Pumpkin Cake, Pintested

Fan of Pinterest?  I am.  I use it A LOT, for everything from sewing projects, to home organization, home decor, and definitely TONS of food!!   

My 7 year old daughter has been asking and asking for cooking lessons, but there really aren't cooking lessons for kids...at least not locally for me.  She is always asking me if she can help cook, and I let her do some small tasks, but when you're working on dinner for an hour, your help tends to wander away...when they're 7 and the t.v. is on in the next room.

So, this particular recipe caught my eye recently, cause it's so dang EASY.  My daughter actually pointed it out...directing my pinning from over my shoulder...she was having me pin every dessert she saw.  This recipe I actually decided to try - unlike many of the food-porn recipes I pin just so I can look at them, knowing I will never actually make them - because it's only 2 ingredients.  I'm figuring that mixing TWO items together is right up her alley.

So, here it is.
One boxed cake mix, chocolate, vanilla, whatever. 
One 15 oz can 100% pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)

Preheat oven to 350°. In a large bowl mix cake mix with pumpkin filling using a hand mixer or a stand mixer. Beat on medium for 2 minutes. Pour batter into a greased 7 x 11 inch baking dish. Bake for 28 minutes or until tooth pick comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

That's it.  I know, right?!

I had opened a large can of pumpkin last week to make low-fat Chicken Enchilada Soup, and froze the remaining half of the pumpkin.  After finding this recipe, I pulled it out to thaw, and finally got around to making the cake yesterday. 

I started with a vanilla cake mix - I use Dr. Oetker's - and my thawed pumpkin.  It mixed up beautifully!  The batter was smooth and had the most awesome pumpkin color. 

Fizzzzz!!

 

 
I happily handed over the beaters to be licked by both of my kids, who ahem *happily* posed for this pic:

What a bunch of comedians I live with.

After taking a couple licks, my son asked if I had put club soda in the batter.  Um, NO.  Well, the batter was 'fizzy'.  My pumpkin had gone bad.  GREAT.  That's a $4 cake mix down the garbage disposal!

I had friends coming over, so I desperately started the search for replacement ingredients.  I found another cake mix - but it's chocolate.  Oh hell, I like chocolate, what the heck?  I'm trying it.  Got out another can of pumpkin, and mixed up Cake Batter #2.  This batter looked a little dry, (the cake mix was slightly bigger) so I took the liberty of putting in about 1 1/2 T. of apple cider. 

After mixing, my people again oh-so-happily posed again with their lickables:

Oh my Gawd, mom, can we be done?

My husband suggested using a bundt pan, and I thought it was a pretty good idea.  Actually, I think he really just wanted an excuse to say 'bundt', and every variation of the word he could think of.  He's funny like that.  I did have to increase bake time to about 32 minutes.
Unfortunately, I forgot to get a picture of the finished cake after I plated it, but I did get a lovely shot of a piece I subsequently devoured with glee.  The sauce is an apple cider glaze.

The cake turned out denser than I expected, but I think it's in a good way.  It's pretty fudgy, very moist, but not really pumpkin-y.  The glaze is a perfect compliment.  It's good, I'd make it again, though next time I really want to try it with a vanilla cake mix!!

Apple Cider Glaze:

1 C. powdered sugar

2 T. apple cider

1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

Mix and drizzle!

Enjoy!!

Out of Summer Hibernation

Well it sure has been awhile, hasn't it?!  It's amazing how time flies...my last post was in mid-April!  The daily arrival of the school bus has changed things around here quite a bit, and now that I've got a pretty good schedule going again, I'm trying to work blogging back into my routine. 

I've been working on some new things, and I have a new page started up!  It's called Material Girl, and its for my little sewing biz.  I'm teaching classes at my local Hobby Lobby and making and selling some great items...you can see them on my new page (when I get them up), and I'll probably be posting them here also. 
 
Look, it's me!  

I'm also hoping to get into another store and teach there, as I can do quite a different variety of projects outside of Hobby Lobby's 'use our stuff' requirements.  Don't get me wrong, both formats are fine.  I have a zillion sewing projects that use the items that HL sells, but I've also got a bunch of green/reuse/recycle sewing projects that would require things they don't carry, I am really excited about trying them out, too.  I will definitely be posting those here and on my Adventures In Greenness Facebook page.


