The Halloween After October

So, this year, I only carved ONE measly pumpkin!!! Boooooo!!! :(

The problem with pumpkins around here is that the big-ass mamas aren't sold after Halloween. Instead, for November, people have to make do with sugar pumpkins which are nice for making a little pie, but not so nice for making a BIG pie! Or carving BIG designs! Or roasting BIG amounts of seeds!! 

My mother got me a special pumpkin last month, and when I visited for her birthday, she presented me with "tumor pumpkin" or as I like to call him, Bumpkin. We got another at Aldi's and it's sitting here chillin'. So there are 2 more pumpkins to carve.

Update: My friend fluffy came over to hang out and eat lunch. He brought me more pumpkins! Yay! So now I have 4 big ones and a several small sugar pumpkins. Gonna roast some seeds tonight!

Bath & Body Works Haul! :)

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted!  (Notice how all of my most recent posts seem to have that in common?)  I have been crazy busy over the past few months.  Lately I've been immersing myself in so many new projects that I haven't been as crafty as usual.

However, I've decided to start also doing product reviews more often, since that way I can still touch base with all of you, and share tales of my amazing adventures! :)

My latest and greatest in the world of mail-order has been a purchase at Bath & Body Works.  I have never actually bought anything from B&BW, but my friend Dax loves their antibacterial hand soaps. They go on sale quite frequently, and this time they were going 6 for $20, so I figured I'd give 'em a whirl.  My plan was to keep a few and share some with her.  Don't they look lovely?

I kept the Italian Lavender, Fresh-Picked Herbs, and Bella Flora.  She received the Sweet Pea, Fresh-Picked First Blooms, and Aqua Flora.  The lavender has a lovely light scent, more sweet than medicinal.  (Frankly I love medicine-y lavender and I like it strong!  But this will be nice for the kitchen or bathroom.)  Fresh-Picked Herbs hasn't been opened yet and used on my hands, but a whiff of the bottle is pleasant and green, with a mostly mint vibe.  I haven't even opened the Bella Flora yet.

However, I also bought myself (not pictured!) a 10 fl. oz bottle of Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin shower gel, along with an 8-fl.oz body splash spray in the same scent.  Strangely enough, the two present so differently!  The shower gel is spicy and pumpkininny (thanks, Mr. Show!), whereas the splash doesn't seem to have as much pumpkin power.  There's definitely cinnamon and vanilla-like sweetness, almost like an apple pie, but also I detect a deep musky note as well.  It's not a bad fragrance at all.  The sillage is good and few sprays lasts a nice long time.  I like putting it in my hair and a halo of fragrance all around me for hours!  The best part was the price: The full-sized shower gel was a measly $4.75 on clearance, and the big bottle of scent was just $5.25.  I guess this is because it's last year's fall lineup, but it's great to enjoy such a fab scent in the middle of summer -- and dreaming of those pumpkin picking days to come! :)  So if you're a pumpkin lover like me, get thee to the Bath & Body Works website and grab some pumpkin goodness! :)

Also, I want to mention that the lining of the B&BW shipping box was super cute.  So of course, being the box-hoarder that I am, I couldn't just toss it.  I HAD to use it, because hey, free box!  Instead, I have turned it inside out and taped the box back together, so now it's gracing my bedroom bookshelf in all of its gingham glory:

I may try placing it on a shorter shelf so that it's more like a drawer type thing instead of just a pretty box.  In fact, I'm enjoying the box so much that I might just wait 'til fall and buy some more B&BW to share with Dax (or purchase early for Christmas!) and see if they have a sexy fall-themed box liner for me to enjoy heartily. :)

First Pumpkin of the Season!

Well, I am proud to announce that this week, I was able to get myself to Agway with some friends and purchase the lovely pumpkin below.  (No, it wasn't pre-cut; I did that yesterday.)  It came without a stem, but I like it anyway!

I was thinking about doing a jack o' lantern featuring my business name, but decided to do a PGS jack o'lantern this week instead, just for a bit of practice.  I actually think it turned out fairly well.  The only tools I used were my pen, my knife, & pumpkin scraper.  The letters were freehand -- the little loopy part of the "P" in "Pretty" fell off while I was cutting it.  I have another picture where I stuck it back on with a piece of skewers left over from summer's choochacheechachoo, but I was too lazy to put it up. ;) I wound up having a ton of little pieces of leftover pumpkin from the letters, so I'll be putting those in my crockpot today.

Anyway, here's the first of many of the 2011 season.  I'm already trying to decide what to do with my next one!

Mmmm, smell those fresh pumpkin guts! :)

It's Pumpkininny!

I roasted my final Fall '10 pumpkin this week.  Actually, I had 2 left, but one of them was totally rotten in the middle.  It was majorly nasty and oozy and black -- I should've thought to take a picture of it! One thing I *wanted* to do was save some of the orange hopefully-non-botulism-infested seeds to toast in the oven, as many frugalistas might try to salvage something that seems unsalvagable to people with a higher degree of sanity, but Fuzzband refused to allow any part of the offending item to remain in the house.  Amid my cries of "it's still good, it's still good!" he unceremoniously dumped the black mess into the trashcan and glowered whenever I dared approach!

