Strawberry- Pineapple Smoothie

We decided to have Smoothies for dinner so we searched for a new recipe.  I found a Strawberry-Pineapple smoothie in Allrecipes.com and then we tweaked it a little bit and doubled the amounts so this is the DOUBLED RECIPE.  

• • 2 cups frozen strawberries
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup of coconut milk
  • 1-1/2 cups pineapple juice
  • 1 cup vanilla yogurt
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 12 ice cubes
  • 
    
  • Place everything in a blender and blend until smooth
  (the original recipe did not have any coconut milk but rather, 1 1/2 cups milk)
  Also, we accidentally left out the sugar but it was really good without it so I'm not sure if I want to really try it with the sugar next time or rather just enjoy the less sweet version.  
  
  

 We bought the 6 pack of little cans of pineapple juice, even thought it's a little more expensive, so we would be able to enjoy the remaining juice at our own pace rather than have to hurry to drink it before it spoils.

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• Here is what our doubled version made in total.  The plastic bottle is about 20 fl oz and the glasses, about 16 each.  
• The glass alone wasn't quite enough to hold us so we had some toast and jelly to make it a more filling meal.

Magazine Holder from Reclaimed Wood

A couple of weeks ago, Simon and I found a weathered pallet in the "Free: Please take me" pile in a front yard.  Everyone has passed those in their neighborhood.  I've noticed that you see those unwanted piles often on Sundays - people do their weekend cleaning on Saturdays I suppose.  We've found a lot of really good stuff in piles like that so I've gotten into the habit of checking them out whenever I notice them.

We almost passed it up because we don't really have the room to just keep wood until we need it.  I remembered though that I had been looking to buy a magazine holder of some sort.  We have so many magazines from Good Housekeeping, Southern Living and some other random things that I like using for recipes and what not that it was becoming a little ridiculous.  So Simon went back and loaded it into the car.  Later that evening, our magazines had a home!  

It's about 1'x1'x1.5'

We bought some rope that we thought looked equally worn at Lowe's. Rope can actually be pretty expensive so we limited to ourselves to the options that could be bought by the foot, but they had exactly what we wanted so it was perfect!

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

I've been planning to make Pumpkin cupcakes whenever the fall season came around and now that it is here I had to find the right recipe.  Then I saw the cover of a November Family Circle Magazine with cupcakes that looked like pumpkins too!

 I thought that was really cute so I decided to put the two together.  

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice together in a bowl and set aside.  (The original recipe called for 2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp ground cloves but because I had the pumpkin pie spice from making the pumpkin spice lattes, after comparing the substitutes that recipe provided, I came up with the cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice ratios I used here).

 Then, in the bowl of a standing mixer combine pumpkin, sugar, brown sugar and oil.  

Add in eggs one at a time mixing well after each.  Then, in two portions, add flour mixture in.   

 Fill muffin pan with paper liners.  I always spray my paper liners, it makes the cupcakes come out of the wrappers neatly every time.  

Bake at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes.  

 Now, for the SUPER orange icing!!  The amounts in the recipe made SO much more frosting that was needed.  I will almost cut that in half the next time - I may even keep the same amount of cream cheese for an extra strong flavor.  

It's hard to see in the picture, but I covered most of the cupcakes with orange crystal sprinkles, (If you are planning on using those for fall decorating, buy them early!! They go fast!) The pumpkin stems are the ends of giant pretzels. 

Well here they are:  My pumpkin pumpkin cupcakes.  The frosting in the recipe I used seemed to be much runnier than the type best for attempting a controlled icing process so I may try a different icing if I were to make the pumpkin designs again.  

Halloween-ing the Apartment

Decorating for holidays is one of my favorite memories as a kid and even since I've been in college I've decorated as much as I could.  Really the only ones I care much about are Halloween and Christmas as far as decorating goes.  Probably because those are the ones I remember the most about from decorating the house with my Mom.  

Our apartment doesn't allow for many decorations when it comes to storing them or putting them out.  So I decided that if I wanted any decorations I would have to make them from things that were already out.

I saw that Walmart was selling M&M's that were candy corn colors.  We also had several empty glass bottles that we were using for decoration.  So here was my first Halloween decoration idea: 

A lot of our picture frames are black so I figured I could use that to my advantage in this situation.  I took out the picture and made a little Halloween drawing on some green construction paper from my scrap booking box with a sharpie.  Then i added some floating eyeballs to the edges with double sided tape.

  

These things placed around the living room combined with a medium sized pumpkin we bought made the house look a little more festive.