinterest Party! I hope that they will serve up some Gevalia coffee & amazing desserts from their local Safeway or Vons too.  Most all of Gevalia's many varieties of coffee are available at Safeway/Vons.  As a busy Mom of four little ones, I appreciated the convenience of just running into my local Vons {Safeway in many parts} and walking out with delicious desserts and smooth, rich coffee ready to be brewed. It made hosting this Gevalia House Party such a breeze!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Vintage Scooter Summer Porch

Are your kids out of school for summer?  

Lucky you!

We have eight more days until our Summer Break officially starts, but that hasn't kept us from getting a kick start on summer with picnics and enjoying the gorgeous San Diego weather {although that's pretty much all year long... lucky us!}  Our boys are always outside, so a summery front porch is the perfect view point to watch them play outside, run through the sprinklers, get muddy, be silly, and ride around on their bikes and scooters.  

I have a soft spot for scooters... I know, kind of a weird thing to have a crush on, right?  Maybe it's a Boy Mom thing... I'm not sure.  But when our Jake was about to turn four years old, ALL he did was zoom around on the cutest little vintage style scooter any chance he got.  

It wasn't really a vintage scooter, but a Radio Flyer scooter from the L.L. Bean Catalog sent to us by the boys Grandma back east.  He loved it so much that we had a "Vintage Scooter" Birthday Party for his 4th Birthday.  It was my favorite party that I've hosted to date because he loved it, and because of it fulfilled a dream of mine... having a party of mine featured on Hostess with the Mostess!  

Ever since planning Jake's Scooter Party over two years ago, I've had my eye out for a real vintage scooter, and I've run across a few but they were priced around $75.  That's definitely more than my bargain-hunting mind had in mind because it's solely for decoration.  I love to shop for fun, funky, unusual vintage finds and I'm super picky about what I bring home, but the bargain is definitely part of the thrill!  So when I saw this little wooden vintage scooter at a garage sale recently, I almost didn't even ask the price.  But I did as I was walking out and the lady said, "Um, four dollars?"  YES!!  So, she came home with me and promptly found her home as the focal point for our Vintage Scooter Summer Porch display! 

I used a vintage window that I got for free... hello, happy roadside find! {I had painted it yellow to use at our baby's 1st Bee-Day Party Brunch last month}.  I made a simple pennant paper from patterned paper and ribbon for the window, put my Interchangeable Chevron sign on an iron stand,  and painted a $1 frame from Michael's my favorite color {Folk Art Jamaican Sea}, spray painted the cardboard insert that came with the frame with Rustoleum Chalk Board Spray Paint, and hot glued on my favorite little detail from Jake's Vintage Scooter Party.  The chevron sign has a little nail on it so I can switch out the decoration for the season, so I just hung my $1 Michael's frame on it.

That tiny little scooter on the frame was the centerpiece on Jake's birthday cake at his Scooter Party!  I've kept it on a shelf in my Craft Area and I smile every time I see it because it reminds me of not only a fun birthday party, but meeting a goal of mine that I had set years earlier in blogging. 

Do you have a summer display somewhere inside or outside of your home?  I'd love to see it-  Leave me a link in the comments, and I'll come check it out!

I'm linking up my Vintage Scooter Summer Porch at some of my favorite party places.  xoxo

Better Nights with Target GoodNites Bedtime Underwear!

This shop is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group™ and GoodNites, but all my opinions are my own. 

#pmedia #BetterNights  http://cmp.ly/3/8vNxcO.

With four little boys, 

it's always an adventure at Gallamore West!

And we sure are in for an adventure these days, 

as we've embarked upon Potty Training with this little cutie. 

He is so excited to wear his "big boy" underwear during the daytime.  But I've been through Potty Training twice before with his older brothers and night times were a definitely struggle both times.  Both of my older boys trained well during the day, but oh those night times were tough!  I was constantly getting up in the middle of the night, changing sheets, then washing and drying sheets and remaking beds during the day, adding hours of chores to my daytime routine.  Then I'd drag through the day because I was so tired from being up during the night.  And this happened over and over.  Who has time for that?!  No one, that's who!

This time around though, I'm excited because I know we'll have better nights thanks to GoodNites Bed Mats and GoodNites Bedtime Underwear from Target.  

 The Bedtime Underwear are great for my little guy because he loves to wear his real underwear during the daytime so much that putting him back in a regular diaper at night time makes him sad.  These Bedtime Underwear are more like regular big boy underwear to him so he loves them, and they help me too because he wakes up with clean sheets in the morning.  And once he has mostly gotten the night time training down enough, I'll just switch him from the GoodNites Bedtime Underwear to the GoodNites Disposable Bed Mats.

These will be a lifesaver to keep me from having to do load after load of extra laundry when those accidents do happen during night time Potty Training.  Yay!  That leaves me more time for fun stuff, like more shopping at Target!

If you've got a Potty Trainer in your house, head to Target with your coupon for $1.50 off either the GoodNites Disposable Bed Mats or the GoodNites Bedtime Underwear and get started on Better Nights with Potty Training in your house too.

S'mores Father's Day Gift!

Father's Day is just around the corner, so I'm showing you an  easy, quick, and affordable gift for the special guy in your life!  

We're planning a few camping trips this summer, so we've got S'mores on our mind here.  The best thing about it is that everything in the basket is available at Target for about $10.  It doesn't get any easier than that.

I love the rustic look of the basket from Michael's.  I got it awhile back, but I'm pretty sure they still have them.  And the chalkboard sign is just a $1 frame from Michael's that I turned into a chalkboard frame with a quick coat of Rustoleum Chalkboard Spray Paint.  I liked the simple look of leaving the frame unpainted... plus it made this whole gift take about 10 minutes total to put together, including the time it took to paint the frame.

I'm completely smitten with the Dollar Spot at Target right now... well, okay ALWAYS!  But the red & white gingham picnic/camping stuff there right now is awesome.  Go grab up some stuff before I go back and take it all!  The marshmallow roasters are $1 each, and they work so well in this basket because they do a great job holding up the back of the basket, so everything is displayed well and not flopping around.

Have a great weekend, friends!  xoxo

I'm sharing my S'mores Father's Day Gift at some of my favorite party places!