Fall Faves

My favorite season happens to be FALL! I love the crisp, sunny days, changing leaves and festivities that come with this wonderful season. I want to share with you some of my favorite things about Fall...

Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte

This is my favorite coffee drink and I get very excited to hear when the pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. This year my friend Susannah actually called me the first day (September 1st) they started serving them this season to let me know because she remembered just how much I love them. So off I went to get one and it was so delicious!

Boots...Boots...and More Boots!

Yes I love boots, I purchased some boots while they were on sale this past spring and summer (thank you mom for the gray boots!!) and now I am finally able to wear them. They are so fun with dresses, skirts and of course skinny jeans (which are also a new thing for me:)) there are just so many possibilities. Also a big plus is that they keep me so warm. It has been quite chilly this past week and weekend for us and these boots have taken the chill away.

Festivities with Friends

This weekend we got together with some friends and the men did some pumpkin carving. Jordan did the cat pumpkin in honor of our Pazooki. Mark did the crazy monster. Matt drew his pattern freehand onto his pumpkin only to discover that it was rotten...it was very sad when he had to throw it in the woods. All in all we had a great night of laughs and yummy desserts.

Speaking of...

Apple Pie

There were so many yummy desserts there. Tosha made a wonderful pumpkin pie with a yummy cranberry mixture on top then brown sugar whipped cream to top it all off. Denise made some amazing pumpkin bread muffins and sent us all home with a loaf, so good! I brought this apple pie. Actually the Fugi apples were given to us by Matt and Tosha as a gift and they are the most scrumptious apples ever! My recipe called for tart apples and Fugi's are considered sweet so I reduced the amount of sugar in the recipe and it turned out great! I love baking in the fall. It's great cause you actually want the heat from the oven in your house and then you get all the fall aromas swirling around your home.

So I am toasting to all of you with my pumpkin spiced latte, a very happy Fall!

Yummy

This blog has been a long time coming. I made this recipe about 3 weeks ago and took a photo of the finished product knowing my desire to share it with all of you and I finally have a second to sit down and tell you about this yummy recipe. So when I was jobless I had a few cooking shows that I loved watching one of them being Giada at Home. She makes such fun and things they are all Italian and also it's fun to hear all the correct pronunciations of many Italian words. A month ago she made a recipe that is called Stuffed Shells with Crispy Pancetta and Spinach and it looked so good. A few days later I decided to give it a go and make the shells. This was my first shell stuffing attempt and I was excited! I went to the grocery store to get all my yummy ingredients but sadly I could not find the Pancetta which is and Italian style bacon. I could have used American bacon instead but I decided to stick with the spinach and delicious cheeses. Making these shells was so much fun I loved the stuffing part. The only thing I would have done differently would have been to cut the recipe in half it makes a whole lot of shells which we were gladly eating for days. Here is a picture of how they turned out.


I must say that writing this blog reminds me of an amazing movie that I watched twice this summer once with my lovely Mom and then I made my wonderful Husband watch it with me again :). It is Julie and Julia if you have not seen this movie I highly recommend you watching it as soon as possible. It was such a fun movie that was first a book. It is about a girl named Julie who decides to write a blog about her cooking her way through Julia Child's cookbook in 1 year. So as she is cooking all the different recipes she blogs about them. It is so much fun to watch and actually the movie was one of my inspirations for starting this blog.