Five on Friday: Fall is Here!

I'm finally getting some time tonight to sit down and think about my 5 on Friday post. And as I sat here I thought about the fact that my kiddos are back to school now and in the evenings and early mornings there's a cool crispness in the air. Some trees have even begun to change color already and I'm starting to crave more hot beverages than cold. Plus, geese have been flying over my house daily. 

So I thought I would embrace these lovely changes around me and shout out Fall is here!! My 5 this week will be to share some highlights I have pinned to my board "my favorite season" (which of course is Fall!) on my pinterest.

ONE

Of course one of the most wonderful parts of Fall is the yummy comfort food that begins! From sweet treats like caramel apple nachos and gingerbread pumpkin pie bites you can find here and here. 

To comforting Autumn soups and pumpkin maple pecan granola you can find here and here.

TWO

Another delicious part of Fall...and one that really brings the cozy to it; are the wonderful drinks! From pumpkin chai latte, to caramel apple sangria you can find here and here.

To even making your own pumpkin spice creamer.  You can find it here.

THREE

There are also wonderful ideas and examples for ways to decorate pumpkins and ways to dress up your stairs and front porch for the Fall season. Not to mention tons of fun ideas for how to dress up a Fall fairy garden pot for display. You can find these ideas here, here, and here.

FOUR

And of course there are SO many ideas for fun things to do, or make in the Fall - and especially related to Halloween time. Like making your own Halloween s'mores kits,the mummy drink boxes I did last year, and using a pumpkin as an ice bucket to keep drinks cold which you can find here, here, and here.

To even how to make creepy chocolate chip cookies that look infected with spiders (ew!) or a cool Halloween bunting that you can find here and here.

FIVE

And I love all of the  beautiful images, cozy signs, and even haunting pictures that you can find related to Fall and Halloween here, here, here, and here. 

It's time to have fun embracing the BEST time of year....or at least in my humble opinion. ;)  

I'm linking with Amy of Love Made My Home for Five on Friday.

Cinnamon Swirl Banana Muffins

Hello Friends! 

I shared some muffins I had made on my instagram the other day and I thought I would share more about them today. They're basically a lot like the tasty bread I shared the other day in this post, but even easier due to less prep work and faster baking time. I'm always using up overripe bananas in recipes and an absolute favorite in our home is the standard banana bread recipe found here in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook - that has been around forever (with the red plaid cover on it). However, I often don't add the lemon zest or nuts the recipe calls for (my kiddos don't care for nuts in their bread) - and I do add chocolate or butterscotch chips.

Well it's really easy to take that bread recipe and line a muffin pan and bake it up in the form of muffins instead! Since it's back-to-school time right now - muffins are a great way to provide a yummy breakfast on the go or an after school snack.  For this recipe:

I made up the banana bread batter and added a few chocolate chips as that's my kiddos favorite with banana anything. I filled the cups 1/2 full and topped each with a little bit of some cinnamon & sugar mixture, but I always make mine more "cinnamony" (a technical term I'm sure) and less sugary.  Then I filled the rest of the cups with more batter and then topped them again with a little more of the cinnamon/sugar mixture.

Now I know that it's not the healthiest muffin - but I think there would be easy ways to health it up a bit. You could use part or all whole wheat flour in the batter. Or stir in healthier things like apple chunks and walnuts or pecans. I love nuts in mine so next time I think I'm going to do apples (so good with that cinnamon) and at least 1/2 of the muffins will have some walnuts in them whether my kiddos like it or not - Lol! I'm sure you could even add some bran or flax seed if you want to really health it up. 

Then just bake these at same temp of 350* F, but for less time. The normal recipe calls for 50 to 55 minutes, but these were done after about 35-40 minutes.  Then enjoy seeing the smiles on your kiddos' faces when they gobble them up!  Again here's the link to the batter I make if you want to give it a try...or else just use the banana bread or muffin recipe you already love!

And make sure you take a moment on a rainy gray morning to light some candles, pour a hot cup of coffee, and enjoy one yourself. 

Blessings. xoxo 

I'll be sharing this with Sherry at Charm of Home for Home Sweet Home. And with Andrea at Scrapality for Scraptastic Saturday.

