Sweet November: Autumn Picnic

Hello! I thought for my first project for this years Sweet November week, I'd start by sharing some of the photos from that Fall picnic I packed up last weekend! Nothing says Fall to me more than enjoying lunch outside under the cover of old Elm trees while the afternoon breeze creates just enough chill in the air. With the kids running about gathering up the fallen leaves, I got to set up our first picnic in the park! Below, you'll find lots of photos, my picnic menu outline and (hopefully) some helpful tips for planning your next picnic!

picnic menu

  

turkey & cranberry sandwiches (with/ lettuce, blue cheese, and red onion)

guacamole with blue corn chips

roasted spicy pumpkin seeds

tomato and pepper soup

apples with caramel dip

black plum and mint fruit salad

apricot and strawberry jam cookies

hot apple cider

Tara's top 10 best tips for planning a picnic:

- plan your menu and then create a shopping list & head out shopping 2 days before picnic

- do all prep work the day before; like making sandwiches and preparing salads

- bring along a small cutting board and knife for cutting up fruit

- pack 2 plastic bags, 1 for garbage and 1 for dirty plates/utensils

- look for metal trays at thrift stores (I love them because they are so much sturdier than a paper plate on it's own) and a cup will easily balance on one! 

- keep soup's and drinks bubbling warm by storing them in a thermos

- use vintage linens cut into a rectangle shape with pinking shears in place of paper napkins

- I like to pack cold foods in a ice-cooler and the dry foods in the picnic basket

-   to help transport everything from car to picnic site I have a old red wagon that I like to use, it's kind of nostalgic and super cute full of picnic stuff!

- use a large plastic ziploc bag and fill with; utensils, napkins, wet hand wipes, and the 2 plastic bags

   

 

Hope you enjoyed my Autumn picnic photos, I couldn't wait to share them on the blog! It's never to late to pack up lunch and head out to your favorite park! Be sure to pop into Jessica's blog today for a couple of sweet Fall inspired recipes! 

Sweet November: Welcome to Autumn

Hi there and welcome to day one of Sweet November! Just like the previous Sweet November, Jessica from the crafty Scrumdillydilly blog and I have an entire week full of Autumn inspired projects and posts that we hope you'll enjoy! Since Autumn is my favorite season I thought I would start our first post with some of my favorite things! 

Let's begin with a color-combination. It's no secret that color is always my main inspiration. For me, all projects begin with a simple color combination. I usually spot various embellishments on my work desk and it sparks an idea, or a concept and this year Jessica gave me the challenge of incorporating teal into our palette. So I gladly accepted Jessica's challenge and set about  creating a very neutral nature inspired color palette. 

Some of my favorite things: Color Combination

dove grey - apricot peach - teal blue - chocolate brown - taupe - gold

What can you find on your desk today that would make a spectacular color palette? 

Some of my favorite things: decor

I'll admit that I don't have very much in the way of Autumn/harvest themed decor and most of what I have collected I've made myself - with the exception of this collection on squirrels & chipmunk. The chipmunk was given to me by my Grandmother. As a little girl I remember this little figurine displayed on an end table at Granny's house. I never knew the back story of where she acquired it, or why she loved it so much and even with a chipped ear and broken tail (which Grandpa glued carefully back together) she still really wanted me to have it. So, Chippy came home with me last summer and found a place to stay in my craft room, perched on my dresser to watch over my creating. I'm thinking this chipmunk will be one of my more treasured Autumn decor pieces. 

Some of my favorite things:  Pumpkin Seeds

Need an idea for what to do with all those pumpkin seeds from this week? I love roasting just about everything, and pumpkin seeds are no exception! I've already made a spicy batch of pumpkin seeds but I also wanted to make one that was on the sweeter side. Here's my recipe for Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin seeds! 

Cinnamon Sugar Pumpkin Seeds

2 1/2 cups pumpkin seeds, rinsed & dry 

2 Tbls. butter, melter

3 Tbls. sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

directions:

- Preheat over to 220 F. 

- In a mixing bowl, combine pumpkin seeds and butter, stir to coat. Sprinkle on cinnamon sugar to stir again to cover pumpkin seeds. 

- Cover a baking sheet with foil and spray with non-stick cooking spray

- spread the pumpkin seeds evenly on the baking sheet and roast in oven for about  90 minutes, stirring every 30 minutes

- when the pumpkin seeds are finished cooking they should be dry, crunchy and no longer sticking to one another

I like to cook at a low temperature because: 1. I've been known to forget about what I have in the oven and 2. cooking at a lower temp can be more forgiving.... which is good because of #1. I tend to use the old cooking rule: when you can smell what's in the oven throughout your house, you'll know it's done and your house really will smell like cinnamon sugar, or like doughnuts as my son told me today! 

Some of my favorite things: music

When Peter and I were dating, we would take weekend roadtrips as often as our schedules would allow. Peter had a stash of cd's set aside just for our outings together and an old Frank Sinatra cd ended up being on of my favorites. It seemed like the perfect fit too as the theme music as we wound our way down Oak covered roads and through the historic mining towns of Northern Arizona. I can almost picture a black and white movie filmed in Sedona or Jerome with this song playing in the background. Frank still reminds me of date afternoons in the Fall!