This past weekend our family got to go 'up north' with our BFFs...that's Best Families Forever, fyi...and hit an auction and quite a few estate/rummage sales.  I picked up a whole big box of milk glass items for $20 (almost 30 pieces!), a McCoy cookie jar, an awesome flame red/orange Fire King tilted ball pitcher, a flower frog, a very old pair of glasses, and a print of good old honest Abe. My friend acquired a projector screen...one of those metal ones that the teacher had to bring out and set up when we were in grade school...it has the stand right on it...you'd know it if you saw it...for A DOLLAR.  My friend's mom got another McCoy piece, a cute mule-pulling-a-cart mini-planter, a covered silver dish with spoon notch, and a couple other great items.  The garage at this house was so packed full of goodies, and there was another whole box full of pressed glass items that I know was feeling neglected, among so many other boxes that were just begging to be explored. 

As we were leaving we saw that there was also A BARN!!! that we didn't even realize was part of the sale (I know, right?!) so we tried to go back to the estate sale the next day, but unfortunately it was over.  You know the nightmare where you're running and running and your legs are dead weights and whatever you're running towards is getting further and further away?  That's how I've been dreaming of that barn. 

And speaking of junk, check out this beauty I curb-shopped from down the street...

This kind of stuff makes me happy.









Next post:  The Dissection of a Box of Milk Glass.  Have an awesome day!!

Creativity Room Master Plan...B

After consulting the experts at Sherwin-Williams, it has been determined that we have a few options that do not include what we thought we would be able to do, which was to put a nice big wallpaper band-aid over everything and pretend we never saw it.

Option 1:  Put a 'skim coat' over everything and start with a new surface resembling plaster.  Considering my skills at frosting cakes, this is definitely not a good idea.

Option 2:  Put a new layer of drywall over everything.  It may be weird, but knowing that I would lose an inch overall in the room would really bug me.  Call me picky.

This is obviously me.

Option 3:  Get the sledgehammer, have a couple cocktails and bang out some walls!!  This totally sounds like it would provide the most excitement.  But it would also take quite a while, I would be doing most of the demo myself (see pic), and I would like to make that room functional sooner than later.  Knocking out the walls would mean mess, cleanup, drywall, mud & tape (gag), sand, fix spots, prime & paint, decide I don't like the color and repaint.  That last one I threw in just for good measure.  Plus, we're not exactly drywall hanging pros, you know?  The ceiling in that room is all slanted and the house is old and crooked and the chances of us getting it all straight and wonderful aren't so hot.  At any rate, it's not a quick solution.

The Winner:  Strangely, the solution we have come up with makes me very happy!  Thanks to a conglomeration of high quality brainstorming, and a great suggestion from my friend Kimberly over at Scrap It Girl, this is it:
Ceilings will be redrywalled and painted some wonderful yet-to-be-determined color of my choice.
Lower walls will have wainscoting, topped with a chair rail where the wall meets the ceiling (about 3 1/2 feet or so off the floor).
Opposite walls will be covered in cork board (thanks Kimberly!).

Yes, the old mess will still be under there, but considering the lovely mental picture I have of what the room is going to look like, I'm just gonna go ahead and suck it up.  My OCD can kiss it.

My darling, wonderful, loving, hot, sexy, manly, macho, brilliant hubby said if it rains today and he can't work outside, we can voyage to the hardware store and get the supplies (Hi honey!  I'm ready to go!).  Yay!  I can't wait.

So I need to ask you all a favor.  PRAY FOR RAIN.  If you don't pray, then cross your fingers, cross your eyes, do your dance or sing your song.  Whatever you do, do it with RAIN in mind!!!  I will reward you all with another blog full of pictures of room progress and me being ecstatically happy.  And who doesn't want that?! 

Bite. Chew. Choke! I Bit Off Too much!!

