Wordless Wednesday

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Puppy Chow Crunch

My son's Fall party is tomorrow so I made this yummy mix for them to munch.  I actually didn't include the puppy chow part in the one I'm sending to his class.  I figured they'd already have enough sugar in their systems without the added white chocolate, caramel, and powdered sugar!  So this is what his looked like.

Ingredients:
Chex cereal I used rice and wheat but whichever kind you like works
Pretzels
Crunch n munch Caramel popcorn, hmmm
Chocolate crackers aka Teddy Grahams
Reese's pieces
Candy corn
Halloween candy corn mix i.e.. the pumpkins and like
M&M white chocolate candy corn colored if you love white chocolate, you love these!
White chocolate chips
Caramels I would totally suggest getting a big chunk of caramel vs the candy's, unwrapping is annoying!
Powdered sugar
Pumpkin Spice creamer

Melt your caramels and white chocolate chips in a pan.  Cook on low because you don't want to burn it and stir ALOT.

Once it looks like the above add about 1/4 cup creamer and enjoy the delicious smell!  I added another 1/4 cup creamer to get a smoother constituency like below.

Be sure to have your cereal in a big bowl ready to mix.  Add the caramel/white chocolate melt to the cereal and try to stir and get as much coated as you can.  Then add around 2 cups of powdered sugar to coat the cereal.  I apologize for not having a picture but I was not willing to let me 3 year old take picture with my Nikon since my hands were covered in caramel and sugar!  

Throw in the rest with the puppy chow and enjoy!  Nom nom!

Aargh nice Pirate!

My sweet pirate!  I am pretty pumped about my first costume that I made all myself.  I am by no means calling it perfect but I figure, hey, they only wear it once!  I began by ripping the seams open on a pair of pjs that my son has and used the leg as a pattern to cut my fabric from.

I will be sure to share some tricks for you that I learned from during my trial.  You are going to have to cut two legs but be sure to flip the second to make the pattern backwards on the material.  Think about it this way, the material is bigger on one side to compensate for the hiney so you need to flip the pattern so the hiney side matches up.

Now make sure both are inside out, sew the leg part together to make a pant leg leaving the crotch area open like the picture below.

 Then I matched up the crotch part so the hiney side was together and sewed it together making sure it was inside out so the seams were not out.

 Now you have the basic pant.

I also ripped out the seam on the pj pants so I could use it on these since the pjs were done-zo.

I fit the elastic onto the waist part of the pants and triple folded it to keep the seams in.  I tried ironing it to help make the fold better but it didn't really help.

As you can see my ironing job, was rough but manageable.  I pinned the fold down and sewed the elastic in.

 Now, when sewing the elastic in DO NOT SEW ON THE ELASTIC.  Looking back it seems like a no brainer but I guess my annoyance at the bad ironing job took over!  If you sew on the elastic then the stretchy quality of having the elastic in is sort of eliminated.  Luckily my son is pretty slim so he could still slide these suckers on.

 I then shredded the bottoms with a rough zig zag and called them his pirate pants and he was so excited.

As for the shirt, I used an actual pattern.  It was the Simplicity 2561 and pattern "C".

The shirt I was wanting was this one.  Cute, easy and simply... that's what I'm talking about!  I needed something that could be done in a naptime session.

So I changed some parts up.  Or I couldn't understand what they were talking about on the pattern directions so I just put it together so it would work "good enough".  Let's just say it definitely looks like a pirate time appropriate shirt, well the sewing level of expertise is anyway.

Halloween at our house

I blame my son for this!  So I might have gone overboard, no pun intended, well...maybe.  My son wanted to be Jake from Jake and the Neverland pirates and this is where I stopped myself.

I had some cardboard hanging out in the garage so I broke down the boxes and began taping up sides and fitting them to my wagon we have for the kids.  After making my 9 month old's tulle costume I realized I didn't want to have to carry her the whole time to trick or treat so this was the coolest alternative.

Slowly I was able to get it right and just started to go tape crazy! Once the pieces were all secure, I used spray adhesive to adhere brown mailbox wrapping paper to cover the cardboard to give a clean finish to help the ship look more cohesive.  Then I used a wrapping paper roll to make cannons and some paint to make windows and anchors.

Of course what is a pirate ship without a flag?  I used foam sheets to make a flag that I glued to a wrapping paper roll.

Ta da!  The kids thought it was pretty fun!  I even got them dressed up for the picture taking session.  I called this my practice run! 

Butt Burner workout

I had a cross training day so I hit up the gym and did this circuit on Tuesday.  Oh my, let me just say that Wednesday I was glad I had speed work to do on the treadmill so I could run out my soreness in my honey and thighs!

I did not include the descriptions for the individual exercises so if you don't know what one is please ask and I will give a description.  I ran through each set 3 times and overall it took me about 35 minutes to do the whole circuit

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Pumpkin Banana cupcakes

My ladies came over last night for wine night and LOVED these little treats!  The original recipe was a pumpkin banana bread that I adapted and added a Pumpkin cream cheese marshmallow icing to.  Yum!    I had two really ripe naners calling my name so this is what I came up with.  I used this recipe from Allrecipes.com as a base and jazzed it up.

