Pumpkinapalooza 2014 Part 1

I love Ned Stark.


So, since we have a hobby farm, we have a lot of manure. And by a lot, I mean tons. Literally tons of poop,

What do you do with tons of cow poop (some of it from a bull ::snicker snicker::)? You spread it on the garden, and by you, I mean your husband who wanted the stupid cows and the farm in the first place.

FYI, 36 large wheelbarrow loads of manure weigh approximately 2 tons in toto.

What does any of this have to do with my beloved Ned Stark? It's basically a longwinded explanation of why my garden, with 3 pie pumpkin plants, has produced 20+ pie pumpkins.

Last fall, I pressure canned 2 or 3 pumpkins, and it produced 9 pint jars of pretty, orange, pumpkiny goodness.

If we do the math, I'm going to have a lot of jars of pumpkin this year.

As a result, I'm searching the Devil's Website  Pinterest for as many pumpkin recipes as I can try out before either a) my family rebels, b) I run out of pumpkin or c) my pants stop fitting due to the pumpkin and cream cheese overload.

With this in mind, I bring you my first three days of Pumpkinapalooza 2014.

Day 1: Pumpkin Spice Cookies

My husband has a friend, who has a wife. She makes pumpkin cookies in the fall. It's a ritual. I though I'd try my hand at it, so I texted her to find out the recipe, since I had seen on The Devil's Website that there was a method with spice cake mix and pumpkin puree. She said that she had gotten the recipe in college from a roommate and that it involved molasses, but she would get it for me later.

Well, that sounds like too much work.

Enter the 3 ingredient recipe: Pumpkin, Spice Cake Mix, and Chocolate Chips.
Yup. Got all three (I have a slight cake mix problem. I love Duncan as much as Ned, and have to stock up when I see a sale).

So, a pint jar of home canned pumpkin (drained), a Duncan Hines Spice Cake Mix, and a handful of chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate because that's what the farmer likes), 20 minutes at 350, and I had a dozen and a half big, cakey pumpkin spice cookies.

The Verdict: Pretty Good
My toddlers liked them, my husband liked them, my friend's toddlers liked them, and the friend with the recipe involving measuring and molasses? Yeah, she liked them.





Day 2: Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting


Um. Yeah. I like cupcakes.

We recently had a family tragedy, and lost the teen son of my husband's cousin. When babies are born, or people pass, I make food.

Nothing I can say can make people feel better, but never underestimate the power of Lasagna.

I spent a day making food, and as an afterthought, decided to make some cupcakes.

Pinterest spit this out at me: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2013/11/16/favorite-pumpkin-cupcakes/

It went together quick, it made exactly 14 perfect cupcakes, and it was easy.

I made my own version of cream cheese frosting:
Brick of cream cheese
Stick of butter
(These should be softened, but I never think about that in time, so I just throw them in my Kitchenaid with the whisk at high speed. They get soft in a hurry.)
A splash of vanilla extract (Get it at www.beanilla.com or www.spicejungle.com Seriously. Go there.)
Powdered sugar (I'm not really sure of how much I used. 2 cups, maybe? 3?)
Pinch of sugar.

Kitchenaid everything together, and stop when you have frosting that tastes right.


Verdict: MAKE THEM!

Seriously, stop what you are doing, and make them. They were amazing. People that don't like pumpkin or cream cheese thought they were amazing. The only negative comment that I got was from an 8 year old who told me I put too much frosting on them.

Whatever, kid. You're 8. I'm not going to listen to you for much of anything.

I actually considered making a second batch after dropping off the bereavement food, but after 2 hours in the car, getting home to make the farmer's dinner, and getting two toddlers ready for bed, I was done for the evening.

Day 3: Lazy Girl Pumpkin Rolls

It is socially irresponsible to throw out food.

Especially cream cheese frosting.

Yesterday's cupcakes had too much frosting, according to the 8 year old, yet we still had some extra frosting left over.

So, I created the lazy girl Pumpkin Rolls

Take a sheet of Pillsbury Recipe Creations Crescent dough (it's about time that they started selling sheets of this without the triangular scoring) and unroll it onto a piece of parchment or wax paper.

In a bowl, mix a half cup of brown sugar, a half cup of pumpkin and a healthy teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice. I also added 2 tablespoons of flour because my pumpkin seemed especially moist.

Roll up from a short end.

Use thread (or dental floss) to cut it into 6 or 7 pieces.

Place in a greased pan and bake at 350 for 25 minutes or so. Maybe start checking in at 20 minutes.

Let cool a bit and top with leftover cream cheese frosting.

Result: Worth making again.

I may have put too much spice in mine, I used a regular spoon and heaped it up pretty good. The frosting helped to cut the spice.

