Pumpkin Craze!

Boy oh boy am I on a pumpkin kick lately. Not really that shocking considering that it's officially fall! And if you know me at all you know that Fall and Winter are my most favorite times of year!! Hands down I am in my element once the temperature drops along with all the leaves changing colors!! It's just such a pretty time of year plus I absolutely love to feel nice and cozy in big sweaters and boots!! It just doesn't get any better...or at least until Christmas rolls around :o)

To celebrate the joyous Fall season I decided it was time to go out of the box and try a new recipe that included Pumpkin...a new recipe that was not a dessert! I feel like I don't branch out to crazy when it comes to cooking but times are a changing with the season and I am here to experiment!!!

While Chuckles cleaned up the house and kept the dogs out of the kitchen I set out to make Pumpkin and Sausage Penne straight from Taste of Home's magazine!

Ingredients

• 3/4 Cup uncooked penne pasta
• 2 italian sausage links, casings removed
• 1/2 cup chopped sweet onion
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/3 cup white wine or chicken broth
• 1 bay leaf
• 3/4 cup chicken broth
• 1/3 cup canned pumpkin or fresh pumpkin puree
• 3 tsp minced fresh sage, divided
• 1/8 tsp each, salt, pepper, and cinnamon
• dash ground nutmeg
• 3 tbs half and half cream
• 2 tbs shredded Romano Cheese

I am going to start off by letting you know I took the easy way out when it came to the ingredients. I improvised with stuff I had instead of going through the process of chopping up all the spices. I just don't roll that way so instead of chopped sweet onion I used onion powder, instead of a garlic clove I used garlic powder, and I did not add the Romano Cheese at all.

Here's a huge helpful tip - read recipes before you buy your ingredients!! The ingredients list calls for 2 sausage links, casings removed. You have to remove those casing!!!! Then the recipe simply wants you to ground it all up anyways! Save yourself the headache and you can either slice the sausage like me or just buy ground italian sausage!! 

Pour some olive oil in the pan and fry up your sausage.

Now would also be a good time to get started on cooking up your pasta!

After this step things tend to move pretty quickly! Grab your olive oil, chicken broth or white wine, onion powder, and garlic powder.

Remove your sausage from your pan, set aside. Pour your olive oil, chicken broth, and powders into the pan. Oh and toss in your bay leaf at this point too!

Yes it will sizzle and pop!! Let the mixture simmer down to almost nothing...

Add in your pumpkin, sage, remaining chicken broth, and salt, pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Mix all that together, then add in your half and half cream. Stir.

Finally toss in your sausages! Simmer on stove for a minute or so.

Remove the bay leaf!

By this time your pasta should be cooked and placed into a serving bowl. Add your above mixture to your pasta.

And we enjoyed this meal with some more Garlic Cheddar Biscuits! YUM!

This dish was very tasty!! I loved loved loved the pumpkin flavoring!! I think next time we will substitute the pasta for white rice!! 

If you are a pumpkin lover like myself then I highly recommend this recipe! It was actually quite easy to make too! Of course the bonus I always love is when a recipe fills your home with amazing smells! This one definitely did the trick! :o)

Another great fall recipe that will be repeated multiple times in the upcoming months!!

Enjoy!

Fabulous Fall is in the Air.....and Our Home!

Well folks the Halloween decorations are down and Fabulous Fall has arrived!!

Yesterday morning, due to the time change, I ended up getting out of bed at 6:30, so what better to do then start packing up Halloween decorations! Then my wonderful honey got out my Fall tub of decorations and you know I got my decorating on!

A few pictures to share!

Our guest bathroom downstairs!

Mr and Mrs Scarecrow! 

Our entryway table! I absolutely love my little leaf bowl that I got at Pier 1 last year! I think I may need to go back this year and see if I can get a few more in a different colors! (Excuse the can of soda, we use it to scare the dogs so they allow people to enter the house before they jump all over them)

Our bookcase! Hopefully the leaves will still be there every night when we get home but we have mischievous kitties and dogs who eat anything on the floor! HAHA! Oh and those pretty flowers are straight from San Francisco! I swear the flowers smell stronger than any we can buy here in town!