Wednesday Wonder

SLOWLY FALLING INTO AUTUMN

I so love this time of year. I'm finding lots of fun things that inspire or bring me joy to pin on my "my favorite season" pinterest board - like the top photo.  My Hubby has been replacing our old peeling deck stairs and landings, but I love that right now they're starting to accumulate Fall leaves and pine needles. And even though my kiddos started school last week....I always think of right after Labor Day Monday as the true start of the Fall season and back-to-school - and the inspiration at the bottom reminds me of that. Blessings Friends. ;) 

Happy Homemaker Monday

Howdy Friends! And welcome to Monday! 

Yep, it's that time again. Today, though, in my neck-of-the-woods it's Labor Day...so it's a day to honor hard working folks and give them a day off. It's nice having my Hubby home from work and my kiddos have been having fun with friends this weekend. We went to my son's high school soccer game Saturday. My Dad & step Mom came over and we celebrated my Dad's birthday that night & went for a lovely pontoon ride. My niece slept over with Annie last night and they had lots of fun!! Back to school tomorrow though (hee hee - secret Mom chuckle).  

THE WEATHER OUTSIDE IS:

It started out rainy and gray. We had some good thunder boomers in the night and some rain continued through the morning. Clearing up now and getting sunny. Supposed to reach upper 70's today.

ON THE BREAKFAST PLATE THIS MORNING:

I baked up a yummy cherry butter bread this morning - so we had that as kind of a treat with our breakfast. It was tasty!!

  AS I LOOK OUTSIDE MY WINDOW:

I'm watching my daughter, niece, and some neighborhood friends ride bikes, roller blades, and scooters in our driveway.  Enjoying the sun that's finally come out.

RIGHT NOW I AM:

Listening to some music in my office and looking ahead at my calendar for the week.  Some soccer ahead for both kiddos.  I need to see what I have in my freezer so I can figure out how long before I need to get to the grocery store again. Hoping we can use up some things in the pantry and freezer to sort of reset and then restock things as I'd really like them. Starting to think more cozy Fall menu ahead!

AS I LOOK AROUND THE HOUSE:

The girls picked up their mess from the tv room upstairs where they slept last night. But the downstairs game/media room probably needs some serious love! Otherwise pretty tidy. My Hubby was a Sweetie and did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen early for me.  Think I'll keep that guy around.

ON TODAY'S TO DO LIST:

I need to do another load of laundry and get my kiddos to put their clean clothes away (they've been some naughty slackers lately!). Time for some Mom police to go patroling. Lol  Clean up downstairs (with kiddos' help as I'm sure it's their messes), I might do some scrapbook organizing in my office. We might rent a movie later and just have snuggle in rest kind of day later. My Hubby has been working on some new - much needed - stairs that go down to our dock. He's going to have some of his work crew guys come soon and build a new platform deck that will connect to the stairs. He enjoys doing some things himself though. It's so wonderful having a handy guy. ;) 

CURRENTLY READING:

I've started a new Nora Roberts book and I'm catching up on some magazines. Some new Fall ones have come - yay!!

ON THE TV TODAY:

I have some cooking shows to catch up on and I think we have some of The Profit taped (my Hubby and I love that show) and Bering Sea Gold too (my Hubby really loves that one). I have some Hallmark movies taped too.

ON THE MENU THIS WEEK:

MONDAY: leftover pizza & salad for lunch & BLT's with yummy juicy tomato from my Mom's friend's garden for dinner

TUESDAY: hopefully find chicken to thaw and make along with pasta side dish and veggies. Might bake up a pie with a can of harvest spiced peaches I have on hand.

WEDNESDAY: might be cooler this night so thinking butternut squash soup and use up the lunch meat in fridge sandwiches

THURSDAY: double soccer night so keep it easy - may pick up Subway or something

FRIDAY: not sure yet - might be dinner out night, or get groceries 

*have bananas I need to use up so plan to bake up some banana bread or maybe banana chocolate chip muffins or a cake

WHAT I AM CREATING AT THE MOMENT:

Right now I'm focusing on getting some of my own scrapbook stuff organized so I can catch up on my albums. Then focus on the kiddos' school albums and our travel/trip album.  Basically scrapbook mania ahead!  I did have fun finally figuring out how to change up my blogging background and play with fonts and things. Hopefully nothing else weird is showing up...as sometimes I still feel like I have no clue what I'm doing with some of that stuff and just wing it! :P

NEW RECIPE I WANT TO TRY THIS WEEK:

Maybe new banana related recipe?

