Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins

The seasons are changing, fall is in the air and while this isn't my favorite time of year (I'm a summertime girl) it's my second fav!

I love the flavor of pumpkin, which is why I really look forward to this time of year! Pumpkin is everywhere!

So...this morning I went in search of a pumpkin muffin recipe. I found a couple that were decent recipes, but none that I fell in love with. I wanted this to be healthy for a breakfast option this week so I set to making my own recipe and I have to say they turned out deeeelish!!

 

Ingredients

 

4oz. unsweetened applesauce

1 cup sweetener of choice (I'll discuss this more below)

2 eggs

2 very ripe bananas, mashed

1/2 cup plain, fat free Greek yogurt

1/2 cup pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves (optional)

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

 

 

 

Directions

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

 

Combine applesauce and sweetener of choice in a medium sized mixing bowl with an electric mixer. As you can see in the photo above, I opted to use Splenda Essentials. Lately, I've been trying to go the all natural route and stay away from artificial sweeteners, but I'm not one to throw something away and I had this sitting in my cupboard so I opted to use it. Honestly, you could use white or brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, agave nectar, stevia or whatever you'd like to sweeten it with. If you're going to use honey, maple syrup or agave I would suggest lowering the amount to 3/4 cup or maybe even 1/2 as it may come out way too sweet with a full cup. Do you have a go-to all natural sweetener that you use? If so, please share with me! I'm not a fan of stevia at all - I don't like the bitter aftertaste it leaves.

 

Add eggs into the sugar and applesauce mixture, beating until combined. Add bananas, Greek yogurt, pumpkin and vanilla, beat until smooth. (There will still be some lumps from the banana and that's okay.)

 

 

 

Into the same bowl, add the flours, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and cloves. Use a large spoon to mix batter just until combined. (If you have an aversion to all purpose flour, you can most definitely use 2 cups of whole wheat or a combination of whole wheat and coconut flour or spelt flour. It's up to you, but if you omit the all purpose flour make sure to spray your muffin liners with non-stick cooking spray. I've found that coconut flour and spelt flour like to stick to everything. Whole wheat is a pain sometimes as well. That being said, if you mix any of these flours with all purpose flour then you shouldn't need the non-stick cooking spray.)

 

 

 

Line 24 regular sized muffin tins with paper liners. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full and bake for 20 - 25 minutes. Muffins are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

 

If you make these, let me know how they turn out! Did you change anything? Add anything? Take anything away?

 

You'll have some pumpkin left in your can...take it and put it into an airtight container and throw it in the freezer. I'll be back on Tuesday with another pumpkin recipe using that bit of leftover frozen pumpkin!!

 

Ciao for now, bellas! XOXO

 

 

 

Click the Magic button for Nutritional Information & Weight Watchers Points!

Zucchini Ribbons with Homemade Tomato Sauce

So...I've been MIA for the entire summer! I know - I'm so incredibly sorry! The summer months were hectic and went by entirely too fast! I found myself constantly thinking, 'I need to blog about this', or 'I bet my blog followers would love this'! I had the greatest intentions, but my follow-through was shameful!

Anyway, school is back in session and the routine has been established again. Things are starting to calm down a bit and I feel like I can finally breathe again. Phew!

So, today I have a great, healthy, meatless recipe to share! I was really surprised by how delicious this dish was! The entire family asked for seconds - that's never a bad sign.

Zucchini Ribbons with Homemade Tomato Sauce

My garden has exploded with tomatoes lately and I really didn't feel like canning them, so I decided to make this simple tomato sauce. I also had two zucchini and green peppers from the garden that needed to be used up. Let's get to the recipe!

Ingredients

For the Sauce

-6 medium sized tomatoes of your choice (I used some heirloom and some roma), chopped (as fine or as chunky as you'd like)

-1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

-1 small (or 1/2 large) sweet onion, chopped

-2 small (or 1 large) green pepper, chopped

-3 cloves garlic, chopped (or less depending on your preference)

-salt & pepper to taste

-1 teaspoon dried oregano

-1 teaspoon dried basil

-1/2 teaspoon dried parsley

For the Zucchini Ribbons

-1 large (or 2 small) zucchini

-salt & pepper to taste

-fresh grated parmesan cheese

Instructions

Add the tomatoes, olive oil, onion, green pepper, garlic and seasonings to a heavy sauce pan and stir to combine. Turn heat on medium-low and bring to a boil. Once bubbling, reduce heat to low and simmer, covered for at least one hour. After one hour, remove from heat and let sit for at least ten to twenty minutes with the lid still in place. 

Using a vegetable peeler, start peeling strips of the zucchini lengthwise until you can't peel anymore then set aside. Bring a large pot of water to a boil with salt and pepper. Once boiling, add zucchini and stir for 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat and drain, then blot with clean paper towels to absorb some extra moisture. 