And my favorite piece to decorate is ALWAYS our mantel! I cannot even tell you how long I wanted a mantel and still to this day I am so excited to decorate it! It's perfect for garland!

And last but not least our entertainment stand! I went hog crazy with the fall garland this year but it's just so damn pretty :) And our colors for the living room go perfect with fall decorations!

So I'm pretty sure I have a missing box floating around somewhere but it was too cold to be out in the garage digging around! Besides we are almost out of places to decorate in the downstairs so any decorations I come across will get hauled to work!

Anyone else decorate for fall yet??

Falling Leaves - Crafty Time

I was so excited to sit down in my Scrapbook Room awhile ago to work on Crafts that I completely forgot to post this lovely work of art!

I found the idea from this very cool blog - Happy Clippings!

I just had to make a quick stop at Michael's for the felt leaves, then JoAnn's for the buttons (which I fell in love with).

I got home and laid out my supplies and got to work!

First I cut out the tree using my Cricut and the My World Cricut Cartridge.

Then I cut out little squares (I think I made them 1 x 1) for the letters. Now the original crafter used Scrabble tiles but I couldn't even imagine "stealing" tiles from our game so I just made a little change!

I actually just used from plain black Alphabet stickers for the letters!

Than I laid it all out, made sure everything lined up right and then began gluing everything into place!

I was so happy with how this turned out and I honestly cannot remember what got me to the blogger who first created this but I am ecstatic I did!!

After much consideration on where to place this we decided the front door would be ideal! Added in a few Halloween touches and voila - entryway table decorated!

Unfortunately this post has a sad ending...One morning Chuck walked past the table and must have knocked it just right because the frame came crashing down and knocked off the little ghost in the middle and the Jack o Lantern to the left. Smashing the Jack O Latern and Ghost to pieces but the frame stayed in tack....for now...

About two days later I closed our door and it was enough to knock the frame down another time :-( Luckly just the frame shattered and not my other pumpkin but now I'm on the hunt for a heavy frame which I'm going to get before November 1st so that this little baby can be put up for our Autumn/Fall Decorations!

Anyone else been crafting any Holiday crafts?

It's So SPOOKTACULAR!

Chuck and I are always really excited when October 1st comes rolling around because that means it times to really jazz up the house. We love decorating for Holidays and while I put out the fall decorations in September the house isn't super festive until October. And guess what??? IT'S OCTOBER!! 

We pulled out our three tubs of Halloween decorations!! Yes they are black to coordinate with Halloween...I like to be organized.

While we started with the inside decorating first I am going to show you our decorations working from the outside in. We actually just finished our decorating of the outside last night...this year we only did our front patio. The back patio will get decorated next year!!

Welcome to our Home!

Don't you just love our Welcome sign! My Aunt and Uncle gave us that for our Housewarming gift along with holiday banners and an everyday banner!

This year we decorated the door. Usually that gets wrapped out the front pole but I thought itd be more fun on the door. And yes I was right :-) Also those "heads" hanging from the door handle and on the side of the condo are motion sensored. Meaning they move and make noise when someone comes close to them. I LOVE IT!

Here is our little Halloween village that we set up on the breakfast bar. This is Chuck's favorite part of our decorations and he always sets it up :-) It's pretty neat, two of the pieces light up and make noise! We have found all of these pieces in Michael's but this year we didn't really care for the new stuff.

Our entry table got a little festive!

We both LOVE this sign. We got it at Michaels for like 40% last year and it's just so perfect and fun! It hangs in our entryway.

The mantel all done up! We love our candle holders!

The tv stand!

This is a pumpkin Chuck bought me a couple years ago. If you plug him in he glows green! I just love him cause he's fun but kind of spooky! He gets to sit inside this year since we don't have a plug outlet in the front!

