Pumpkin Season

Picking a Pumpkin in PA 2009

     Every year Pumpkin time nears I get so excited because you see every item pumpkin  flavored available. I know I do use pumpkin in the can but it is not the same as roasting a pumpkin yourself. Who am I kidding? The pumpkin from a can is so much easier when you cannot find pumpkin! Now I am talking 100% pumpkin not the pumpkin pie mix. My friends and I a couple years ago would find pumpkin in the store and buy a case at a time to split because it was so hard to find. So I stock up year round so I never run out, and have enough for the holidays; Thanksgiving, The Cookie Exchange, scrapping get togethers, Bon- fires, and Christmas.
     Here is a set of recipes I just made that you can add to your cookbook! It was actually inspired by two things. DD aka Dunkin Donuts and My Hubby. Since I love Pumpkin flavored coffee and I also I got an email telling me Pumpkin Coffee was now available; I had to make a coffee run. So David and I had errands to run so we made the stop. I was surprised that not only had DD come out with the coffee but all pumpkin inspired line. Coffee drinks, Ice Cream, Cream Cheese, Muffins and Donuts were all calling my name. I controlled myself and only ordered a few of these items. I had a mission to only buy the coffee, but the bagel with pumpkin smear called my name a little louder than all the others. As we headed to our next stop, I could not wait to try the bagel with Pumpkin cream cheese, right there in the car. Now I had it on a plain bagel toasted because I was not sure what it would taste like. It was better than I imagined and I was talking about how great it was and that David needed to try this right now! David does not cream cheese, sour cream, plain yogurt, ricotta cheese, yet his favorite food is lasagna and I do use it, or even cottage cheese. Any way I had him try it and he says " Babe, you could probably just make it. " I all the sudden was on cloud nine. Duh! Of course why couldn't I make it. I just had never considered making it. I felt excited and dumb all at the same time. After the errands I made one final stop to pick up half an half for the pumpkin coffee and cream cheese and a few extra cans of pumpkin.

My niece playing with the "pupmikin"seeds
2009 at Great Nana's House

     So this is what I came up with now the only reason I added sugar was because of my brother who also likes to add his tidbits of info as I am getting ready to start something said " You may want to add sugar or something...". So my original intention is to just add a 3/4 cup of pumpkin to one block of cream cheese and some pumpkin pie spice. BUT I decide to look up a recipe online. There was two one that wanted brown sugar and maple syrup...sounded too sweet. Another recipe that was calling for 1/4 cup of sugar... also too much sugar for my liking. So I came up with these two and both are equally awesome.

Pumpkin Pie Dip/Spread

1/2 cup of canned pumpkin
1 block of cream cheese room temp.
3/4 tsp of pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp of vanilla
1/8 of  a cup sugar

I whipped it in the blender til all fluffy and lighter in color. This was great as a spread on bagels, used on cut up apples too. Much more of a dip.

Now this recipe is just a little different but gives a more savory style cream cheese taste and great on bagels.

Pumpkin Paste

1 cup of pumpkin
1 block of cream cheese
1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp of cardamom
1/4 tsp of ginger
1 tbsp of dark brown sugar

AMAZINGLY great! This recipe I did not whip. I turned the mixer on and let the cream cheese mix a little to make sure it was not cold  and added the sugar to the cream cheese til it was mixed in. I mixed all the spices into the pumpkin first and then folded in the pumpkin and just mixed til all combined. It was richer in color and much more savory.

 Happy Pumpkin Season!

September Crafting

So I really have not blogged since after the Fourth of July and yet I am keeping busy with the craftiness. Some birthdays and some Etsy orders keep me busy too. Well if any of you know about Tim Holtz; you may follow his blog or know of his awesome tag challenge if you will. I challenge myself anyway. He changed from doing the 12 days of Christmas to doing one tag month.So you don't have to do all Christmas related tags. Even though it would still be a cool idea to do both but that is sooo many tags! I have been watching and saying "oh wow'" I have to try that out. Well This month I saw it, AND was like totally in need to do this. It was so easy and only one ban-aid through out the process, believe me this is normal for me. Here is a link to his blog and please use his step by step instructions.I try to incorporate some of the items he uses but then spin it to be more my style. Hence the reason my tag looks crazy bright! The instructional pictures are awesome.  September Tim Holtz Tag

You can make this alone or or if you lucky like me you can craft with a buddy! I now feel like this technique will help me in so many steam-punk style cards and ATCs(Artist Trading Cards). I am so excited to have another crafty way to make something. BEWARE... Do not try smoothing out the edge of aluminium tape that you just cut with scissors, using your fingers!  Have a blast. Oh and you may a see a few posts about pumpkin related items soon; you know because its that season. Tootles!

