Pumpkin cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese icing!!

I hosted an event here the other night and needed something fun and seasonal for dessert.  Maybe it's the pumpkin latte's everywhere, but I've had some serious pumpkin cravings.  And, since my hubby won't go near pumpkin, I had to make sure there were others around to eat them.  My kids will eat them (all of them) but I don't need that happening!!!

The other interesting thing to note is that I don't bake desserts.  My husband does. I've even devolved to using the bagged cookie mix.  (I know those of you who ate cookies I made in my teens are cheering right now.) So for me, this was a serious challenge.

So, I searched for recipes and found two awesome options.  The first was from My Baking Addiction and the second was from Skinnytaste.com. One of the sites said that it was adapted from a Martha Stewart Recipe -- always a good sign!!

After looking at the calorie content on both the recipes, I combined the two.  I was aiming for really tasty and not too bad for you.

From Skinnytaste.com, I used the pumpkin cupcake recipe (and it was stupidly easy...so that was a selling point for me) and I pulled the cinnamon cream cheese frosting recipe from the second site.  It is the really unhealthy part of the recipe.  But it is really, really tasty!!  Then I couldn't resist sticking the candy corn on top.

They were a HUGE hit!!  People even took extras home to their spouses (supposedly). I think they just hid them in their fridge for later....


Thanks to both My Baking Addiction and Skinnytaste.com for your publications!!

Houzz: In Praise of Silliness

There was a great Houzz article published today, In Praise of Silliness.  Take a look -- there are some seriously fun home ideas.  Fun paint, a slide or displaying a funky collection? How far would you go?

Camouflage an "oops" or Upcycling your Shirts!

While working on the "mud wall" I was waylaid by a small problem...

My first grader came home from school with a "mysterious" hole in his shirt.  He didn't know how it got there.  And didn't notice it until I mentioned it.  It was about the size of a quarter.

Well, this was a nice long-sleeve Life Is Good woven shirt.  Perfect color for fall, and plenty bit to last through the year.

What to do....

What to do....

How to save the shirt?

Look at Pinterest and Etsy.  Two great sources for ideas.  I decided to put an applique on top of the hole.

Much to my surprise, when the shirt was washed, the hole shrunk drastically.  It was obvious that it was made by poking the shirt with a pencil. Hmmmm.... <sigh>

Anyway, there are lots and lots of cute ideas out there!  Numbers (for birthday shirts); animals, footballs, basically anything you can think of.  I was inspired by a deer shape -- we happen to have a significant amount in our neighborhood and their antlers are now visible.  So, I used my 7th grade art skills to draw a shape proportionate to the shirt and a large enough to cover the area where the hole was.  I also printed off a picture I found online (silhouette of a deer head).  It wasn't the right size, but made creating the new shape much easier.

For the fabric, I wanted to try something boy-ish and it needed to match the shirt.  So, I dug around in my giant space bag full of "baby clothes that are too cute for me to let go of".  I was initially thinking something camo or striped would be cute; but found a really cute 3 month size plaid button down.  So cute!!  It also had an orange/rust color in it that looked great with the shirt. (winner!)

Here's a close up of the fabric, simply hand stitched on top of the shirt.  Yes, a machine would have been A LOT faster...but I don't have a machine that is easy to access.  A contrasting thread would also be sharp; but this one blends so you won't see any huge discrepancies in the stitching.

Here's the finished product:

It looks even better on!!  So good, that my other one asked me to make him a "special shirt" too......:)

Completed "Mud Wall"

It's finished
and has even survived a gathering that included 14 kids...

Actually, it is such a clean look that the comments about it as people walked in the door were basically limited to, "this looks nice!".

I'll take it!

whimsical hooks and all :)

My kids love it.  There backpacks are actually up off the floor again...and the entire space looks larger and cleaner. Ahhhhh.....

(in case you're wondering, I did play around with different paneling looks; like adding more vertical dividers.  but, the space is so small that it just looked too busy.  so, we just went with a horizontal frame.  It keeps a clean edge.)