Pumpkin spice latte addict...make your own at home

I figured out how to make my fav fall drink at home!  Saving some major $$ too!  ;)

To brew my own pumpkin spice flavored coffee, I brew my regular strong coffee to make a latte.  I use Starbucks Verona bold and use 5 tbsp grounds to 2 C of water.  On top of grounds in the filter I sprinkle 1 tsp of pumpkin pie spice.  Then I brew the coffee like normal.

To make the latte, I pour milk (1% organic) 1/3 way full in my mug.  Then microwave for about a minute to get warm.

Then I pour around 2-3 tsp homemade vanilla syrup (recipe to follow) in the milk and fill the rest of mug with hot coffee.

Very delish!!!

Hubby doesn't do lattes, but does enjoy some black pumpkin spice coffee.  :)

Make your own vanilla syrup and avoid that nasty HFCS and it's cheaper:
In saucepan, bring 2 C sugar and 1 C water to boil til sugar is dissolved.  Set aside and let cool a bit.  Pour into a re-sealable container and pour in 2 tbsp vanilla.  I keep mine in the refrigerator.

Just random stuff

Frustrating morning.  This morning was supposed to be fun fun fun.  Micah had a costume and fall party at school.  They were to dress as a favorite book character.  I made this SUPER CUTE Skippyjon Jones costume for my blue eyed boy to wear.  He pranced around in it last night and the cuteness made me just giddy.  :)  Then stomach pains.  Then vomit.  From the 5 year old.  BIG bummer.  No school for him this morning.  This meant a few things that made me really emotional.

First, I forced my way through making his costume through a big headache I had yesterday.

This is NOT being worn for Halloween (he's long picked out Batman).

Granted this will get played in a lot...especially since both his sisters insisted I make them ears too so they could play Skippyjon's sisters.

Second, no parade.  I have pics and memories of the first 2 doing the same parade (in not nearly as cute or creative costumes).

Third, it also meant I had to miss Maressa's FIRST preschool party of which I am room mom (a position I've been coveting for years, but unable to commit with smaller siblings) and in charge of said party and craft.

I've NEVER missed a single preschool party for anyone thus far.

I was really crushed this morning.

Not to mention I was worried that Mar would be upset being the only child without a parent there.  Hubby rescued me though by driving 20 mins across town to be at her party for a short while and able to capture cutie pie songs they sing at the end.

I really have been growing in that I usually don't let myself get upset over things I cannot change.  

But I admit, I REALLY had a hard time with this one.

So let's move along, shall we?

This is the flower that my awesome 9 year old Zachary made for me after school yesterday.  He made it to make me feel better from the awful headache I was having.  He's super thoughtful!

This little star I picked up from Target dollar spot was much happier in canary yellow to put in my newly renovated cabinet.  :)

I am SO happy that I saw this post and took up the offer.  Canvas picture (11X14) for a whole $9.99 plus shipping.  The quality is AWESOME!!  It hangs happily in my dining room. 

Slowly, slowly the dining room is coming along.  I need some serious fabric in there though...it echoes when there's not a huge pile of clean laundry on my dining room table (but let's face it, it rarely does NOT have laundry covering the table).  

Though right now it has my cutting board and fabric and pieces of homemade costumes.  :)

Finally! 

 Z's long baseball run (been playing straight since beginning of April) is about to come to an end.  

As much as I love it too, I'm grateful for the upcoming break.

This weekend is his last tournament.

Then two month break til practices begin again.

Whew!!

Jack-o-lanterns and yummy roasted seeds

This past weekend we carved our pumpkins. 

 The kids are pretty traditionalist when it comes to their jack-o-lanterns.  They drew how they wanted their faces on paper first.  Then I carved them out.  Maressa didn't really draw a face, but just scribbled.  So we talked over how she wanted her face to look.  She wanted a circle mouth.  Z had a semi-complex face (the pumpkin on the far left) and I did the best I could to get it to look like his picture.  :)

Here they are lit up.  Sorry for the blur.  It was dusk and with the flash off, the camera is hard too hard to hold still.  I guess if I really really cared, I could have got out the tripod.  ;)

I really love using the batter powered tea lights for the pumpkins.  You can get a giant box of them at Sam's.

So then we had four pumpkins worth of seeds.  I decided to experiment with roasting them.

After I washed the seeds all off, by myself (kids had abandoned me to play on the trampoline very quickly into our pumpkin project...but who can blame them, it was perfect weather), I divided them into 3 bowls.

Then each bowl got 2 tsp of melted butter.  Then one bowl got some sea salt, another bowl few tsp of brown sugar, cinnamon and pinch of nutmeg, and the third bowl got brown sugar, cinnamon and few dashes of cayenne pepper.  Then I roasted them all in separate baking dishes at 300F for about 45 mins.  

Let cool.  Enjoy!

The sweet and spicy was my favorite.

That cabinet...done

I got my cabinet finally done.  It is now bright white and houses all kinds of fun and colorful candles, dishes and whatnot.  It fits my dining room so much better now!

On top I threw some cheap off white paper globes that I've had a long time.  Kinda to compliment my crazy globe chandelier and provide more height to my cabinet.

Here is the sad before.  :)

Now to get those Halloween costumes done!!

in the mind of a six year old

Kalla used to always have a few questions for her daddy when he tucked her in at night (brilliant stalling tactic).  He journaled them for a couple of weeks on the computer.  I came across this list the other day and just love it.  Thought I'd share.   :)

As written by Matt:

A few of Kalla’s Bedtime Questions

2/27/2009

How did God make our skin?