I shared a few of my Fall favorites and I'd love to hear some of yours! Don't forget to pop into Scrumdillydilly to see how Jessica is starting her Sweet November -  Thanks for stopping by!

Etsy ~ Citron Faire

Some of my favorite product photos! (I say it all the time, but I really love styling small products!)  I'm thinking about updating my little Etsy shop on Friday.... it seems like a good day and the excitement from the week should be winding itself down. ;)  I'm also thinking about creating a new section in the shop for just vintage finds.... We'll see if I can fit in another round of photos this week! 

Ok, so I have my checklist for the evening - carving some pumpkins, making a chicken & broccoli casserole, and working a little more on Sweet November ~ it's almost here!

Thanks for stopping in today! ~ Tara

Pumpkin Fest

This past weekend I decided that we needed to go on an adventure up North to Prescott for the annual Pumpkin Festival. We packed a big picnic lunch, grabbed some Halloween costumes and headed out for a day of games, jumpy houses and an afternoon at Prescott's historic Courthouse town square. I love Prescott, it feels like Fall and the best part is that it's a less than 2 hour roadtrip to get there! The kids had a great time,   they even got to do their first cake walk - which Alaina won! She told me about 5 minutes later that her legs were still shaky because she was so excited when they called her name. :)  

We're getting all ready for the big night, I still have a few things left on the checklist to complete and a couple of classroom parties to attend before Wednesday and then it's onto Sweet November! Here's to a hopefully very full and productive week!

Sweet November, part 2

We're bringing it back this year! Jessica and I loved hosting our week long Sweet November blog hop 2 years ago, so much so, that we've been working away on another edition! Starting next Thursday join us for over a week of Autumn inspired projects, crafty tutorials, recipes, fun ideas, photos and a couple of giveaways! I'm also going to be adding some Autumn themed embellishments to my little Etsy shop - I'll do a preview here on my blog closer to the 1st. 

Hope to see you all for what's sure to be a very sweet start to November! 

Autumn Colors

Another month, another color challenge. It felt like Fall here for a few days, rain and 70 degree weather. For us in the desert, that is wool coat, scarves and boots weather. We're wimps. But it put me in such a great mood for pumpkin flavored everything and a color combination that was reminiscent of a rustic Fall afternoon! Details of the challenge are posted on the Crate blog if you all want to check them out. 

the colors are: dove grey, peacock blue and gingerbread brown

I only intended to create 2 layouts but the above layout was such a simplistic idea that it begged to be made for this challenge. My Fall to-do list (below) is taped onto a paper bag so I can add photos from our adventures when I get around to taking them!

I love this page. Chase has a speech delay and really has only started speaking with in the past 9 months. He started off  "talking" as a typical 1 year old will start to do, but as he grew older he also grew quieter until he reached 2 and had lost all verbal communication. After months of trying to locate the correct people to help with his development I was finally put in contact with the right speech therapists and we had Chase tested for possible eye sight and hearing issues. After we had ruled out an array of possible answers to the questions of why he had just stopped talking, it was left up to us, him and an in home speech therapists to get him on the right track. We started speech therapy once a week and on a good week he might be able to mimic a single letter sound. After a disappointing 4 or 5 months of practicing every day and flashcards almost every hour, it was mentioned that sign language would help him more than anything else, and this way he would have some way of communicating. So, Chase and I learned sign language and that was how we talked to eachother. 

When he turned 3, he was tested again for eye and ear issues and still nothing, although by 3 he was able to say 2 words: momma and no - even though I was still the only one who could understand him. He started preschool at a developmental preschool for children who have special needs last September. His first IEP was so simple and basic, we just wanted him to be able to pronounce 4 consonants and 3 vowels sounds. By the end of the year his IEP goal was to have at least 4 working phrases. I found a video on my phone a couple days ago that I had taken of Chase last December on Christmas morning, he still had no speech capability and was signing to me about our dog barking. 

At 4 now, Chase putting together words to form sentences that actually make sense, even if they're not so nice(thanks in part to the older boys in the neighborhood that he idolizes), is incredible. He's basically learned how to speak within just the past 9 months and he still signs to me but only when he's really upset with someone or I've had to ask him - can you tell me what you said again? Speech is one of those things that you just take for granted because we don't have to think about it, we assume that development goes in order; first they crawl, then start pulling up, and then walking happens just like a baby babbling, then mimicking and then talking. It's been a great experience though and a humbling reminder to slow down and really being proud of all the little things he's able to do, like being able to pronounce the "d" sound - which he mastered about 2 weeks ago! 

This picture is what his speech therapist does to his mouth when he's trying to pronounce the "o" sound. :) He loves showing me what he's learned each day at school.

I also created a few art pieces for my piano. I have this small collection of chipmunks from my Grandma that I'll display along with these for Fall. 

I'm working on a fun little project with my crafty twin Jessica this week, with some luck, I'll be back to post about it this week! Thanks for stopping by!