TIP OF THE WEEK:

 

Okay I can verify that this one works!  We were out-of-town watching a sporting event (probably hockey of course) and it was winter and COLD. My Hubby had heard this and so he when we were in the hallway (still in the arena!) he held the key remote up under his chin & clicked it, so it could warm up the car if it worked. Sure enough, when we got all the way out to the parking lot a ways away our car was running and warmed up by the time we got in! Crazy!! I'm not sure what it's doing to your brain though? - kind of scary. 

FROM THE CAMERA:

Happy Birthday to my Papa! Look how Annie is catching up - I'm not that much taller. We even almost share the same shoes. She's 10 people (& she might have been standing tip toed) - but that still gives you an idea of how short I am & how small my feet are too. ((sigh))  

It was a gorgeous night on the pontoon!

Chillin' by my Ruby.

Cute couple. ;) 

This was the lovely view at my son's soccer game. This is the parking lot above the fields. My kiddos' go to a wonderful private school.  It sits on a hill even higher above this. They sure have an amazing view of the big Lake! 

Still picking flowers from my pots for window sill bouquets.

My sweet Hubby working away. Looks like he's got his work cut out for him!

PRAYER, INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE OR DEVOTIONAL:


I'm linking with Sandra of Diary of a SAHM for Happy Homemaker Monday.

5 Reasons to do a Back-to-School Tea

Hello my Dear Friends! 

I'm finally truly joining back into the blogging world after a bit of a break. I've enjoyed focusing more on my kiddos these past couple of weeks before school started, as well as just catching up on some of my life around here in general. 

I've missed doing regular posts and visiting with everyone though! I'm slowly catching up now. Although, I had read and appreciated all of your comments from my HHM check-ins when you sent them.  I hope you all know how much I love when you share a comment with me! I typically respond to all of them - but since I'm still catching up - I may only respond to the past couple of posts, or if you asked me a specific question.  

Okay, now on to today's fun!  5 Reasons to do a Back-to-School Tea!

ONE

It's an excuse to set a fun and pretty table! My daughter and I came up with the idea to have a fun back-to-school tea about a month ago. She invited one of her BFF's and we also invited Nana (my Mom) and Auntie Susie (my Aunt and Annie's great Aunt). One of the fun parts was thinking about how we wanted to set and decorate the table. We decided we liked the idea of stacks of books, pretty flowers (picked from our pots outside), candles and of course some apples! I even found an old apple Yankee Candle lamp that I had & it fit our theme perfectly. 

TWO

It's all about the fun food! We decided on a menu that included a variety of finger sandwiches (the biggest hits were white bread with whipped berry spread and strawberry slices, white bread with veggie spread and cucumber slices, and cheese bread with peanut butter - just like the crackers you buy in the store). We had salad on a stick with a variety of dressings. We also had fruit sushi that we ate with fun chopsticks! Just roll bananas in peanut butter and strawberries in hazelnut spread then roll in rice krispies and cut into bite size slices. We also had watermelon and kettle chips.  We washed it down with peach iced tea that we kept cold with frozen peaches in it for the ice cubes. ;) 

THREE

Of course one of the main reasons to do a tea like this is to gather! To laugh, tell stories, share, and dream on the school year ahead. The Girls were so excited to talk about what this new school year was going to bring for them! We had so much fun gabbing away and laughed a lot!!

FOUR

And what would a lovely tea be without DESSERT!?? We had French macaroon pastries that were fabulous (chocolate, vanilla, raspberry and pistachio flavors). It was so fun to use my Fall leaf serving dishes too. We also had semi-homemade s'mores ice cream. We softened some vanilla bean ice cream on the counter and added some marshmallows we had roasted in the oven & cut up - as well as bits of hershey bar chopped up, a swirl of hershey syrup, and broken up pieces of graham cracker. I mixed this all up in a bowl and then poured it into a 9x5 bread pan and put it in the freezer to re-freeze. It was SO GOOD and probably one of the biggest hits of the tea (along with the sushi and trying out chopsticks). You could taste those bits of roasted marshmallow in there. Just excellent and I recommend giving it a go sometime! 

FIVE

A final reason to have a tea like this is to continue to enjoy the glow beyond the tea time. I still have this as my dining room centerpiece at this moment and we continue to enjoy the pretty at sunset each night.  A beautiful reminder of such a fun day.

I'm sharing this with Amy at Love Made My Home for Five on Friday. And with Andrea at Scrapality for Scraptastic Saturday.