Happy Halloween!

We hope you all have a happy and safe holiday filled with more candy than you can eat!

We already had one round or trick-or-treating at an outdoor mall yesterday. Boy was it windy, but the weather today is supposed to be beautiful! 65 degrees and sunny, so we're looking forward to more tonight!

Our little robot

Our little cupcake

Another Pinterest Challenge

Young House Love and Bower Power are back with another Pinterest Challenge and I can't wait to join in on the fun! I'm not really sure what I'll be tackling this time around, but I'm definitely going for something a little more challenging this time around! I'm thinking maybe something focused around the holidays. I'm off to scan my Pinterest boards to find my project!

Recipe Time: Pumpkin Bars

Yesterday I made chili and cinnamon rolls for dinner, but because it was chilly outside and I was bored, I decided to make a pumpkin bar recipe that I found on Pinterest. I've never made pumpkin anything before except pie, so I was excited to try these! It is a super simple recipe and the bars are done in no time!

The original recipe can be found here at realmomkitchen.com. The only change I made was ommitting chocolate chips to half the pan of bars.

I actually think the bars taste better today after being in the fridge overnight! I love fall and all the pumpkin recipes! And not only do these taste amazing, but they're also so pretty!

Pumpkin Bars


6 eggs

1 1/2 cup oil (I use canola)

3 cups sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 large can (29 oz) pumpkin

3 1/4 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 Tbsp cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp. salt


Mix together eggs, oil, sugar, vanilla, and pumpkin. Fold in dry ingredients and pour into jelly roll pan (13 x 18 pan) .  Bake at 350 for 30 to 40 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Do not over bake. Frost with cream cheese frosting.


Cream Cheese Frosting

1 (8 oz) package of cream cheese (I use light)

8 Tablespoons butter, softened

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

(I doubled this recipe for the frosting to cover the entire pan of bars. In the original recipe, she only frosts half the pan)


Blend together cream cheese and butter until smooth. Beat in powdered sugar and vanilla.

Hudson was helping me take pictures!

This recipe makes A LOT of bars for a small family, so it would be a great recipe for parties or family gatherings! I need to call some friends to see if I can take them some tonight!

Linked up here:

33 Shades of Green-Tasty Tuesday

Countdown Calendar Tutorial: A Repost

Last year I made this adorable Countdown to Candy calendar for Halloween. I love it so much that I thought I'd share it again for those of you who might not have seen it. I added a link to the original post with the tutorial.

{ Halloween Countdown Calendar Tutorial }

I can't believe it's already October 19th! Time is flying this fall. Before we know it we'll be getting ready for Christmas!

The Simple Things

This week I'm linking up for The Simple Things @ Simple As That.

Pumpkins!

Frame Gallery

I've been wanting to add a frame gallery to the wall that leads from our living to our kitchen forever, pretty much since we moved in here...4 years ago. I finally finished it this weekend. I basically put it all together for free.

I didn't have any money to spend on the project other than a few bucks for some white spray paint, so I used what frames I had around the house. Some of them were black, so I had to spray paint them. It's not perfect by any means. I would've loved to have bought all new frames in just the right sizes, but there wasn't money for that right now. However, I'm really pleased with how it turned out and it definitely adds a lot to the space.

I decided not to do all photos, but instead added other things to the frames as well. I already have quite a few photos hanging around the living room, so I didn't want to overdo it.

Hopefully I can continue to add to it over time and maybe even upgrade to some better frames along the way.

Oh, sorry about the photo quality. It's very dark and cloudy here today, so I had to turn on all the lights in order to get pictures without the flash.

The D is slightly crooked. Those letters are hard to get just right because the holes in the back are so uneven, but we're gonna try to fix it.

 One of the other pieces that I added was a fortune from a fortune cookie. I got it at the perfect time, so it has a lot of meaning for us. All I did was add some scrapbook paper as a background. I love it!

 This is one of Hudson's many paintings. I have an idea for some of his paintings that I found on Pinterest, which will eventually replace this one, but I haven't had the chance to do it yet, so that will be a separate post.

 I made this pebble piece while we were camping during the first year that Jeremy and I were dating. It's been framed in our house ever since and I'm so glad I added it to the wall where I can see it all the time again.

The rest of the frames are filled with photos we've taken and one of our wedding photos. I'm excited to have it completed and happy with the "free" price tag! If ever there are any major changes, I'll be sure to blog about it, but for now it's working just fine.

Week In The Life Update

So, I finished my Week In The Life journaling and photography on Sunday. It was a lot of work keeping up with it while trying to take care of a 3-month-old and a 2-year-old, but I can already tell that it will be so worth it in the end. I love that it's a way to document our ordinary, everyday life because those are the things that I'll forget 15 years from now.

I went to Achiever's on Monday night to pick up a We Are Memory Keepers binder scrapbook and the page inserts that are recommended on Ali Edward's blog. I also picked up a few sheets of scrapbook paper to fill areas with some color and in case I don't have enough pictures to fill it all! But I don't think that will be a problem! I took tons of pictures throughout the week and I saved things like recipes.

My hubby asked if I was sad that the week was over and if I'd miss doing it come Monday morning and at first I said no, but came to realize that I kept wanting to write things down all day! I did miss it...just a little!

I'm in the process of editing my photos and putting them all together. It will probably take me a while since I've never done it before, but I'm making Jeremy help me because he's much better at that stuff.

Hopefully I'll finish in time for Christmas because I'm contemplating doing the December Daily book along with Ali this year. Yikes! I'm obsessed...somebody stop me!

Did You Have A Sticker Book?

I was searching under our stairs for our Halloween decorations when I came across my childhood box that contained my sticker book. Yes, I am an 80's child and my sticker book was one of my favorite things growing up. My best friends and I were all sticker collectors and we loved to get together with our books. We would admire each others stickers and trade them back and forth. We even invented "The Giving Game" in order to obtain our favorite stickers from our friends without having to trade. It was so much fun!

Seeing my sticker book made me realize that I'd actually began scrapbooking way before I thought I had. These stickers were a record of the times. They represent what was popular at the time.

I have specific memories attached to so many of them, and seeing them again takes me right back to my bedroom floor with my best friends! I'm so glad that I kept them all these years!

I took some pictures of some of the pages to share.

This is actually my very first sticker book. My parents gave both my sister and I one for Valentine's day one year. I loved it, but eventually upgraded to a fancier version.

Here is the fancier version. A photo album with the adhesive added to the pages. We would stick and restick the stickers so many times that some of them weren't even sticky anymore.

This is my favorite page. A page completely devoted to all of my very favorite stickers. It would change all the time, but this is how it was when I stopped playing with stickers. See that round sticker with a pitcher of pink juice? That was one that got traded back and forth A LOT, as did that big hiking bear. That little pear on roller skates was a big favorite of mine. It's torn a little...

I was also in love with that tiny pumpkin and the little purple balloon! Oh the memories!!

 

Here is my shiny page. Yes, you are seeing that correctly. It is in fact a sticker version of the Michael Jackson glove. That one was traded more times than any other, and I proud to say that I have it in the end! That big glittery star was on everyone's wish list too.

I had a page devoted to balloons too.

And a page for Easter stickers. I always loved the arrangement of this page in particular. And I loved that sticker of the fuzzy bunny holding the lily.

Hudson was having fun looking through all the pages, but I think he liked my favorite page the best too!

There are so many more pages than what are shown here, but I didn't want to bore you to death! I just thought it was fun to look through and be reminded of simpler times when stickers were the most important thing in life!

Did anyone else have a sticker book? If so, I would love to see it!