when in doubt, bake something

After powering through a bunch of boxes this morning,

I was ready for a break.

My sister told me about a recipe for some really yummy cookies

that she made and I wanted to give them a try.

I couldn't find the exact ingredients,

so I varied it a little and here's what I came up with .

Mix a box of cake mix,

a can of pumpkin,

and half a bag of white chocolate chips together.

Bake for 13 minutes at 350

and voila!

Super duper yuminess!!!

They're really little, so they end up being the perfect size

to just pop one (or maybe 5)

in your mouth.

The original recipe calls for

a box of yellow cake mix

a can of pumpkin

and a bag of cinnamon chips.

I still want to try those,

but I haven't been able to find any cinnamon chips yets.

Oh, and I almost forgot,

I added some chopped pecans to mine too.

And I've got this in the crockpot for dinner.

Here's to new recipes

to get me out of my cooking rut!

views

We went from a view of this...

to a view of this.

And a view of this...

to a view of this.

We're still buried under boxes,

but it feels so good to be

home.

busy, busy, busy

We have had back

to back

to back

houseguests

the last five weeks.

It's been super fun, but now it's back to reality.

Which for us right now involves finishing up packing the house

because we are moving one week from tomorrow.

I took a bunch of pictures of the chaos

we are living in these days,

and some pretty pictures of the leaves changing colors,

but then we packed the thingy I need to get the pictures from my camera

on to the computer and over here to this neglected little blog.

Since I don't like posting without a picture,

I thought I'd share an old picture of the monkey.

Enjoy.

not so wordless Wednesday

Ron and I got to have a wonderful little getaway this past weekend.

It was super relaxing, we got to catch up with

some of our best friends,

we made some new friends,

and my man got to golf on a course that had views like this...

I'm pretty sure that's what heaven will look like for Ron.

Now I'm off to the airport to pick up my mom.

Hope she's ready for the insane amount of work I've got waiting for her.

You just gotta love moms!

And maybe while she's packing up my house

I'll have a chance to post some more pictures from

our super fun fantastic weekend.

colorful morning

As we were leaving our neighborhood this morning,

we saw this hot air balloon

lifting off from our neighbors yard.

Too cool!

After I dropped the kids off and was almost home

I saw it out over some corn fields near our house.

I'd say that's a pretty good way to spend a beautiful morning.

flea market :: edited to add pictures

This was one of the first booths (tents actually) that we saw when we arrived.
I immediately fell in love with the distressed green bed for Kate.
I decided to keep on walking and if it was still there
when we made our way back around...

Long story short, Kate has a new bed!

It was super cold (high 40's)
and drizzling the whole time we were there,
so we didn't stay too long
and I didn't get very many pictures.

But it was still a lot of fun and I'm really glad we went.
We even ran in to a couple girls that I know from church.
They had some awesome art work that I would
have loved to have gotten, but the bed won this time.
Maybe next month.

My sister and I are headed here this morning.

I can't wait!

I'll be back later today with some pictures of what we saw

and hopefully some treasures that we got to bring home.

In the meantime, you can watch this.

It's way cool!

charming handbag

After much frustration,

more time than I cared to spend with my seam ripper,

help from a friend,

and a couple of re-do's...

I finally finished the Charming Handbag.

It wasn't feeling so charming to me by the time I finished it.

But now that I know what I'm doing,

the next one will go much more smoothly.

Besides, the fabric is so darn cute it kind of makes up

for the mistakes I made and the words that may or may not

have slipped from my mouth as I was making it.

I'm just saying...

The bag is from this book if you're interested.