There comes a time in the life of every person where you realize you're in a real big pickle.  In regards to this 107 year old farmhouse in which we live, we have been in many a pickle.  You know those GIANT pickles you can get at sub places or delis?  Yeah, those are good. 

This isn't like that at all. 

We came across this problem before when we were renovating our 1st floor powder room; multiple layers of badly applied wallpaper.  Wallpaper itself is just bad to begin with.  I mean, if you've put it up once, chances are you are so scarred for life that you'll never attempt it again.  If you've ever removed someone elses wallpaper disaster, you ARE scarred for life enough to never even consider wallpaper an option.  We're pretty well-rounded over here in the wallpaper-experience department.  As it turned out, our 1st floor powder room not only had a couple layers of wallpaper, but at least one of those layers had been painted over and new wallpaper applied over it and at least one layer was done with no sizing.  Of course.  And no amount of Basic H2 can touch that (yes, you can use it to remove wallpaper, and it works just as good as DIF.  Maybe better).  Once we realized the situation was hopeless, we ended up knocking out the walls.  Using a sledgehammer is actually quite exciting, I highly recommend it. 

Here's Bathroom Demo Bonnie.  You can't say I don't look excited.

In a house full of wallpaper horrors, we scraped our way down to one last wallpapered room.  My future creativity room.  After pulling off the top-most layer of wallpaper and border combination very easily, we were feeling pretty dang positive about how this room was going to go.  Both kids rooms were a piece of cake, and this room is in close proximity to theirs, so by association it should be cake too, right?  Here's a tip:  if you're going to remove wallpaper, remove it from plaster walls, not drywall.  Drywall stinks. 

My future creativity room is drywall.  And the very first layer of lovely pink and green floral striped wallpaper was done with...drumroll...no sizing.  It appears as if wallpaper layer applier #2 (keep up, here) attempted to remove layer #1, quickly abandoned that idea, and just wallpapered right over it.  But not before painting over some of that lovely stripey wallpaper with a gorgeous shade of country blue.  Wallpaper, paint, more wallpaper, with a border on top.  Sounds awesome, doesn't it?!  Yeah, it totally isn't. 


 

 It's a disaster.

What I thought would take me a couple days of H2'ing and scraping, washing, and repainting, will now involve a trip to Sherwin-Williams.  TO LOOK AT WALLPAPER.  My future creativity room is now my WTF DO I DO NOW? room.  But hey, I guess I can look at it this way;  I never thought I'd be putting up wallpaper again and now I will be.  Wait, that was supposed to be a 'glass half full light at the end of the tunnel' statement.  Shoot.

Oh well.  I've decided I'm going to try (very hard) to find something positive of my room every time there seems like there couldn't be a single damn positive thing about it.  So, have you seen my pretty hinge?

 

Oh, right. I posted that last time. 

Well...if you were a cat it would be GREAT!  

The view is like cat t.v., look at that action shot!

 My fingers in the picture are a total bonus for you, dear reader. Photographic proof of my mad skills. Yahoo!  

We're off to see the wizard Sherwin-Williams!  Later gators!

My Future Creativity Room

Installment one! 
I have been working on cleaning out this room of toys and toy shelving, and other kid-related items.  Obviously I am not done.  Here's a shot of me clearly not quite being done...

I've made more progress since I took this picture, thank goodness.  

That's dog-body in the lower right corner, in case you were wondering.  

The room sure isn't pretty (yet), but hey, 

check out the cool hinge on my door!

This room is getting cooler by the minute, dont you think?  Next step is stripping the wallpaper backing, which is gonna be a blast.  I couldn't help myself yesterday, and started picking at corners and edges, which is where I discovered that part of the wall is painted-over wallpaper that I'm going to have to remove.  I love that.  Oh my God I love that SO MUCH.  Here's what I accidentally did...

Awesome, right?!  I know.  I'm awesome.  Hey, it's progress!!

I'm Kinda Junky

I've been thinking a lot lately about what direction I'm going.  Both of my kids are in school all day, and I don't 'work'...outside of my house, that is.  Of course I still run my Shaklee business, as it is near and dear to my heart, being all about nutrition and health.

