Random updates

Long time, no blog.

Things have been crazy. September has been an incredibly pressured work month. My grad class is interesting but time consuming, and my parents have been traveling which always leaves me with a bit more to juggle. We've been trying to squeeze in soccer in between almost unrelenting rain. Things are well though in the household of the Undomestic Goddess.

We've been reading quite a bit together. His reading material is all boy.

Grandma and Grandpa have been in Hawaii (that's my mom in a hammock eating a banana). Isaac has been writing and drawing a lot and I am so enjoying it.

We found this cute 3 dollar candy dish at Target.

Made some potholders using this tutorial.

We pulled out our Halloween decorations. I had forgotten about this table runner that we got after the holiday last year on super clearance. Love it!

We are loving pumpkin flavored/scented EVERYTHING!

We tried a self frosting Nutella cupcake. We had high hopes but we both agreed that they were not that good. The Nutella part was yummy of course, but the cupcake part was kind of flavorless and had the texture of a kitchen sponge.

Isaac pointed these out to me when we were shopping. We decided to get them for his dad for Christmas. I'm terribly predictable. I get him Bob Marley something for every gift giving occasion.

Lots of lounging in front of the computer during Conference weekend.

His Michael Jackson obsession continues. The writing prompt at school was "I can...". In case you can't read it, he wrote "I can dance like Michael Jackson".

A coworker loaned me this for Isaac. He was unimpressed (they are songs from the 80s and 70s) but I found myself singing along long after he got out of the car.

Have a great week!

Soft Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

The quest for true domesticity continues. I tried to make apple crisp, which was a flop... BUT I made these delicious cookies and they turned out incredible!! I thought I would be 0/2 when I messed up the amount of baking powder. However, I managed to save it by tripling the recipe. So there are cookies galore at my house-- come visit!!

Ingredients:

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 egg2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon milk

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional-- I skipped these)

Directions: 1. Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well. 2. Add vanilla, chocolate chips and nuts. 3. Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for approximately 10 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.

No good deed goes unpunished

So I was lazily reading blogs over the weekend and I came across this blog with the cute little pumpkin treats for teacher appreciation week. Now, I am not niave enough to expect anything for teacher appreciation week. All I got for Christmas was a horribly nasty phone message. But Isaac has two wonderful and devoted preschool teachers who definitely need to be recognized. And while I don't think I can make a cute stamped box like the one featured, I thought I ought to be able to whip up some pumpkin bread and do something cute with packaging. And, in light of my new quest for domesticity, I decided I would NOT get a pumpkin bread mix, but I would make it from scratch. Now, Cathee and Christi I am not, but I thought I could manage pumpkin bread. So I bought the ingredients yesterday but decided I would wait until today to bake them. Well around 9ish I figured I should stop nodding off to Lita videos and get cracking. I forgot that bread takes a lot longer than cookies to make. Like, six times as long. Whoops. Then I realized we didn't have enough flour, so I had to run out to the store and buy more. Whoops. And now I sit and wait. And hopefully not burn anything...

Pumpkin patch

I heart Merrymeade Farms