apples, bikes, pumpkins, parties:: from the archives 2008

( I was going through my archived blog posts recently, and found this gem! Apparently I have two fully written posts that were in my draft folder for um, 5 YEARS ago ?!?! So now that fall of 2013 is approaching I thought this would be fun to share. Here we were living in our old apartment,newly married. I'll share the other unpublished one some other time)

so we had a fall picnic, with some friends this weekend. perfect weather for such activities. jason and i made apple crisp and gingersnaps! it was my first time making apple crisp. my grandmother always use to make it in the fall for us. it came out quite well. i'm always happy when i bake, and they turn out like my childhood memories of the dish.


husband thought it would be fun to carve a pumpkin. apparently its a Muppet face.
we also got together a fall bike ride, for the " bicycling Lou's" we rode 45 miles round trip from oaks to the Philadelphia art museum. beautiful ride it was. we underestimated our time a bit, and arrived back home in the dark. quite an adventuresome weekend
Jason and i have been enjoying the fall season with some pumpkins from a local farm stand

Raspberry Torte

Chocolate cake with raspberry filling and ganache frosting, for your eyes to feast on this lovely Thursday afternoon!

Late summer glory

 This boy is a warm weather lover! We are trying to savor all that comes with summer while it's still here. Currently that includes romping around in a diaper, homemade popsicles for teething boys and eating corn and peaches in abundance. Only Liam doesn't like corn off the cob.. Hmm, well maybe that will change before next year.  Oh and he loves his new kitchen "tools", in fact, he lined them up perfectly in the doorway today. I joked he was practicing being a "line cook". Oh that boy and his curious and carefree ways. I love it so!

Lace Bridal Shower Cake

Here's a cake I did over the weekend. I piped on ivory buttercream over white buttercream to get a vintage, lace feel for the cake. I love all things old, so this cake was something I really got into. My Grandmother's doilies, the bride's wedding dress and bridesmaid's dresses were the inspiration for the design!

CSA's + Salsa Verde

This year we decided to be a part of a local CSA. We are fortunate enough for that to mean about 2 miles away from where we live! So every other Friday I go to the farm to pick up our produce and usually pick something out in the fields like strawberries, tomatoes, herbs  and most recently tomatillos! We are big fans of salsa verde in this house, so I was pretty excited about the possibility of making it ourselves. As it turns out, it's actually a lot easier than regular salsa. You husk the tomatillos, quarter them and throw them in a pot of water, along with a few other ingredients. They simmer away for 40 minutes and then you just pulse it in the food processor. I used this receipe and loved it!

Saving seeds and growing pumpkins.

Last fall we got some great pumpkins at a local farm! We love getting heirloom varieties because of their fun shapes, textures and colors. Since pumpkins can actually add up to one pretty penny and because I've always wanted to trying saving my own seeds, that's what we did one late fall day when the pumpkins had started to decompose.
We cut them open, scooped out the seeds and tried the best we could to get all the flesh off of the seeds. Once that was done we layed them out flat on cardboard lids lined with news paper. Set them in a moderately sunny spot. For us, that was our dining room table. There they sat for a week or two. I tossed them every couple of days to make sure each side of the seed was dry before placing them in envelopes.
So when summer rolled around, my parents had a spare patch in their garden where we planted our pumpkins and gourds! As you can see they came up! They are actually producing almost ready looking pumpkins. I joke that I'll be the first in my neighborhood to decorate for fall with pumpkins out in the end of August. I actually can't wait. Fall is definitely my favorite season! With all this fall- like weather we've been having lately, I'm definitely in the mood for sweaters, pumpkins and campfires!

Cupcake Tuesday: Movie Themed Cupcakes

 A couple of months ago I had the opportunity to make these fun movie inspired cupcakes! The popcorn cupcakes were a blast. I wrapped the cupcake in this popcorn bucket cupcake wrapper. You can print them out for free here! Then I cut up marshmallows and stuck them on top with some buttercream and painted on the "butter", which is a mixture of clear vanilla and yellow gel food coloring!

So I think I'm all caught up on my cupcake posts for now. Cupcake Tuesday has been so fun, but is coming to an end for the time being. Stay tuned for some more cake posts in the near future.

A corner of our kitchen: before & after

For anyone not familiar with our living situation, we bought an old house/ general store fixer upper, 3 years ago. You can read more about that here and here. It's been a slow, but starting to be, rewarding process. I love a good before and after transformation! At this point there hasn't been a whole lot of after. 

We are mostly in the middle of many things. In the middle is a hard place to be sometimes. Definitely not as bad as the beginning when your desperately replacing broken plumbing, leaking roofs, replacing old drafty windows, adding LOTS of insulation to try and keep a big old house warm at all costs, replacing our heating system and re-supporting the sagging parts of our house in the basement. Yes we are so glad that we have those parts behind us. So in these "middle times" I've been doing my best to spruce up corners that are waiting to be finished or are mostly finished. Our kitchen being one of them!

We are mostly finished. It just needs some tile flooring and back splash, a new oven, shelves and doors for the pantry and some under cabinet lighting.

This part of the kitchen, this wall, I'm happy to feel like it's finished!

Bits + Pieces of our Summer so far

sparklers

 town 4th of July parade

 outside fun

 couch forts

 cheesy faces

 first tastes of cake

tractor rides

Peach picking with my boys

 Some days are filled with such simple little novelties, such as picking peaches from your backyard tree. Once again we have not pruned or sprayed and have still gotten a few nice peaches. Next year, oh that WILL be the year we do things right! I am so in awe of these little moment we get to spend together as a family and try not to take them for granted. Liam was mighty proud of his peach, he just had to express such, with his little tongue.

Cupcake Tuesday: Toadstool + Acorn Cupcake

These woodland cupcakes were done for my son's first birthday!
Chocolate cupcake with buttercream frosting, green fondant disc and fondant toadstool and acorn!
I had so much fun making these, I could have probably made a hundred little acorns and mushrooms.  Perhaps one day I will have a reason to make a hundred!