Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting

Posted in Food by beckyjael

This is a huge moment. I am about to make you very, very happy. Because I am sharing with you something that is truly amazing. This could be a life changer.

Many, many years ago a coworker gave me this recipe. For pumpkin bars with a cream cheese frosting. And let me tell you, they are so good. Every year since then, the holiday season beginning for me on October 1st, that I love so much, is not complete without making these at least once. I don’t even really like very many foods with pumpkin. But I love these so much. And now I am sharing this source of joy with you. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Pumpkin Bars

4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups pumpkin
2 cups flour
½ tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon

Beat eggs and sugar well. Add oil, vanilla, and pumpkin. Mix well. Add flour, salt, and cinnamon. Grease and flour or spray cookie sheet or bundt pan. Bake at 350 25-30 minutes for sheet pan, or 45-50 minutes for bundt pan. (I have only ever used the sheet pan).

Cream Cheese Frosting

3 oz. cream cheese
2 T. Milk
½ cup butter softened, not melted
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar

Beat well with a mixer until fluffy then spread over warm cake or cooled squares.

I like them best if the bars are refrigerated before eating and served with a glass of cold milk.

14Oct2015

Witches Girls Night Party

Posted in DIY, Halloween, Holiday, Party by beckyjael

I have been wanting to host a girls night witch party for years, and I finally got around to doing it last Saturday. In my opinion it was the perfect day for it, super rainy and windy and stormy all day! I loved it! I had a lot of plans that I didn’t get around to because for some reason after I got back from Hawaii and finished all the Halloween decorations, I just didn’t feel like doing any party prep. Fortunately though, I was planning on keeping up the Halloween decorations for the party, so there were a lot less party decorations I had planned. It was a really fun night!

I found these tiny felt witch hats at Hobby Lobby and placed them around the house.

And I got some orange and black balloons as well.

The table was what I worked on the most, and I was really happy with the results. I pulled out the white branches and put them in a vase with some mini pumpkins and then had a couple crows and an owl perched in the branches. Then I added some pumpkins, some black netting, a black lantern and the candelabra and table runner from the October décor.

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8Oct2015

12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: October

Posted in Decorations, DIY, Halloween by beckyjael

The October/Halloween decorations is the one month out of the whole year that I have been looking forward to the most, and I am so excited that it is finally here.

I have always enjoyed crafting and creating, and all growing up I did small random projects. However I didn’t really get into it “full time” or to the extent that it is today until the fall of 2009. I was just made the co-leader for our church activity’s committee and we were in charge of an appreciation dinner for the women in our ward and I was tasked with the responsibility of coming up with centerpieces for 8 or 9 tables. That was really the catalyst for a chain reaction that made me realize how much I loved decorating. Even though now I cringe a little bit when I see pictures of those centerpieces, at the time I was really happy with what I came up with and still love a few of those items. The next year I made my first full on DIY project and it was this orange wreath. I am pretty sure that when I finished it I sent a picture of it to everyone I knew, I was so proud of myself. And I still love it so much.

Then last year when I pulled out the Halloween decorations I realized that I HATED how the whole thing looked together. It didn’t feel at all cohesive to me, and it didn’t fit in the space we had at all. So throughout the whole month of October I worked on many projects, and by the end of the month it was at a place that I was ok with (you can see it in this post), but I still had a lot of things I wanted to do that I just didn’t have time to get to. I didn’t hate it any more, but I still had so much I wanted to add and change. So even though October was counted as “done” for my monthly goal last year, I still had a ton of things I was working on this year. And I now love it, and it makes me so happy. Along with the fact that I can see an orange/red tree from every single window on the main floor. I love the street we live, we have the best trees all along it. I mean this time of year, it is seriously the best!

I wanted a Harry Potter spell book, so I found a black hard cover book at Goodwill, and made 2 potion pages in Illustrator and printed and cut them out on cardstock that matched the color of the pages and glued the edges into the middle of the book. I used this site for the potion “recipes” and then changed and added things a little bit.

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2Oct2015

Kauai, Hawaii – All 50 States!

Posted in Travel by beckyjael

Vu and I went to Kauai, Hawaii last week. It was my first time to Hawaii, and just so happened to be the last state that I haven’t been too yet. So I have finally been to all 50 states in the U.S.! I am so happy that Kauai was the island that we went to first (because yes I plan on going to the others some day). I loved it! I love all the mountains and vegetation and waterfalls and how remote everything was. Vu didn’t quite love the remoteness of is. I promised him next time we could do the whole resort thing. We stayed in the town of Waimea, on the south side, in these cute little old cottages that used to be on a sugar plantation.