My two favorite scarecrows! I found these dolls a few years ago and this is the first year they needed minor repairs. But Mr and Mrs Scarecrow are loving their spot on the bookcase. And that little ghost figurine is another favorite of mine. Chuck and I were out shopping last year and I fell in love with him, but we were trying to only buy what we needed as we were saving money up and Chuck slyly put him in the basket. I didn't even notice til we were checking out :-)

These shelves are on our dining room wall. I love candles and firmly believe the more the merrier!

The other side of the dining room wall...

And last but not least the bathroom downstairs. We only decorate downstairs now because no one but us goes upstairs.

These guys are on the shelf above the toilet! I'm sure for a guy it might be a little creepy to have them staring at you while you are handling your business but I just love them. I found them at a local Dollar Store a few years ago. They actually stay out until after Thanksgiving!

 

And I am very proud of this guy. I put this together a few years ago. I bought the actual scarecrow but I put together the bag and the fall floral items that are with him. He's survived being attacked by the cats (nearly on a daily basis now) and being smushed a few times in a box. What a trooper! :-)

And just a few sink items. Another fall figurine from the dollar store and a cute candle holder Chuck bought me!

And then of course we have to have wall decorations!

I found these signs awhile ago. I can't even remember where I got them, probably the dollar store as when I first moved out thats where I bought most of my holiday decorations! They really do carry some cute items!

Well that's all folks! We love how decked out our house is from September to January 1...granted we are ready to put things away on New Years but the house is so much more fun during Halloween, Thanksgiving, and of course Christmas!

Anyone else all decorated for Halloween?

A Bit of Updates!

Last weekend and Monday we decided to make a few updates to the house. All minor updates but all make a huge difference to us.

I finally hung a picture in my bathroom. I had this picture up in my bathroom before and in our apartment before and just loved it! With the new color schemes I wasn't sure it would fit in, but alas it works perfectly!

Doesn't it just look great with the towels?!?!?

Another new addition was a WINE RACK!! I scored this beauty at Pier One!!

It fits perfectly on our breakfast bar and since we aren't huge wine drinkers, although I'm learning, we didn't need anything huge! I just love it...And BONUS! It matches our other furniture! Yes I am all about matching!

For awhile now we've been looking for a small fake tree to take up this open space in a corner in the living room! Sunday night we walked to Beverly's to look for glue and frames for our puzzles and scored a HUGE DEAL! They had their fake trees at 75% off! How could we pass up such a deal?!?!?

We got this beautiful fake bamboo tree, which also matches the furniture color LOL, for only $20!! Can you believe it $20!!!

Since we walked to Beverly's from the house Chuck actually decided to carry this baby home instead of me going back the next day with the car! It was quite the sight to see I'm sure, but it's so awesome and it really did finish off that space wonderfully!

Also last week while I was at Pier One, I stopped in at Michaels and picked up this adorable fall decoration! which was on sale! YAY!

And placed it on our mantle shelf :-) I was so excited to have a mantle to decorate!

With this new fall decoration I couldn't help but get out our fall decorations and I started decorating!! I'll post pictures later!

Anyone else doing any home improvements or fall decorating?

My Beautiful Fall Floral Arrangement

So the other day when I went into Michaels to pick up some clay (it was on sale 4 for $5) and I walked out with clay, some vellum stickers, flowers, vase, gems, stamps....the list goes on.
But I scored big time with this vase - originally $24.99, I got it on clearance for $2.99 YAY
Picked up some fall colored gems and three bunches of fall colored flowers.

I first put the gems in the vase


Then I cut all these apart. They are all bundled onto one big stem but I wanted to rearrange them the way I wanted. So it took me some time but I was able to cut them into individual stems.


Then I started to arrange them the way I liked, put them in the vase and TA DA!! I love the way it turned out.

Now I just have to sew the fall table runner to place these beauties on and my table decorations will be complete! I was just so excited to find some beautiful fake flowers since the real ones die way too soon for me. I like having flowers around!