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to see that after over 2 months, the other pumpkin that I got at the end of October was still fresh and in great eating condition (it was beginning to get just a teensy bit dry and stringy on the inside, but even my spouse could see that it was, indeed, "still good" for realz).  I roasted it to perfection, soft and sweet and slightly charred around the edges.  To celebrate, I decided *not* to bake a pumpkin pie, but instead of half-assedly throw together a tribute dessert that was much easier, lighter, and still evocative of my prime pumpkin days -- pumpkin pudding -- just one bite will have you dancin' around like Josh Fenderman!







PUMPKIN PUDDING

INGREDIENTS:
1 "small" package of instant pudding mix (vanilla will do nicely)
1 1/2 cups of milk
1 cup of cooked pumpkin, squash, or other orange-hued gourd, fresh, frozen or canned
1/2 to 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
2-3 pinches of nutmeg
1-2 pinches of cloves

Empty the pumpkin into a large bowl (and puree the living snot out of it with a hand mixer if you aren't using canned pumpkin). Add the milk slowly and continue mixing until about half the milk has been added.  Add pudding and spices, continuing to stir.  Then, slowly add the rest of the milk.

VARIATIONS AND NOTES (for those who are curious):  You could substitute butterscotch pudding for the vanilla, though I haven't tried that yet -- I'll also bet you can get awesome results subbing your favorite vegan mix and adding the pumpkin & spices to the final product.  Usually I make this with sugar free pudding mix and 1% milk; the "lighter" milks will make this come out a bit on the thin side, but it's still a very good substitute for pumpkin pie if you're feeling lazy. :)  I made a full-sugar version for a friend and poured it into a ready-made graham cracker crust... it made a pretty pie, though it was a bit softer than I'd've liked.  The lighter version with sugar-free pudding and 1% was served in a bowl without pie crust, and tasted pretty darn good by itself.  WARNING:  Don't use sweet potato in this; when it's whipped, it makes the pudding gluey and weirdly dense.  (Unless you like that sort of thing, of course.)

The Ghosts of Halloweens Past

Halloween tends to be one of my craftiest times of year!  But this year, well, a lot of shit happened, so I didn't get to be as domestically productive as I'd have liked.  Instead, I decided to reflect on some of the fun things I've done on previous Halloweens.  

One of the things I enjoy the most during this time of year is pumpkincrafting.  I love carving jack o' lanters, cooking pumpkins, making cakes, pies, and cookies out of yummy fall gourds -- as well as tasty savory dishes.  And let's not forget pumpkin seeds!  But the first matter of business is about carving the pumpkin.

Yeah, I know, this isn't a jack o' lantern in the traditional sense... it's a cucumber that I cut in half, carved an evil little face on, and backed up with a tea light.  However, I consider it one of the best jack o' lanterns I've ever done because it's so adorably sinister! ;)

Here's one of the more intricate jack o' lanterns that I've managed to do fairly well.  I highly recommend the carving kits and books by Pumpkin Masters -- they'll really help you master the pumpkin.  Even novices can churn out beautiful finished products in a relatively short time!  This spooky mask pattern was daunting to look at, but it actually turned out to be pretty easy.  Part of the eyebrow on the right side broke off during the carving, but I used a toothpick to put it back into place and no one was the wiser.

Another pattern by Pumpkin Masters.  This vampire theme was by far the easiest one in the book that year (which I believe was circa 2007), but it looked very dramatic with the lights dimmed.  The big open space in the pattern also made it really easy to add and position multiple candles.

Here's a winking emoticon from 2006 -- it's my own simple freehand design.

I'm still searching for a better shot of this "candle basket" that I made out of a pumpkin.  It was easy as hell; just cut out two sides of the pumpkin, scrap well, and fill with some candles.  It looked pretty and lasted longer than I thought it would.  I've heard that you're not supposed to consume old jack o' lanterns after candles have been burning inside them, but with this candle basket, I was able to cut enough pumpkin to cook for dinner that night.  So this one is both pretty and practical!

  

I also loooooove Halloween candy; I look forward to it all year!  These spooky marshmallow peeps imparted a really festive touch to an ordinary cup of hot chocolate.  Who can resist having an excuse to add extra marshmallows? ;)

Cemetery photography is a serious interest of mine.  As most of the images in this entry, this 2007 picture was taken with a crappy cell phone camera.  I wanted to share it because of thost gorgeous leaves... ahh, you can almost smell that crisp fall air!  

Fuzzband and I went to the 3-D theatre re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas one year -- I think it was 2006 -- and we had a blast.  I wish they would put it in theatres every year!  The theatre people painted a really cool "movie poster" in the theatre window.  This was the best picture I got on my old cell phone.

And of course, what Halloween would be complete without a mysterious black-furred familiar?  Here's mine... Seamus the bunny, getting his routine face cleaning!  (He had weepy eyes that needed our attention from time to time.)  He and his bunny wife, Aggie, lived with us from 2003 until their passing in 2009 (Aggie died at the end of June, and Seamus departed a month later).  Vets are estimated his age to be about 10 or 11 at the time; he had a multitude of illnesses, but he was a sweet and wonderful soul who brought so much love and joy into all our lives.  We adopted him and Aggie from New England's very own House Rabbit Network in 2003; he used to belong to a homeless woman.  Seamus was a noseless bunny with broken toes and bites in his ear -- but he was such a cool, mellow dude!  Seamus and Aggie are in my heart, and I still think of them and miss them every day.  This picture was taken in 2006; I'm sure I'll post better bunny pictures sometime though. :)