Pumpkin Banana Cupcakes

2 ripe bananas

1 (15 oz) can of pumpkin

2 eggs

1 small cinnamon applesauce (like the single serving kid cup)

1 cup brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

2 tbsp water

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 cup golden raisins

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Heeds: 18 cupcakes

Oven setting: 350 degrees

Wow, looking back it was alot of ingredients but I just used stuff that I happened to have.  You could sub 1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice if you don't have the others.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE pumpkin pie spices so I'm generous with my helpings.

First you add the ripe bananas, pumpkin, applesauce, eggs, vanilla extract, and sugar to the mixer and mix til all is a smooth.  While that is mixing, place the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices together in a separate bowl and stir.  Once your wet mix is smooth, slowly add the dry mix in as the mixer turns on a slow speed.  Scrape the sides to ensure all is well turned and then remove the bowl from the mixer.  Dump in the raisins and pecans and fold them in.

Place some liners in a muffin tin and spray the liners with nonstick spray.  This is important because my cupcakes stuck to my liners more than normal.  Place in the oven for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when stuck in the cupcake.

Yes, I know, they aren't too pretty pre bake, the raisins and pecans make them a bit lumpy!

The cupcakes are very muffin like, but that's a good thing to our household.  The hubs and R LOVE muffins.  But I had some pumpkin cream cheese so I had to make a icing to top these out.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Marshmallow Icing

1 jar Kraft marshallow creme

1 container of Pumpkin cream cheese

1 tsp vanilla extract 

powdered sugar

Put the first 3 ingredients in the mixer and mix on high.  Add powdered sugar occasionally scraping the sides till the mixture is thick enough to cover you cupcakes.

This was the first time I've used marshmallow creme and I've had this sitting in my pantry and I've been itching to use it after seeing all those yummy recipes with the fluffy icing.  Well, I mine just wasn't fluffing so I added some powdered sugar (have no idea how much, maybe 1-2 cups?) to thicken the mixture.

Regardless, the finally taste was AWESOMENESS!  It was so good!  The combination of hearty muffin/cupcake and the sweet light pumpkiny icing was delicious!

Half Marathon Training

I thought I'd share with you my training plan.  I started it a week ago but I am going to go through my training with you.  This is my plan generated from Runners World Smart Coach.  It is based on my goal time, what I can run a mile in, and how much I'm willing to run each week.

I am also going to try to incorporate and fastest 10k program I found in Women's Running in this somehow to try to help get my time down.  The last big race I ran was about 1 1/2 years ago and it was the Houston Marathon and I was pretty proud of my 4:16 finish.  But I decided after that exhausting run (I literally sat down and cried in my dad's arms when I finished), I'm sticking with fun, satisfying half marathons.

My first half was the inaugural Rock n Roll San Antonio and I believe I ran a 2:04.  So my second half I was determined to make it under 2 hours.  I totally rocked it and beat my time with a 1:56 half.  For now I'm not sure how feasible and realistic it is to constantly take almost 10 minutes of a PR so I'm giving myself a pretty attainable goal of 1:54.

Are you training for anything right now?  One day I've love to do a triathlon but the hubs hasn't approved the acquisition of a nice bike yet.  Someday...maybe;)

Homemade birdfeeder

I spent WAY too much time last week driving around looking for pine cones.  Really?  I grew up in East Texas where pine cones were EVERYWHERE!  So tell me if you think this is bad but I ended up having to take pine cones from peoples yards that had a pine tree growing in their front yard.  Hey, I figured I wasn't crossing any fences...right?

Well, I was encouraged into the idea of trying to do a project with my 3 year old one day watching his favorite show, Special Agent Oso.  Oh yes, that's right, but R was pumped to hear we were going to make pine cone bird feeders like Special Agent Oso.

Necessary ingredients: bird seed, pine cones, peanut butter, ribbon, hot glue gun, a cup, a plate, and a pan with sides.  Sorry about the bad picture, my son was so excited to make the bird feeders that I was in a rush to get it ready.

First you need to cut some of the ribbon so it will make a loop and you can hang the pine cone on a branch.  Either tie it in a knot or just cross it and use the hot glue gun to glue the ribbon to the top of the pine cone.

Next put some peanut butter on a plate and roll a pine cone around in the peanut butter till it's well coated with peanut butter.

Then dip it in a cup filled with bird seed and roll it around in the cup to fully coat the pine cone with bird seed.

Lookie there, our first pine cone bird feeder!  

After they were all coated I just sprinkled the rest of the bird seed in the cup on top of the finish bird feeders to try to cover any empty spots.

R was so proud of the bird feeders.  I pretty much made them all but R had fun talking through the whole ordeal about Oso and the birds being hungry and peanut butter so I would definitely say it was a positive project for him to do.  Plus, we will be keeping an eye out at our trees to "watch the birds!"  Educational, right?!