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CALLIN' ALL Shoppers! NEW ETSY LISTINGS - IDea BoOks, Cards & ScrapbOOK SupplIeS!

I am cleaning out the proverbial closets. As of now, I have idea books, cards, some papers, embellishment packs, and collage packs too. If you are shopping for yourself or a friend, please take a look. I will wrap items if you wish and am adding a few freebies with every order. Come Check it out! LINK TO THE SHOP!

Baking Craze Continued...

If you are in the mood to bake (pumpkin goodness) {Refer to post below on how to puree pumpkin} then, try one of these recipes: Downeast Main Pumpkin Bread or Fresh Pumpkin Pie. Both are fantastic!! Here is a picture of the bread. It makes a double loaf.

If you want to roast the left over seeds, just rinse off all that gooky stringy stuff and rub a little olive oil on them. Lay them out on a pan and shake a dash of sea salt on top of them. Bake them for about 15 or 20 minutes at 300 degrees. They should be golden tan. Can you taste them already?! Yum!

Since we already had such a mess in the kitchen, the kids and I decided to make some zucchini bread too. Here is the recipe we used: Lemon Zucchini Bread

It's a keeper!! Give it a try. It's super moist and tastes delicious.  Even the kids love it.

I hope you like the recipes. Our goal is to try 1 or 2 new recipe a week. I will post our favorites.

Baking Craze!

So we've been baking a whole lot around here. Seems like there are lots of left over pumpkins from Halloween and other fall produce to transform. The first objects of our baking zeal were the pumpkins. Did you know that you could cook them and it's really easy. Then you can use all that yummy goodness to make breads, pies and soups?!

All you have to do is wash them really well & then cut them in half. Scoop out all the seeds. You can save them to roast or toss them. Or if you havea garden, maybe you will save them to plant next year? We put them in a bowl of salty water and pushed them to the side.

Next scrap out any stringy stuff and rinse inside. Put them cut side up in a big oven safe dish, at about 1/2 inch of water and cover with plastic wrap if you are going to microwave them or tin foil if you are going to bake them. It takes about 15 minutes in the micro and about 25 in the oven at 350 degreees. Bake them until they are soft. 

When they are done you will be able to lift them out of the dish and using a spoon you can scrape the pumpkin right out and into a blender. 

When you are finished you'll be left with a blender full of orange flesh and a couple of paper thin pumpkin skins. Toss the skins and hit the go button on the blender. After a minute or two, you will have velvety smooth pumpkin puree. 

Now you can use it to cook with, or you can put it into a ziploc and freeze for later. 

So Halloween ended up looking like this after Oskar's  many many decorating re-dos and re-orgs: We had lots of fun running to all the neighbor's houses and then back to our own to hand out candy! It was a blast.   The kids collected lot of candy booty & were the cutest pirates ever.