Best Ever Pumpkin Bread

Hello again,

I have failed to keep up with any holiday postings seeing as we were busy with the holidays...such is the way.  Well, who says we cannot enjoy pumpkin treats beyond the fall holiday season?!?!  Not me!  I love all things pumpkin and this bread is our absolute favorite pumpkin treat.  In all fairness this can be called a cake, but either way it is delicious!  I do not alter very much from the original recipe which can be found on the Taste of Home website here.  I usually cut one egg from the recipe and use 1 cup of canola oil and instant pudding can be substituted; other than that there are no alterations to this recipe as it is perfect.

This year we hosted Thanksgiving Dinner for our family and as a little gift to all of our guests we made mini loaves for them to take home.  Super easy gift to share with family and friends around the holidays.  The tags that I used were a fabulous free download that I found on Pinterest here.

Baking Times vary on what size pan you choose to use.  I usually opt to bake it in a bundt cake pan as it is so pretty and easier...only one pan needed.

Bundt cake pan  325 degrees for 80 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Mini loaf pans 325 degrees for 30 minutes

Hope your family enjoys this pumpkin treat as much as we do.  Thanks for stopping by. -Robyn

Thankful for Thanksgiving Family Activity

Just finished the final touches on my Thanksgiving decor around the house.  This is my absolute favorite holiday all year...family, friends and wonderful food minus the pressures of holiday gift giving.  In the spirit of Thanksgiving we thought we should remind our children all they have to be thankful for.  To instill this sense of thankfulness everyday we created a family thankful jar.  Our jar sits on our dining room table where everyone is sure to see it and take a moment to fill out a slip...so far the plan is working.  We decided we would read them all on Thanksgiving.  I just used a couple of items from around the house to create our thankful jar.  I canning jar, some burlap scrap, twine and a foam leaf.  A little hot glue later and our jar was complete.  I just printed out some "I am thankful for" slips and we were all set.  How does your family celebrate Thanksgiving?  I would love to hear other ideas on how to remind ourselves how much we have to be thankful for.

As always thank you for stopping by. -Robyn

Simple Fall Hostess Gift

With all of the fall get togethers that are sure to fill up your weekends, you may be looking for a simple, affordable hostess gift.  I love bringing a little something to say thank you, I love homemade, but from the store is equally wonderful.  While visiting the gift shop at a local farm I found the most adorable little baking gifts.  They have a wide variety of super cute baking mixes and other cute kitchen accessories.  I choose a scone baking mix with a couple of coffee packets.  Wrapped them up with a little cellophane and tied with a bow and added a glitter leaf.  Sweet little gift for anyone on your gift list.  This can be altered with any baking mix...even a cute seasonal quick bread mix from the grocery store...it is truly the thought that counts.

Thanks for visiting.  -Robyn

Rustic Autumn Themed Wedding Shower

Good morning...I am so excited to finally share the autumn wedding shower with you.  A week ago I shared a little sneak peek of this shower here.  The link to the Etsy shop where I ordered the adorable invitations and the how to for the pumpkin centerpieces can be found in my earlier post.

We held the shower in a restaurant so the decorations were fairly minimal which makes this a very simple shower in the way of set up.  Here is a couple of pictures of the pumpkins that I made for the table centerpieces.  I was thrilled at how easy these were and how cute they turned out.  The tutorial can be found here.

Along with the invitations we included a little poem card asking every guest to bring along their favorite recipe to share with the soon to be Mr. & Mrs.  I found a simple brown kraft recipe box that I found at Hobby Lobby and decorated it with brown and white gingham ribbon and a monogram.  I found the wood pumpkin at Hobby Lobby as well, and painted it with chalkboard paint.  I painted the letter A and glued it right on, and attached the sunflower clip to dress it up a bit.

The shower favors were little milk cartons filled with a hot cider drink mix envelope and some caramels.  The cartons would not stay closed so I dressed up some small paperclips to solve that problems and thankfully it worked.  I followed this tutorial on how to make a monogram in MS Word and it was fantastic, what an eye opener...I had no idea how much you could do in Word.  I cannot tell you how excited I was after discovering that this was a possibility.  Just sized it down to be able to use a 1 3/4" circle punch and really cute personalized monogram for all of the favors (I had 8 to a sheet).

