A Fall Spread

So... what can you do with 6 ornamental pumpkins, 4 sheets of funky paper, 3 bunches of flowers, 2 tealights and 1 medium sized pie pumpkin? I'll tell you... an entire fall themed table setting for under $30.








This past weekend, I got a hankering for a change. I love fall, I love pumpkins (see pumpkin pancake blog from a couple weeks ago), and I love having a pretty table setting. So, I took a couple of hours and headed out to Micheals, World Market, Target and the grocery store on Sunday. I ended up spending a total of $30. So, I started with two ornamental pumpkins and two tealights and one pumpkin carving set.








Take the poky thing from the pumpkin kit (and yes that IS the official name), poke around the stem, then cut and remove the stem. Don't cut any larger then the stem because you may end up with a whole too big for your tealight and you'll have to figure out something else to do with your pumpkin.









Then place your tealight on top of the pumpkin where you want it to go and trace around it with a pen, pencil or thin marker. If you use a thick marker, you may end up with a black line around the edge of the tealight. Then follow the line and make holes with the poky thing. Use the knife to trip to the line. Be careful because you can always trim a little more off, but you can't put any back. Don't gut the pumpkin because insides will help keep the candle from falling all the way inside.











if you are lucky like, me, you can get your wonderful, super strong and totally handsome husband to push the tealight into the hole. if you don't have one of those, then just stand up and put all your weight onto the tealight. You want it to be snug.







And waalaa! You have a pumpkin tealight holder!







Repeat for the second pumpkin.

For the large centerpiece take the medium sized pumpkin and cut out the top like you would if you were going to carve it. Then clean it all out.











Then simply take your flowers and arrange them in the pumpkin. In order to cut down on bacteria form the flowers or pumpkin, put a couple of drops of bleach in the water.







In order to funk up the arrangement, take some funky, bohemian paper and cut leafs out of it.







To make funky place cards, take one of the leaves, print the guests name on them (or print them out on the computer if you have really nasty hand writing like mine). Take a basic straight pin and push it through the leaf and into the pumpkin.









Put it all out on the $10 table clothe you got at Target last year and love, love, love! And you are ready for a dinner party where your guests cancel on you at the last minute. Oh wait, that's not right. :-)








Hope you enjoyed!

bonnie

EDITORS NOTE: If you decide to take my bright advice and leave the pumpkin innards in the pumpkin so that the tea light doesn't fall into the pumpkin... make sure you throw the pumpkin away as soon as it starts getting soft. Why is that? Because if you don't it will literaly thow up all over your favorite table cloth and stink up your entire house to high heaven. Consider yourself warned! ;-)

Adventures in Breakfast

One of the things I love doing is taking a weekend morning and experimenting with something new. So, a couple of weekends ago, I decided that I wanted to make pumpkin pancakes. They are one of my favorite foods, well pumpkin anything really. I always look forward to the fall when when restaurants start serving pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, and how could I mention pumpkin food without mentioning Cheesecake Factory's pumpkin cheesecake! Woohoo!

Anyway, I got online and found a recipe from the mother of all things wonderful and cool... Martha Stewart. I'd never made pancakes from scratch, who needs to when there is Bisquick. But I figured it would be a fun adventure. So, here are a few pictures of our efforts.










I know Jay isn't a huge pancake fan, so I decided to make cheese eggs and hashbrowns as well. I was hoping to find some fancy bacon, but Harris Teeter doesn't sell any in their meet department. And apparently The Fresh Market doesn't open until 11am on Sunday. Jay was in charge of the eggs and hashbrowns. And they turned out wonderful as well.








The pancakes weren't that difficult to make. Trust me, if I can make it, anyone can. And they turned out to be SOOOOOOOO good. I highly recommend this recipe!









Here is the recipe...

Pumpkin Pancakes

For a spiced breakfast treat, whisk 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour; 2 tablespoons sugar; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 1/2 teaspoon each cinnamon, ground ginger, and salt; 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg; and a pinch of ground cloves. In a separate bowl, stir together 1 cup milk, 6 tablespoons canned pumpkin puree, 2 tablespoons melted butter, and 1 egg; fold mixture into dry ingredients. Melt some butter in a skillet over medium heat; pour in 1/4 cup batter for each pancake. Cook pancakes about 3 minutes per side; serve with butter and syrup. Makes 8 to 10.

And here's the link...

http://www.marthastewart.com/article/pumpkin-pancakes

Hopefully there will be another installment of Adventures in Breakfast soon.

Love y'all!

bonnie

Birthday Party Goodness

About a month ago was my 29th birthday. One last year as a 20-something. Holy crap! Next year I'll be 30!!! I never thought that I would have a hard time with getting older. But I'm a little more worried about it than I expected. We'll see though. I think it just has a lot to do with not expecting to be where I am at this age. I figured by the time I was 30 I'd have my Doctorate degree or by saving the world. But I'm just boring ol' me. But anyway... onto the birthday party goodness.

I had talked with Jay about what i wanted for my birthday. I finally decided that I really just wanted to throw a party, with invitations and a color scheme and matching drinks.

I decided to go with an ocean blue and lime green color scheme. So I was able to use a wonderful table cloth that I already had. In fact it was a great find when I stumbled across it many, many years ago. It was on clearance at wal-mart and I think I got it for about $5.

For centerpieces I tried something I'd been wanting to do for a long time. I took two square vases and filled them with whole limes and some small purple sprigs. Then in a tall cylinder vase, I cut up limes and lined the vase with them. Then I put some tall blue irises in the middle. It worked really well. I started out by trying to get the limes to stick to the side of the vase, but that didn't work too well. So, I filled it with water and put the irises in it. At that point there was enough in the vase to hold the limes slices against the sides. I just dropped them down the side and arranged them with a knife. I was quite proud if I do say so myself.










As favors I decided to pick up some martini glasses at the dollar store and spruce them up with some pretty name tags. I decided that the favors could do double duty both as favors and as drinking glasses so we didn't have to get a bunch of plastic cups. Plus the tags would double as glass markers. They were a big hit, except not everyone took theirs home so we ended up with a bunch of martini glasses. I think one night when the Hales are over we'll have sorbet and whipped cream in them.










We set up a drink station at the end of the bar. To continue with the color scheme, we had melon lemon drops and blueberry martinis. And in order to provide for the tea totalers out there we had green apple and berry lemonade Jones Sodas.






For food, we served my favorite meal of all time... my mom's cubed steak and gravy with mashed potatoes and creamed style corn. Mmmm, mmmm, mmm!

But as much fun as all the planning and executing was, the most fun part was having so many people that I loved in the same room having a good time. Not to mention, it was the first time that I had gotten to meet my nephew, my baby brother Aaron's baby. He was so adorable!




















We had so much fun! And it was a great way to ring in the last year of my 20's!

I'm really, really behind on my blogging. I've got about three in the works and ideas on a bunch more. So here we go.


About a month ago, me, Jay, and my middle brother Luke went to check out the new US Whitewater Center out near Gastonia. It was soooo beautiful. We didn't do any rafting, but just walked around and checked everything out and watched a bunch of other people try and navigate the whitewater.









We took advantage of the beautiful surroundings to take some pictures.










Then we asked Luke to take some of us. They came out so beautifully.















After all the walking and picture taking, we had dinner in the wonderful restaurant. We got to look out over the water and eat our healthy food. And it wasn't even that expensive!

So, we totally recommend checking out the US Whitewater Center if you're in the area. It only costs $5 to park and you can walk around for nothing. It's a great way to spend a weekend afternoon!