To serve, place zucchini ribbons on plate then spoon tomato sauce over top. Garnish with fresh grated parmesan cheese and that's it! 

This sauce recipe is incredible versatile and can be adjusted to make a larger or smaller batch - it all depends upon your preference. It freezes really well, so if you make a large batch, you can most definitely freeze the leftovers for a later date. 

If you decide to give this recipe a shot, let me know how you like it! I had intended on trying some quinoa meatballs with this dish as well, but I ran out of time! So...be on the lookout for a quinoa meatball recipe soon! 

See you soon! Ciao, bellas!

More Mother's Day....DIY Canvas Tote Bag

Well my aim was to get this up on Thursday, but as you can see...that didn't happen! Better late than never, right?

This little project is so simple that you could run out to the craft store now and pick up the supplies and have it completed in under 30 minutes!

Once again, I bought the supplies for this at A.C. Moore. Here's what you need:

Materials:
Canvas Tote Bag
Iron-On Printable Transfer Paper
Iron
Pillowcase
Scissors
Parchment paper

Once you have everything rounded up, you'll need to create the design that will go on the bag. I originally wanted to use Wordle but my printer didn't like the site and wouldn't print my word cloud. So....I had to find another site that did word clouds and I'm kind of glad I did. Wordle is AWESOME, but you can't really do shapes. With ImageChef you can and there are tons of shapes to choose from!

There are pros and cons with both sites. For example, on ImageChef you can't print right from the site. You have to save your image as a photo and then insert it into MS Paint or MS Word. I chose Word because I'm very familiar with it. It's an extra step, but I was willing to take it to get that heart shape!

Here's a screen shot of my word mosaic on ImageChef.

 

 

And here's what it looks like saved from an image on my hard drive.


 

 

As I stated above, I inserted this into a blank MS Word document and then printed it out on the transfer paper. Make sure to read the instructions on the transfer paper before using it. I know that sounds silly, but there's a right side and a wrong side to print on.

 

After you have your image printed onto the transfer paper then you can get prepped to iron. At this point you'll want to cut the image out into the shape that you'd like it to be. Keep in mind that if you have white transfer paper the edges will not blend into fabric that isn't white. So if you want the lines clean and crisp make sure you use a good set of scissors. I left mine a little jagged because I liked the way it looked.  

 

The transfer paper you purchased should have specific instructions on how to proceed with transferring the image to your fabric. I'm going to give you the run-down of what the product I bought said.

 

Pre-heat your iron to the hottest cotton setting you can and turn off the steam! Place a pillowcase over your ironing board and put your tote bag on top of that. Run the iron over the tote bag to remove any wrinkles.

 

Now, the transfer paper should have a backing. It took me almost 10 minutes to get the backing paper off the first heart. I was getting extremely frustrated, but I just had to find a good point and try to get the backing paper to lift. For some reason, the second one wasn't as tough as the first one.

 

Next, you'll want to set the image on your tote bag. At this point, you can put it wherever you like. I toyed with tilting the hearts on mine a bit, but in the end, as you can see above, I left them centered and straight. I didn't use a ruler for this - I just eyeballed it.

 

Cut a sheet of parchment paper slightly bigger than your image and lay it over top of the image. Next, take you iron and lightly pass over the image going slowly and applying very light pressure. Do this at least 5 times applying light pressure. Make sure to get all around the edges and/or any corners of your image. Then, go over it again 5 more times with very firm pressure, again making sure to pay close attention to the edges and/or corners of the image.

 

The instructions that came with my transfer paper made it seem like the parchment paper would stick to the image, but it did not. Once you've made your final 5 passes, let it cool for a moment and remove the parchment paper. If you plan to do more than one bag, you can reuse the sheet of parchment.

Here's one of mine hot off the press.

At first, I thought it didn't take or I printed the image on the wrong side of the paper, but once I ran my hand over the image I could tell that it would be okay. It feels as if the image is part of the fabric now.

I chose the word cloud because of the Subway Art I also did for Mom and MIL. If you missed that post you can find it here. I love the word cloud idea and v1.6 was great with helping me come up with adjectives to describe his Grammies!

So there you have it! Super simple and handmade Mother's Day gift that they're sure to love! The only thing I would change is probably find a transfer paper that doesn't have a white background OR dye the canvas bags another color. Hindsight is always 20/20!

I hope you enjoyed this little craft! To all the Mamas out there...Happy Mother's Day! :)

Ciao for now, bellas!

 

Mother's Day...already?

Sheesh *wipes brow* where has the time gone? I started this blog to help myself get organized in my life! When life throws you a curveball (or ten) even the best of intentions fall to the wayside. I'm having a very hard time juggling life, my part time job and blogging! I'm not giving up though!!

So please let me apologize for my lack of posting! I have several blog topics for posts coming up! Today, though, let's talk about Mother's Day! I can't believe it's already May! YIKES! 

