Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Pumpkin Soup

Oh how I love Fall and the cooler weather. It makes me in the mood for warm soup in bread bowls, stripey socks, and wool scarves.

Here's a soup I made recently, that was oh so good!



Creamy Pumpkin Soup

2 tbsp. butter
2 tbsp. flour
1 tbsp. olive oil
2 cups mashed cooked fresh pumpkin
1 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
3 cups chicken broth
3/4 cup half and half or milk
Sour Cream

Put cooked pumpkin, salt, ginger, nutmeg, olive oil, and pepper in a blender or food processor. Slowly add in chicken broth and blend together until smooth. In a large sauce pan melt butter and flour to create a roux. Slowly pour in half and half and then stir in pumpkin mixture. Simmer on low until soup starts to feel thick. Serve hot with a dollop of sour cream and garnish with roasted pumpkin seeds with a side of crusty bread. Serves 4-6.

~ I bought a pumpkin pie pumpkin or sugar pumpkin from the grocery store, it was about 6 inches in diameter, and yielded about 2 cups of pumpkin once cooked. Pumpkin pie pumpkins are very hard to cut into! I actually put the entire pumpkin in my stock pot and boiled until the skin was soft. Then I cut the pumpkin in half and scooped out the seeds (roasted them later) the pumpkin came off the skin perfectly!

Friday, September 25, 2009

Free Alphabet Poster

I don't have a whole lot of money to decorate my kids room, let alone my whole house, so I've come up with some fun and cheap ideas to make mi casa all fancy like over the years!

I've been drooling over some gorgeous alphabet prints over at Etsy for my son's room.

I especially love petitcollage's Animal Alphabet Silkscreen Poster and pennypeoples's Alphabet Print.

Both of these prints inspired me to come up with my own alphabet collage to adorn my little ones wall...

Alphabet Poster

I printed this out with my regular ink jet printer and slapped a $5 Walmart frame around it, and whoo hoo instant art!

I made this print in 6 different colors, so you can print them out too.

alphabet poster colors

The size of the poster is 8x10 inches, just click the link below to see the original size, then right click to save to your computer and print.

Brown
Green
Teal
Orange
Pink
Purple

Enjoy! ♥

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

New items!

Please check out our new items at the Etsy Shop!

fall_heyday

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Pocket Pie

I recently aqquired a Pocket Pie Mold from Williams-Sonoma.

I love me some pie, I even love those bad for you Hostess berry pies. SO when I received this pocket pie mold as a gift, I was super ecstatic to make my own version of a simple delectable treat!

Pie!

You could easily make these pies without the mold, just use your favorite cookie cutter and crimp the edges with a fork to close the pies!

I used this basic pie dough recipe... but substituted a 1/2 cup of veggie oil for the butter.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

DIY Clothespin Holder

I recycle as much as I can, but sometimes there's that inevitable What the heck can I do with this?! moment. For example, I've been hanging on (no pun intended) to this small plastic hanger that was part of some packaging that I received...



It was too small to use for clothing, and it wasn't made out of recyclable material, ie no number 1's or 2's on it. (That's all we can recycle here in Charlotte)

I knew that I could do something with it and then it came to me...

clothespin_holder

Below are directions to make you own clothespin holder, with a good ol' wire hanger :)

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Materials Needed:


1/4 yard *cotton fabric. One main color and one complimentary color for lining
Matching thread
Wire hanger
Wire cutters
Clothespins

*If you are going to keep your clothespin holder outdoors, I would suggest making it out of oil cloth

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Directions:

1. Cut off the top of your hanger with wire cutters, set aside.

cp1

cp001

3. Print pattern piece by clicking the picture below.



4. Cut out two 8x10 inch pieces of fabric from your main color and two pieces for the lining.

5. On the wrong side of one main fabric piece and one lining piece, trace and cut out opening from both pieces of fabric. Satin stitch both pieces together, wrong sides facing, along the raw edge to keep from fraying.

6. Pin all pieces of fabric together, with main color pieces facing right sides together. Sew all around the edge with a 1/4 inch seam allowance, leaving about a 1 & 1/2 inch opening at the top as shown.

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7. Square off your bottom corners by sewing straight stitch about 1/2 inch from the corner. Turn right side out. (I pinked my edges, but you can leave them raw)

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8. Insert wire hanger top and fill with clothespins.

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cp

Hang on your clothesline and enjoy!

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Lie Barry

Oh I love the local library, especially when you can "order" the book you want online and your local library will email you when it's ready to be picked up! Yeah, I'm lazy like that! ;p

Anyway, one of the recently rented library rags that I picked up is Beyond-the-Square Crochet Motifs.
Wow there are some beautiful motifs in this book, I didn't know where to start, I wanted to make all 144 of them!

So I broke out some of my cotton crochet thread, a teeny tiny crochet hook, and made some motifs into necklaces...

Motif #143

A different Colorway

Motif #143



Whatta ya think? ♥

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Rag Rug Finished!

I finished that rag-rug I was working on, it came out to be about 24 inches wide. Now I making one for our little guys bathroom in red & white to match his Dr. Seuss theme he has going on in there!

rag-rug finished


rag_rug_complete

I never did get around to making that tutorial video either, but I did come across these fabulous blogs that will help you (if you are so inclined) in making a rag rug for yourself!

Rag Rug Cafe - Great site with videos if you don't know how to crochet but would like to make a traditional rag rug using the toothbrush method

Moda Bake Shop - How to make a braided rag rug - super easy!

Craft Stylish - A fabulous blog & post on how to crochet (or knit) with fabric!

Enjoy ♥