Genius

Earl Hallows Eve

Tis the Season for Cooking

Something about the cold weather is making me want to hoard baking ingredients and make things that include squash. I'll have recipes soon, but here are photos of the new stuffI tried out this weekend. Above is coconut encrusted tofu and the soup below is topped with sweet potato dumplings. It was awesome.

Treats

These are quite possibly the best homemade pumpkin muffins ever. I found the recipe here and added walnuts to it. They are extremely yummy and at least a little healthy. A lot of the oil was replaced with applesauce (I love that trick) and I put in less sugar than it calls for. I made a few today for a grad's birthday on Tuesday. The box, with cute wrapping tissue paper and ribbon is from a Martha Stewart kit on clearance at Michaels. I am loving the MS craft materials line, though I do think some of it goes a little to far in doing the work for you. But these treat boxes (and bags) are so cute.



Those blue blocks above are the quilt I'm working on for our bed. The one below is the vintage top I finally finished off. Today I put the binding on- scalloped in the same round shape you can see below, so a bit tricky. It won't look perfect, but it's on and in the end I'm glad I retained the scalloped edges. It has some great fabrics in it.

The Earls

For Kennet's birthday I commissioned Hillary to create some Earl related art. He is now well on his way to becoming a deity (Earl, not Kennet) and this is just the first step. The frames are in the mail, I can't wait to hang them!

Liza turns 8

I still haven't decided if these are scary or cute. Kennet spent about 3 hours helping me scan and photoshop and print and etc. etc. Hillary drew a body and I made some paper clothes for them, which we scanned in too. I think they turned out rather well. They come with totes/sleeping bags and a larger tote bag to carry them around in. I stole the idea from one of my favorite blogs. I don't know how she got her colors so vivid, but I think these are cute if you don't stare too hard at them.

I think it's kind of funny the way the stuffing bulges and makes us look slightly swollen.
We look waterlogged.

And finally

Instead of journaling about our adventures in Africa, Kennet, David and I created mind maps about each place we went. There is a map for more or less each location we went to and it includes all the things that we thought were memorable enough (or possible to draw with our second grade abilities). It made it easy to keep track of the immensity of the wildebeest migration, the bizarre bird noises, and the piles of food we ate, without having to write everything word for word. Plus, they're cute.

David scanned them before we left and they're all here.