I went on a search for cute, handmade Mother's Day crafts the other day and I settled with some subway art and canvas tote bags. Today, after v1.6 got on the school bus, I came back home determined to get at least one task accomplished AND blog about it! All in one day!! YAY! Now, onto my little subway art boards!

 

 

I got inspiration for this post from many blogs, but How Does She had a great tutorial that I followed for these! I didn't do everything exactly the same way, but you'll find exact details below on how I did these.

First, you'll need some tools!

I found everything I needed at A.C. Moore. Any craft supply store should have these materials though. I went to A.C. Moore because I had a coupon!

Materials Needed:
2 sheets 8 1/2 x 11 scrapbook paper (you can get plain or patterned - your choice)
2 wooden plaques (the ones above are 4x6)
1 foam brush (I bought 2 because I'm a nutcase and wanted to be overly prepared)
Mod Podge for paper (note about this below)

You'll also need access to a computer and printer.

The first thing I did was go on a hunt for some chalkboard-esque fonts. I found an awesome site that has free fonts called Fontspace. The font I used in the boards is called Mom's Diner.

Next, I opened a blank Microsoft Word document and started playing around. You can use whatever words you'd like to describe your Mom, Grandma, Aunt, etc. These little boards make great gifts! Here's a screenshot of my Word document:

 

 

I would recommend printing a draft copy of this first on a plain piece of paper to make sure it will fit on your board. That's what I did and I'm glad I did because I had to go back and make everything just a tiny bit smaller.

 

In hindsight, I could have added a ton more words, but I like the simplicity of this AND I was working with text boxes in this document. They sometimes don't always like to cooperate and like to overlap, etc. So I tried to keep it simple.

 

After I had everything where I wanted it, I printed it out on my scrapbook paper. Then I had to figure out how to cut it out so it would fit. Since the top of the plaque's edges are beveled slightly I flipped the plaque over and traced it, as seen in the photo below.

 



 

It didn't turn out too bad, but I really should have dug out my scrapbook cutter and cut the edges with that rather than scissors. If you don't have access to a scrapbook cutter then just go ahead and use scissors - just make sure you cut inside the lines. I ended up having to trim a little off the edges to make it fit, but they still turned out cute!

Next, I applied a thin layer of the Mod Podge to the back of the paper and then stuck it onto the plaque and pressed firmly to get it to stick.

Here's my note about Mod Podge - I have never once in my life used the stuff and when I was standing in the Mod Podge aisle with tears in my eyes because I realized there were literally twenty different types of the stuff, the hubs calmed me down and pointed out that there was Mod Podge specifically for paper. I gave him a big hug, dried my tears and then went in search of the next item on my list. That being said, I have absolutely no idea if regular Mod Podge would work with this project, but from seeing other people's posts about DIY crafts - I'm pretty sure the stuff is versatile! Now, the real question is...did I just waste $8 by purchasing the 'paper' version or should I have just bought the regular stuff? I don't know if I can use the 'paper' version on photos or other items? I have to do my research I guess!

So that was it - I repeated the process for the second board and it literally took no time at all to make these. Looking back, I really wish I would have painted the wood before sticking the paper on there because I think they would've looked even cuter with a white distressed paint, but oh well! Lesson learned! If I do these again for Christmas gifts I'll know to paint the boards first, and I may just sponge some white paint around the edges of the plaque to jazz it up a bit! Who knows!!

Next, I'm onto canvas tote bags personalized with an iron-on transfer! My aim is to have these done and post about them on Thursday! I'll try my best!

Tell me, have you had any fun adventures or made any cool crafts with Mod Podge?

Ciao for now, bellas!

For the love of makeup...

When it comes to makeup, I'm a junkie! I've admitted it - I know I have a problem, but I don't want help! My vanity is overflowing with enough makeup products for 10 people! I have added my vanity to my never ending reorganization list - I'm hoping to get there this summer sometime. My computer desk/command center was a huge task and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to reorganize the vanity so it makes sense for me! You can view my post on reorganizing my computer desk here. I have more coming with the computer desk this summer. The command center was only the beginning!

Anyway, back to makeup...

I've always known about Urban Decay's products, but I've never ventured into their realm until just recently. I started with the Naked 2 palette, and once I tried it, I was in love! It's such a versatile palette.

When it came in the mail, I couldn't wait to try it! It came with a super cute lip gloss too! I toyed with the different shades and couldn't find the right combination for me - so I took my search to Youtube! There are so many videos on the naked palettes! I spent quite some time viewing, but I found a couple videos that had really great tutorials for everyday makeup wear with the Naked 2 palette!




I like this look a lot. I do a couple of things a little differently, but I'll add that information at the bottom!

Here's another one that's a super cute smoky/gold-ish tutorial!