For the shower we had them set up on a tiered serving tray with a little tag thanking the guests for coming.

At each place setting we had a little sweet treat.  We used the salted caramels from Costco and wrapped them in little cellophane bags.  I made the little acorn tags using the same craft punch and my embossing tool and stencil.  I also made little place setting cards (which I forgot to photograph), but was able to find an Avery template which made this so easy.

Thank you for stopping by to see what was new.  If you should have any questions please feel free to ask.  Thanks again -Robyn.

Fall Wedding Shower Sneak Peek

The weather this weekend is absolutely beautiful here in the Midwest, which makes me giddy for fall.  I have been planning a fall wedding shower for tomorrow and couldn't wait to share with you a quick glimpse.

I ordered the invitations from Sunshine Printables on Etsy.  Sasha was absolutely wonderful to work with.  She had the invitations to me within 24 hours of placing my order and couldn't have been any sweeter.  As part of the invitation we asked that each guest fill out a recipe card and bring it along to put into the recipe box for the bride to take home with her.  I found the cute little poem here and just altered it slightly to fit our needs.

I made the pumpkin centerpieces from just a few simple supplies from Hobby Lobby.  The pumpkins were already white, which made my life that much easier...as much as I love to spray paint it was easier to purchase them already done.  First I added a couple of glitter fall leaves found with the seasonal picks and just cut the stem with wire cutters and pushed them into the foam pumpkin under the stem.  Then I saw these adorable pumpkins with jute wrapped stems and just loved the look.  I followed this tutorial to make the curly-cue stems.  Then just added a bow and the pumpkins were finished.  I used Dollar Store candlesticks painted silver as stands.  I am pleased with how they turned out.  Hopefully the person who ends up as the lucky winner will too, as this is a party gift as well.

Hope you enjoyed and will come back to see the rest of the shower.  Thanks so much. -Robyn

Witch Portrait Craft DIY

Around here we LOVE Halloween....we can hardly wait for October 1st to pull out all of the decorations.  Witches are a very popular theme around here...so we decided to make our own silhouette.  The frames were from Goodwill and spray painted black.  The background is made from scrapbook paper cut to fit the frame.  I drew the witch freehand and then cut her out.  If you prefer I am certain there are many witch templates to be found either on Pinterest or Google Images.  Just tape it in and put the frame back together.  Instant Halloween decor that you can match to any style that you like.

Thanks for stopping by, -Robyn

Fall Wedding Shower Gift

Greetings!  It has been awhile since I have posted anything, however now that the kids are back in school hopefully this will change.  Fall is around the corner and this is my absolute favorite time of year!  I wanted to share with you a wedding gift I put together for my brother and his beautiful wife.  They were married in the fall so naturally I wanted to go with this as the theme.  First stop...Home Goods, as I love any excuse to shop there.  The serving dishes, wooden utensils, and fall towels all were from there.  As well as the candy dish,  I filled that with the autumn holiday m&m's.  The bushel basket was from Hobby Lobby and I added a Paula Deen magazine....I just LOVE Paula! There were Keurig Apple Cider k-cups to enjoy on those crisp fall nights.  Then it was on to the nursery section of the hardware store for a pie pumpkin and a small mum.  I stenciled their initial on the pie pumpkin with acrylic paint and wrapped the mum in burlap fabric and tied it up with a bow.  I placed it all in the bushel basket with a fall bow.  I was so pleased with how this turned out and my sister-in-law loved it.

Hope you enjoyed stopping by to see what is new.

S'Mores Hostess Gift

Last summer our good friends were kind enough to invite our family out to their lake home.  As a hostess gift I choose to bring a s'mores kit complete with the roasting forks.  I wanted to make the gift family friendly since they have two kids.  I purchased the white cake box at the local craft store and packed it with graham crackers, marshmallows and Hershey bars.  There were Reese's peanut butter cups in there as well, although you cannot see them in the pictures.  You could include any candy you think that they would enjoy...the ideas are endless.  Tied up with a bow it makes a sweet gift.

Thanks for stopping by.  -Robyn

Fall Family Fun List

Since fall has arrived here in the Midwest we thought we should have a fall family fun list of things to do just as we did for the summer.  We thoroughly enjoyed checking off things this summer we decided to make a fall one as well.  I can see a seasonal tradition being made...  Hope you enjoy your fall as much as we have.