2/28/2009

How many things are in the world?

3/1/2009

Do they make glass like in a machine?

3/2/2009

How do workers make power lines?

3/3/2009

Remember how yesterday you said we could talk more about power lines.  Well, how do they make the trucks that put them up high?

3/4/2009

How do people get their teeth out and get fake teeth?

3/5/2009

How do they make toys?

How did God get his powers?

3/6/2009

How do workers make roads?

3/7/2009

How do people make those snow jeans?

(meaning snow pants)

3/8/2009

How do they make clothes be the color that they want?

How do they make dolls and attach the hair to it?

How did God say “let there be” and then there was?

3/9/2009

What do you do on your computer at work?

What do you talk about at meetings?

3/10/2009

How do they make beds like this one and this one?

(pointing to her doll bed and her bed)

3/12/2009 (With her own answer)

How do you make the lady talk on the GPS?

Answer: You just go on America.

Amazing the things that go on in their growing brains.   :)

a fall break

Baseball tournament:

Mini vacation at lake:

The blonde on left is my bff's little girl.

Pumpkin farm:

Again with the paint

Yep, painting another piece of antique furniture.  We got this piece with wedding money during our honeymoon week (we didn't go anywhere...tragic, I know).  When we moved into our new house, it wasn't the right scale for the dining room really.  Then I got this for storage and decided to ditch the china cabinet.  So it sat in my garage forever.  Then I had a change of heart.  I decided maybe I could pep it up and then use it to store fun colorful pieces and I maybe will even make cloth napkins (that I've been hanging out on my to do list for a really long time) to roll up and put in a pretty basket or something.

So I have most of a primer coat on and can't wait til it is bright white.  Maybe soon I'll finally have the dining room reveal...nothing to hold your breath over, but I want to get more details done before I go taking pictures and all.  ;)

Yeah and don't think that dresser is safe either....it's dull brown days are numbered.

Oh and speaking of thrifting.  I went to Goodwill yesterday and found lots of treasures.  Will share soon!

Monster Mash Pretzels

Ok, I made some cutsie food too.  :)  I was browsing the newest issue of Everyday Food and saw these in an ad for pretzel sticks.  I already had everything to make them and that paired with the fact that the kids just were complaining a little that there was not a 'special' after school snack the other day I decided to make some.  Yeah, kids spoiled much?  lol

To make your own monster pretzles, you just need some pretzel sticks, green food coloring, white chocolate (I used bark) and mini marshamallows.
I melted some bark down in a bowl in the microwave.  I used 3 cubes for our snack.  I then added a smidge of green gel food coloring.

Then I took handfuls of pretzel sticks and broke them in half and added to the chocolate.

I kept adding the pretzels til the chocolate was used up once coating all the pieces.

Once the prezels are coated, spoon lumps of chocolate pretzels onto wax paper.  While still melted, take mini marshmallows and cut in half with kitchen shears.  The ad used mini red M&M's on the marshmallows to make eyes, but I didn't have any so I used food writers to make red dots.

The kids were so excited to have their special snack yesterday and gobbled them up!  :)

Some slightly spooky ghosts and a not so haunted house

I don't know if you've noticed over the years that this time of year usually my blog s lacking halloween type decorations and crafts (except these batty favors).  Not that I have anything against it all, I'm generally not into it for decorations and  I don't go out of my way to craft it either.  I haven't in a long time even made cute little halloween type cutsie food.  Raason for that being is that the preschool my kids go to don't have 'Halloween' parties and they ban anything related at the fall parties (this used to mean ghosts and witches, but this years note included bats, spiders and black cats).  I really don't care either way.  ;)

As my kids get older they wanna know why we don't decorate for Halloween like half the houses on our street (it's gotten so that you can drive at night in your car looking at scary decorations as one would go looking at Christmas lights).  My compromise is they could decorate a room in our house how they wanted if they made the decorations (I'm not spending money on it).  So they all asked if they could make our 'front room' (a room reserved for hard playing, ball throwing and wrestling and that my biggest boy, aka hubby, has banned most all furniture from) a haunted house.

So it is so.  And because I'm really not all humbug about it, I helped the kids make some fun ghosts.

I took a $5 twin sheet from Target (I already had) and tore it into 4 pieces.

Gathering it up as it would be once hung, I figured out where they should put the faces and I blocked off the area with tape.

With fabric markers and fabric crayons (you could use really anything since they won't need to be washed), they made their own ghost faces.  They all agreed they wanted them 'scary'!

With Maressa, who is only 3, I drew a face as directed by her and let her color it.  She then added a nose and eyebrows of her own.

Once they were done I blew up 4 white balloons and placed the fabric over them, gathering and tying under the balloon.  At this point I applied some glow in the dark acrylic paint, but it didn't show real well.

I poked holes through the top of the fabric (careful to not poke the balloon) and strung through fishing line.  I then used small flat tacks to attach them to my ceiling.

Here are some of their own decorations they made as well.  I used small rolled pieces of tape to attach to the walls.

I also contributed my old ceramic jack-o-lantern and some fun votives and battery operated candles.  Oh and another big hit was I got a strobe light from the Target dollar spot that they turn on at night.  Warning if you get that same light...it goes through batteries really, really fast.  Funny thing is once it is on they are more fascinated by putting on hand puppet shows than anything spooky related.  lol

And another first, I promised we would actually cut into their pumpkins they got from the farm this last weekend and make jack-o-lanterns.

Maybe we'll even have some friends over for a little Halloween party this year.  Maybe.  :)