But I've been feeling...unoccupied.  Like my brain may not be getting enough stimulation and parts of it aren't working correctly anymore.  My ridiculously awesome sister-in-law says it's mommy-brain, but I don't think so.  Maybe I could blame my airiness on mommy-brain in the sleep-deprived days of infants and the 'can't stop to think of anything else but what my toddler might be getting into' days, too.  But not now. 

I'm a fairly creative person, that is, I like to make things.  When I say creative, I am definitely not saying that the things I make are necessarily good or original or artistic like so many that are really worthy of the title 'creative'.  I just like to make stuff, especially sewing and crafty type stuff.  And being a greenie, I tend to gravitate towards projects that have something to do with recycling, reusing, repurposing, whatever you want to call it.  Surprising, I know.  And I can really thank Pinterest for a lot of my inspiration lately, as there is no end to the fabulousness of remade junk that you can find on the internet and pin.  (Yeah, thanks a lot Pinterest, cause what I really need to do is spend MORE time on the internet.)  In fact, I've created a board of just the type of projects I'm talking about and I add new things to it every day.  You can follow me on Pinterest if you'd like...the little link is over on the right of this page. 

So now that my kids aren't babies anymore I am taking over their playroom, which was once filled with many colorful specimens, playsets (many of them vintage), and other now-neglected toys.  I'm reclaiming this space.  God, I'm so GREEN, how can you all stand it? 

When I die, this is what heaven will look like.

I have a number of projects lined up already, whether they are items I never finished or items on the to-do list, and many of them are using items that I've either bought not knowing what on earth to do with it but out of pure covetousness (is that a word?), or things that we no longer like or have use for that are just 'too good' to throw away or give away.  I have {conserve} very deeply ingrained in me, what can I say.  I also have quite a collection of wonderful items that I have collected to use in some un-pre-determined way, put away for a rainy, yet inspired day.  I call this stuff treasures.  My husband, though, calls it something else...when he talks about it it sounds a lot like...'hoarding' or maybe 'junk collector' or 'collection of crap'.  I don't know, but I think there must be something wrong with his mouth. 

At any rate, I do believe I will be using my time a little differently in the days to come, and I hope that I make things worthy of an Etsy store, or if they're not too hideous I'll keep them for myself.  I'm kind of excited!  I'll undoubtedly be blogging about it, which will involve many pictures.  I have a feeling some of those early blogs may have quite the comedic factor as my skill level builds.

Hey, everybody loves a good laugh, and I really don't mind it being at my expense...usually.  I know how to laugh at myself *wink*.  So stay tuned, or if you get bored waiting, check out my Shaklee store and buy some healthy, green stuff to help fund my creative process. 

See you soon!

It's Easy Being Green! Your Eco-Friendly Guide to Discrimination

You know what I'm sick of?  Racism.  Sexism.  Descrimination against sexual orientation.  Bigotry of every kind.  Holier than thou, superiority complexed, small-minded sheeple.  I have come across so many examples of people being hateful lately its really makes me angry.

And you won't like me when I'm angry.

I said that to a misbehaving Beebs the other day, and she laughed so hard she cackled.  She laughed and I laughed and it's hard to be mad when you're laughing.  You know what she didn't do?  She didn't get all high and mighty and in my face about how I wasn't being sensitive about the color of the Hulk's skin or his giant body.  Maybe he's aNgRy cause he's green and humungous...?  Nah.  I don't think that's his problem at all.

 

For some reason, discrimination topics have really been catching my attention lately.  I don't know if its because there has been a higher instance of them lately, or what.  Articles, Facebook posts, conversations.  Even GH went through a 'sensitivity' course recently for his job that had more than its share of ridiculousness. *The examples I am posting have nothing to do with any particular group, it just so happens that these were three very different sources I wanted to use. 

"A (random non-description human being of unspecified race, religion or sex) walks up to an African-American man and asks 'Do you know what Fo Shizzle means?'."  In some way, shape or form, the correct answer ended up being:  The A-A male gets offended that the other person would assume that they would know that definition just because they are A-A, and goes to their manager to complain.  The A-A employee is then fully encouraged to take the issue to human resources and make a formal complaint, where it is then decided that the 'other person' should be reprimanded for racism and insensitivity and potentially lose their job.  