I have worn both of these looks with my Naked 2 palette and both looks are very versatile. I have a couple of preferences for mascara and primer though.

For mascara, I'm absolutely in love with Maybelline Volum' Express Falsies Flared! I have tried countless mascaras and this is what works best for me! It thickens and lengthens my lashes beautifully. You can find it here.

Also, for a primer, I use Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion in Original. The tube is small and can seem expensive at $20, but I've had mine for a few months now and have hardly even put a dent in it. You know the term, 'just a dab'll do it'? That's the case when it comes to this stuff! You only need a tiny bit! You can find the primer here.

Do you have any favorite beauty products? Drop me a line in the comments and let me know or email me!

Ciao for now, bellas! :)

Disclaimer: the above is all my personal preference. I am not being paid to endorse Urban Decay or Maybelline.

More Summer Lovin'

Ahhhhhh.....spring! Can you smell it? I know parts of the country are getting bombed with snow right now, but here in the North, we are actually having some decent temperatures! Of course, as I type this right now it's pouring rain and the temperature has dropped a good ten degrees, but that's okay! It's not snowing and that's exciting!

I had great plans of getting v1.6 on the bus this morning and then getting some fun shots of the spring flowers that are popping up, but the rain moved in and I wasn't really looking to use the warranty on my camera anytime soon - so I think I'll stay inside and keep dry! :)

I promised everyone a recipe to accompany the BBQ chicken bites that I posted the other day - you can see that recipe here. I don't have a picture of this recipe for you, but I'll be making it again in the next couple of weeks so I'll post a picture the next time I make it.

I went in search of a 'salad' recipe after I was sick of the mayo based pasta salad and potato salad. I found a version of this and decided to try it and it's been so long now I can't remember where I found the original recipe. I've changed a few things up through the years though.

Ranch Potato Salad

Ingredients

1 - 5lb. bag of red potatoes

1/4 - 1/2 cup low fat ranch dressing

1 package real bacon bits

2 cups low fat sharp cheddar cheese

1 tsp black pepper

1 - 2 tsp garlic powder (or minced garlic)

Directions

Bring a large stock pot filled with water to a rolling boil. Chop potatoes into small pieces. You do not have to peel them unless you want. Add chopped potatoes to boiling water and cook until tender. This can take about 10-15 minutes depending upon how big your chunks are. Drain potatoes and set aside for an hour or more to cool. You can speed this process by putting them in the refrigerator. 

To a large serving bowl add ranch dressing, garlic, pepper, bacon bits and 1 cup cheese. Add potatoes and stir until combined. At this point you may need to add more ranch dressing if you prefer. Once everything is combined add the rest of the cheese and stir again. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight. 

And that's it! I have made this salad so many times and I get compliments every time I bring it to a party! 

What's your go-to dish that you bring to parties or potlucks? Let me know in the comments below or email me! 

I'm hoping to have a new post in a couple of days about Urban Decay's Naked 2 palette! Have you tried it yet? Are you new to Urban Decay? I'm brand new to UB, but let me tell you - I am in love with their products! 

I hope it's spring-like wherever you are! Ciao for now, bellas! ;)

Summer Lovin'

Well life has been so hectic lately! Spring seems like it's always just out of reach here in the Northeast, but we've had a taste here and there! Not so much today - it's pouring rain and there is ice gathering on the trees! YUCK! I'm ready for summer sunshine and pool time!

Thinking about summer gets me thinking about recipes that I want to revive! This is not the most healthy recipe, but it's delicious as a meal or an appetizer! Plus you can pair it with a delicious potato salad! I'll post the recipe for later!

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 bag BBQ potato chips of your choice (the 9.5oz bags work best, but you could get away with a smaller bag)
1 egg
2 Tbsp water

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut chicken into bite sized pieces and set aside. In a large cereal bowl whisk egg with water until combined and frothy. Dump BBQ potato chips into reseal-able plastic bag and crush into small pieces.

Starting with 4-5 pieces of chicken, dunk into egg mixture until coated then drop into reseal-able bag and use hands to press crushed chips into chicken. Place on baking sheet or baking stone then repeat with remaining chicken until all pieces are coated. You will have some crushed chips remaining in the bag. Sprinkle over chicken before baking.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink in centers. Serve with BBQ sauce or Ranch dressing for dipping.

Here's a photo of the uncooked chicken bites on my well used baking stone! The chicken isn't completely coated with the chips, but that's okay. They bake up nice and crisp and the chicken is so juicy! 

I'm not sure why, but this recipe just makes me think of summer! The potato salad that goes with it is divine as well! I'll get that posted in a couple of days! 

What's your favorite summertime recipe? Leave it in the comments or email me! Also, you can click the 'Magic' button at the bottom of this post to take you to a printable version of this recipe along with nutrition information as well! 

Ciao for now, bellas!