Fourth of July 2012

This is four blog posts in one!!!

I love red, white, and blue and just being able to spend time with family and friends. The Fourth of July is not just about celebrating the freedom we have but showing our support to our own countries patriotism. Now we may not have the same spirit as those who live in Bristol, Rhode Island, but uh I hope to enjoy my time just the same. With that I love searching for things to do for parties. Pinterest is great for finding ideas. I can always find unique things on how to celebrate or make cool crafty things for kids. I have a big family so we have lots of kids running around and I try to make the children happy and have lots for them to do. Most know if the kids are not having fun or enjoying themselves the parents are not happy and then it ends up being a very short lived party.

One of the projects that I found on Pinterest were confetti poppers that looked like firecrackers from a blog called alphamom I thought that was easy enough how about making them into individual pinatas. Well the project was interesting and am so glad I had a helpful friend who likes to get down and dirty when it comes to crafting! I hung them off of an eye sore in my back yard and was pleasantly surprised. We have half of an old laundry hanger it does absolutely nothing except it held these very nicely

 I also made a bubble juice station that was a big hit. This was super easy and lots of fun to watch the children play with at there own disposal. You definitely will not run out of bubbles. I used some material and twine to decorate the top so it had a nice fourth of July look to it. The kids did not care it was fun for them to use. I also posted some tips for for those you want to try it out.  I tried using a different recipe for bubble next time I will just use dawn soap  or I also heard using a bubble bath soap would work too. I did not want to use the recipe with Karo syrup found on la la daycare, because here in Florida just a little amount of stickiness will bring on the ants, so no sugar based play items for me.

1.  Make sure the kids have a bucket to rinse their hands and wands in as they play- I inadvertently had one going on and did not realize til after the party, so it worked out.
2. I wanted the bubble juice to be colored so added a little food coloring, not a big deal but next no food coloring.
3. I made the cornstarch recipe bubbles and you let it dissolve - all it did was eventually settle at the bottom of the container next time a basic recipe will be fine.
4. You can never have too many bubble utensils, silly straws worked great as bubble blowers.

Now this was an after thought. We always are picking up pallets for our burn pile. I personally love to decorate with them! David not so much, but I was thinking that I still did not have enough for the kids to play with except a back yard and some bubbles. So I whipped this little project up myself no I did not see this one on pinterest, but maybe now it will be! It was a super simple idea. I took a piece of plywood aka my hubby and he cut it  so it was a 2ft x 2ft square, then he filled in any little nooks and gave it a gentle sanding.  Then paint a primer on the wood so that you use save some of your chalkboard paint. I had a can of Chalkboard Spray Paint gave a quick coat. I checked it 15 minutes later and gave another coat and seriously  it was done and put together in an hour. After the chalkboard was dry you can just screw the corners in to the pallet. Done!!! You can dress this idea up by painting the pallet or just adding chalk board paint to the top slat. Maybe use magnetic paint instead of the chalkboard and what a cute way to display those wedding seating cards. That is all up to you. For the chalk, I just used a plant hanger and a bucket to hold the chalk in. You could add a little piece of wood at the bottom to hold the chalk if you want but since we just leaned this against a tree, not really a big deal. We just put it away after the party and pull it out when needed. It is a great score keeper when playing lawn games.



Speaking of lawn games, I also had this idea for a bean bag toss aka cornhole games. I make these cute chickens and thought that they would make the game more fun or child friendly. Plus I love chickens and I was able to find some cute material too. David made the two tossin in things the actual game parts, and I sewed the chickens. This game was for the kids and the adults.

This post was a long time coming and hope this makes up for the lack of posts in July. :)