Pumpkin Mania

What does one do with pumpkin? Well, lots of things. My wonderful sister in law gave me fresh pre baked and mashed pumpkin puree in convenient little baggies. I already made a batch of pumpkin ice cream and tonight found a lovely pumpkin apple raisin bread recipe (If I had them, I would had added pecans). So, since hubby was out for the evening, I got to baking. The recipe called for one cup of pumpkin puree, no sweat, except, the baggie had 2 cups worth in it. I could either get messy and try to separate out 1 cup, or just double the batch. *Grimace* I doubled the batch. What DOES one do with EIGHT mini (although they really ain't that mini) loaves?!!!! Thankfully, my son likes it. Girlie pants will take some convincing to try anything that isn't a chocolate chip cookie or an oreo. It's really good warm, I am looking forward to eating it with coffee. 2 pumpkin baggies down.... uhhh.... at least 3 more to go. =)

Harvest Party!

So, we did a Harvest Party at our Church yesterday. My son went Army Ranger (he refused for me to paint his face) and my girl went as a butterfly princess as she liked to call herself (*mutters she still wore it today too) It's all indoors with tons of games and tons of prizes and candies. There was also pizza, corndogs, popcorn, soda and chips for cheap so that weary parents and grandparents didn't have to concern themselves too much with dinner. Considering it gets pretty cold and rainy this time of year, I way prefer trick or treating this way. Here are me and the kiddies. Oddly enough, while walking around waiting for kids to be done with the inflatable slides, had about 3 little kids come up randomly and ask me to "meow" for them. 0_o

Autumn

Last week went with a group of ladies from my Church to go visit an orchard in Cashmere, Washington. My sweet sister-in-law thought that in recent happenings of stress in my life I needed a bit of a girlie get away so she signed me up. Had a tour of a pear orchard, hay ride, apple tasting, and an outdoor lunch underneath beautiful turning leaves with the smell of ripe fruit dancing in the air. Lunch consisting of apple salad, apple chicken spread, apple pie and apple cider was served buffet style. After that we had a one hour jaunt in the next town of Leavenworth which is Bavarian themed. Fun times. Here are a few tiny pears in the hand of one of the owners. And here is a picture of me and my sister-in-law on the hay ride. We may share the same last name, but appearance wise we are pretty gosh darn different.