Even with too much spice, I intend on eating the entire pan. The filling almost has a pumpkin pie texture. It's interesting.

DIY Corner Drool Pads for Kinderpack

Hello, all!

This is going to be a rambling post on how to make corner, or curved, drool pads for a Kinderpack.

I recently bought a Kinderpack, and I know my little snotballs  darlings like to drool, slime and otherwise mangle the straps of my trusty Ergo, even though they are really too old to be doing so.

So, since I am cheap, I'm making my own protective drool pads.

Since I'm fancy, I involved embroidery.

Since I'm nice, I'm sharing the pattern I made.

****Disclaimer. I am in no way, shape or form a professional pattern maker. Use this at your own risk. It worked for me. I also am assuming that you know how to use your sewing machine, pins, thread, scissors, etc.

Shrug.

So, here we go.

Materials:

• Fabric of your choice - You will need 1/4 of a yard for each side (I used Robert Kaufman Effervescence in Lime for one side, and Kona Cotton in Basil for the other - both were 44" wide - I cannot speak to whether or not a fat quarter would work, I haven't tried it.)
• Batting (You can use thin quilt batting, terry cloth, a couple layers of flannel, polar fleece, etc. I used cotton quilt batting. When I refer to batting in the instructions, I am talking about whatever you chose to put in the middle of your drool catchers.)
• Thread to match
• Closures of your choice (I use Kam snaps and pliers. If you don't have these, you can use hook and loop tape (such as Velcro). You need about 1/3 yard of sew on Velcro if you go this route.)
• Scissors
• Pins
• Sewing Machine
• Ruler
• Pattern (Print it out with no scaling. It is designed on 8.5"x11" paper. The little square should be 1 inch on each side).
  

How to put it together.

**** SEAM ALLOWANCES ARE 1/4" ****

• Cut out your pattern, and cut out your fabric. 
• Make sure that you cut 1 set of fabric with the printed side of the pattern up, and one side with the printing down. Otherwise, you will have issues. The pattern is only for the 'skirt' of the drool pad.
• For the 'body' of your drool pad (the part that actually wraps around the strap) you need to cut out rectangles that are 7" by 10". You need two of the the fabric, two of the batting and two of the backing. *** EDIT: So, thinking about this, you might be better off cutting the body 10.5" or 11" by 7". This will solve a problem later. I'm blonde.
  
  This is my body fabric.   (Remember I said I'm fancy? I broke out my embroidery machine to try to do some of the bubbles off of the fabric. Took ALL DAY to program.)
  
  

This is the backing of my 'skirt' being used as a pattern on my pretty pretty fabric.

• Sew the top of your 'body' together. Start with your batting, then your fabric and backing RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER. Don't bother turning it right side out yet. Mine looks a little wonky because I wanted some of the backing to show on the front side. It will make sense at the end.
  
  
  
• Pin the batting for your 'skirt' to the back of one of your fabrics. It doesn't matter if it's your backing or your "pretty" fabric as long as its on the WRONG SIDE of it. You will now treat those pieces as one pattern piece. For those of you with sewing experience, pretend it's an underlayment. I pinned mine to the back of my pretty fabric.
  
• Sew the  ends of the 'skirt' pieces together. The pattern pieces are labelled A, B and C. Sew the slanted end of A to the larger slanted end of B. Sew the Slanted end of C to the remaining slanted end of B. Do this with the backing fabric, too.
  
  
  
  

Here's where my picture taking got lazy. I have two small children. One is potty training. I live on a farm. It's harvest season. 

Forgive me.

• Pin the top of the 'skirt' to the bottom of your body.  Keep the batting towards your pretty fabric (not a big deal if you don't, but it's the best way to keep track of the batting. Do the same with your 'skirt' made of backing. I screwed up on the pattern and had a little bit of overhang on the short ends of the skirt. You can trim it off. It was about 1/4". ***EDIT: Yeah. If you cut the body a little larger, you don't have this problem, and the pads fit better with the PFA's fully tightened. Again, blonde.
  

• Sew your skirts onto your body. 

• Turn the whole shebang so that the RIGHT SIDES of the fabric are facing each other.

• Sew down the side of the body, across the bottom of the skirt and back up the side of the body. **** Make sure to leave a few inches unsewn so you can turn the drool pad right side out****

• Turn right side out. Poke a chopstick or something (I usually end up using a screwdriver) to make the corners pointy. It should look something like this:
  
  
  

This is the back side of mine. See how it's kind of poufy? We'll fix that.

• Next, topstitch 1/8" in from all edges. This will make it less poufy, more finished, and will close up the opening from turning it.

• Finally, add the closure of your choice. I used snaps, and I didn't get a picture of them. Lame 

**EDIT: Here's a picture on the kinderpack :)

So, was this helpful? Leave a comment!