Cassie DeNisco

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Brussel Sprout Pasta Salad Recipe!

Summer for me is all about a good pasta salad. I live for it at BBQs and just weeknight dinners in general. Lately I’ve been trying to really use up all the produce in my fridge and I found myself making this Brussel Sprout Pasta Salad!

This combines some of my favorite summer flavors and does well on its own or as a side! You’ll be obsessed with the flavor combo once you give it a try!

brussel sprout pasta salad

Ingredients

1 can chickpeas rinsed and drained

7-8 Brussel sprouts thinly chopped

1 package cooked orzo

1 tsp oregano

diced walnuts

feta or parmesan cheese (I used vegan)

1 tsp parsley

1 tbsp lemon juice

salt & pepper

1/2 cup olive oil

Directions

  1. Sauté your Brussel sprouts in a pan with a drop of olive oil. You just want them to be soft and not too crispy!
  2. Assemble the dressing by combining olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, parsley, and salt & pepper. Mix well and set aside.
  3. Mix together the cooked orzo, Brussel sprouts, and chickpeas then add in the dressing and mix well.
  4. Garnish with diced walnuts and cheese!

This is the most delicious pasta salad. It gives you a little more than a normal one would with the protein from the chickpeas and nuts and then the greens from the Brussel sprouts.

I also love the light dressing. Sometimes people get a little too crazy with the flavors and I’ve found this really compliments these well! If you loved this recipe, you can check out my others here! You can also follow me on pinterest @cassiedenisco for more recipes!!

My Top Secret to Drive Traffic to My Blog

I get asked all the time, “cute blog but does anyone actually read it?”. People are shocked to find out yes, actually a lot of people read it, not just family or friends. I learned early on that if I wanted to make my blog a source of income I would need many, many people to read my posts. This lead to months of research trying to find anything that I could do to get traffic to my blog. Read more of my posts on blogs here.

I soon realized, driving traffic and eyes to a blog is a little different for everyone. The one thing I kept coming back to was Pinterest in my research. I could talk on and on about Pinterest and let my social media manager side really come out but for now I will stick to the basics and how I use it as a way to get people to read my posts.

Pinterest Basics

In case you don’t know, Pinterest is a social media app where you can curate boards based on different topics or categories. Pinterest is unique because it is basically a search engine. You type something in the top like you would on Google and many many pins come up. You can click on the pins, save them, or go directly to the link of the website they came from. If you’ve mastered SEO tactics, using Pinterest to create pins that will lead back to your blog should be a piece of cake for you. You can follow me on Pinterest here.

Creating Pins

Every single blog post I create has a corresponding pin. This is super important because the pin is linked to the post on my website. People who see the pin then can click on the link to my website. As you can see from these example pins, I use the same template so that when someone comes to my account there’s a bit of cohesiveness.

Another thing I like to do is post just the images from the blog post without a template. I’ve found that some people on Pinterest like more organic pins and others like the template format. Also, I’ve heard really great things about people who post videos.

The Title, Description, Link, and Alt Text are crucial for you to fill out with keywords. This is where the SEO tactics come in. I do some research by typing in some of the keywords from my blog post in Pinterest and use the ones that generate content similar to mine. I fill my description with keywords and a few hashtags relevant so that people who are searching for my kind of content find it.

Scheduling Pins

One giant tip I have for you is to only focus your energy on one or two social media platforms. For me, I focus on IG Stories and Pinterest. I find I get the most interaction from them and they get me the most link clicks. To save time, I like to use the app Tailwind where it schedules and then posts my pins for me. This is game changing because I can have 20-30 pins going up every week to boost my engagement without me having to sit and do it myself.

Tailwind also has a feature where you can just loop your old pins. This helps my content to show more often. Good analytics and posting frequently is the key to getting your pins seen and links clicked on. Good engagement rates pull your content up higher when someone searches your keywords.

Realizing how useful Pinterest is to me was something that took awhile. I really had to build up my content and post consistently but I cannot reccomend trying it. I used to think that getting traffic to my blog was going to be so difficult with low followers but literally the game changed when I started focusing on Pinterest.

Let me know if you have any questions about Pinterest or if you have any tips for driving traffic to your blog!!

My Secret to Staying Organized

If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that I am insanely organized. Organization helps to keep me on track and not stress out so I definitely know the trick to staying on top of what you need to do. My secret isn’t even that revolutionary but the type is.

I know for sure that growing up we have all had a love hate relationship with planners. I went through a phase where a piece of paper was all I needed because I couldn’t get myself to use those little academic planners the schools would hand out. Once I stumbled across the brand “Day Designer” my life was forever changed and my level of organization instantly skyrocketed.

Day Designer agendas are not your typical planners. They have all the same components but so much more that it actually makes it so simple to plan out your day and accomplish things on your to do list. I love to sit on a Sunday night and plan out each day’s to do list in the section for that day. To do lists keep us accountable for what we need to accomplish and it feels so good when you cross something off them.

Not only is the to do list section on each page so helpful, but the fact that it breaks the day down into each hour really helps you start to learn about your time management skills and see where your time is going. I love spending time writing in my day and then following it. It not only helps you stay on track but all of your information is in one spot as opposed to on like 3 apps on your phone and then a sticky note somewhere in your car. Between the days being on their own pages, a big section for a to do list, and the days broken down by hour, I will never go back to a regular planner.

I also found that Day Designer has all different sizes for different needs. I originally had their mini version but found that I needed something more in depth for each day. I have also found that Target has the a line of Day Designer planners that tend to be a little cheaper then on the actual website so don’t freak out that these agendas can’t fit your budget.

Now, I know not everyone has the time to plan out their day to day schedule but you will thank me if you at least give it a shot for this back to school year. My number one tip that I give out when people ask how I stay so organized is my planner and that I specifically use one by Day Designer. Being organized is a serious life skill that we aren’t really taught in school so once we head out to college and the real world, if you don’t have any sense of time management it will get so stressful so fast. Believe me, I was there until I found my holy grail organization product.

Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram + Pinterest for more organization tips! Here’s the link to my exact planner ★

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