If the 'other person' didn't know what 'fo shizzle' means, is it right to assume that they approached a black person thinking that they should know because they are black...? 

An African-born teenage boy of caucasian descent enters a competition at school specifically for African-Americans.  He wins.  Chaos ensues.  Should he be allowed to keep his award?

One of my favorite sayings ever (thank you Javonda):  'Opinions are like assholes.  Everyone has one, and they all stink'. 

Word.  And now, my man Morgan Freeman:

How are we going to get rid of racism?  STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.  Hallelujah!  Of course, here I am talking about it. See the thing is, GH and I don't teach our kids that other races or religions are special just because they're a different race or religion than us.  We're all f*cking special.  They are learning that what makes a person good or bad or right or wrong or whatever is what is inside them. Where it should be.  We teach them to be respectful, and when appropriate, to respectfully disagree.  My kids won't grow up thinking they are entitled assholes that deserve anything they didn't work for, and you won't find them crying in the corner cause they think they have the right to be offended about something dumb.

The same goes for religion.  Live and let live.  If you don't believe in certain actions, then don't do them.  But don't try and make the rest of the world conform to what you think they should or shouldn't do, either.  It's amazing to witness such intolerance from some (notice I said some) of those whose beliefs dictate tolerance.  Very recently I've seen this issue of insurance-covered birth control around.  Should Catholic medical establishments be forced to offer their patients, whether Catholic or not, free birth control?  Does every Catholic believe that birth control is wrong?  I doubt it.  Does every head of every Catholic medical establishment believe birth control is wrong?  I doubt it.  If you're Catholic and you don't believe in birth control, do you take birth control?  Right.  Ok then.  Now, I'm not necessarily saying I want to be the one paying for all this free birth control, either.  Maybe...if you want it, it should be made available to you, but you pay for it just like everything else in life.

Live and let live.  

Let's take a tip from man's best friend...

Wait a minute...what's this about MAN'S best friend?!

I love my dog, but I think I'm gonna settle on this one.

After all, we all know what a girl's best friend is. 

Speaking of dogs, I stumbled upon this horrific Facebook group a couple weeks ago...One Million Moms.  Heard of it?  These assholes are ASSHOLES.  They are discrimination at its worst, breeding intolerance and hate.  They petition to have 'particular issues' removed from whatever media outlet it shows up through, especially anything to do with gays, lesbian or transgender, gay marriage, gay rights, being gay, feeling gay, thinking about gay things, and otherwise general gayness. 

Because this is clearly accurate:    

This group of bigots proudly posts about how they got Whatever AAA Blah Blah Company to 'silently drop public support for the homosexual agenda', or get big sponsors to drop their support for gay pride events by threat of boycott.  They what?!  Maybe I'm gonna find out which companies pull their sponsoring and boycott their asses for being total jagoffs.  One Million Assholes do much lesser damage too, like trying to prevent the Kardashians from having their own line of hoochie Barbie dolls...I certainly wouldn't buy my Beebs one, but the Kardashians are certainly welcome to their right to free enterprise.  I don't give a shit whether they make them or not.  To me, stuff like Barbie dolls or censorship bleeps during prime-time tv are really a waste of time and energy, but you can't attack the whole LGBT community and expect no repercussions. 

You don't like it?  Don't buy it, don't watch it, don't swallow the pills, don't drink the kool-aid, don't listen to it, don't smoke it, don't put it in your butt.  If it hurts your eyes, don't look at it.  See that guy down there on the right?  I wish that was me.

Naturally, I have a solution for everything.  We can all thank the Incredible Hulk for inspiring me on this one...let's just all be GREEN.  Not Hulk green, cause that's not how to get people to get along, but good old environmentally friendly, healthy green.  It's the new...green!  If we all started worrying less about what everyone else is doing, and more about what WE are doing and how our actions impact others and our planet, wouldn't it be so much easier?!  You betcha.  

Dang, I'm good.  Somebody should put me in charge.... somewhere.