Fall Leaves and Yummy Food

Good evening everyone and I hope you all had a great weekend.  I had a pretty good three day weekend.  I got to do alot of crafting.  Sometimes I think if I had it my way, I wouldn't come out of my craft room!  At work, in the teacher's lounge, someone put a big turkey up and suggested we all fill out colored paper feathers with what we are thankful for.  People put multiple things on their feathers.  I put my husband and sons, my health, my craft room which brings me sanity and my cat Mickey.  You knew Mickey would be in there didn't you? 

Did you notice my leaf garland in the above picture strung along my mantle?  I think I am becoming garland obsessed!  I am thinking about what holiday comes next and what bunting/garland I will come up with.  I just bought some fall colored felt and found some leaf patterns online.  I cut quite a few out and tried to decide what looked good to me as I placed them along the brown double fold bias tape on my ironing board.  I decided to glue the smaller leaves onto the long leaves and hang them in twos.  I sewed them in place and voila, there you have it.  I really like how it turned out.  The colors are very fall-like and I like that it is different.  I am enjoying fall crafting.

On the food front, I have been in the kitchen.  Every year at this time, I get back into cooking and baking heartier dinners and desserts that are a little more substantial than the Summer fare.  I made this fantastic beer cheese bread with my bread maker.  That thing is really winning my respect!  I have really thrown some different ingredients in it, and it has been coming through with tasty bread for me.  I followed this recipe.  I used a shredded cheese blend and melted some with the beer and tossed the rest with the bread flour.  I am not a beer drinker and I am happy to report, the beer taste is not distinguishable.  It was very good.  I will be toasting some tomorrow.                                              

                                           

This, my friends, is an amazing frosted pumpkin blondie.  I got the recipe from The Stirring Place.  These are beyond good.  The only change I made in the recipe was to replace the 1 cup of oil with 1 cup of unsweetened plain applesauce.  They were still very moist but much healthier.  I love pumpkin recipes this time of the year and I am such a sucker for any dessert with cream cheese icing!  The family gobbled these up so this recipe is definitely a keeper.                                                      

Thank you Terry, for your recommendation of the Cricut.  I discovered that they are doing a demonstration of Cricuts at JoAnn Fabrics on the 26th.  I can't wait to see one in action! 

I hope everyone has a great week.  My anniversary is Friday-22 years.  Hubs and I will be doing something special.  I just don't know what but we both took the day off!  Take care.  Nancy