Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars

I'm pretty sure Debby Boone was referring to pumpkin and chocolate when she sang, "It can't be wrong, when it feels so right..."

{My apologies to those of you in your 20's...you'll need to google it.} ;)

Because I can't get enough pumpkin and pumpkin season is about to end, I give you...

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars
{recipe adapted from Everyday Food, Nov 2004}

2 c all-purpose flour (could use white whole wheat here)
1 & 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp cloves
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp coarse salt
1 c unsalted butter, room temp
1 & 1/4 c sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
1 c pumpkin puree
12 oz chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Line bottom and side of 13x9" pan with foil, leaving an overhang on all sides.

Whisk together the flour, spices, baking soda and salt.

Cream together the butter and sugar on medium-high until smooth. Beat in the egg & vanilla. Beat in the pumpkin puree (it will look curdled...do not worry).

Add the dry ingredients and mix on low just until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Using an offset spatula (or the back of a spoon), spread the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for about 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean (or with a few crumbs, not batter). Cool completely in the pan.

Lift the bars from the pan using the foil. Peel off the foil and cut into squares.

{They are delicious!!!}

Alright...bring on the gingerbread!!!

Related posts:

• pumpkin whoopie pies
• chocolate pumpkin mini-muffins
• pumpkin spice cake balls
• pumpkin cream cheese

T6EHD3DQN6AZ

Thankful For So Many Things....

Happy Thanksgiving Week!  This is sure to be a busy, family focused week for many of us, myself included.  I am going to apologize right up front if I do not post again for several days.

Today's Bitten by the Bug challenge is to use the cornucopia from Paper Doll Dress Up.  I, of course, made a simple Thanksgiving themed card.  I used three cartridges to complete this card, PDDU, Plantin Schoolbook, and Winter Woodlands. 

I welded a rectangle from PSB to two cornucopias from PDDU (one flipped).  The word Thankful was cut using Winter Woodlands, my current favorite font.  I then cut two additional cornucopias and used pop dots to layer them on the front of the card.  I cut the fruit in three colors of cardstock.  I then used copic markers on the cornucopia and fruit.

Monday is my 28th wedding anniversary.  I will be going to Atlanta on Tuesday to pick up my younger son from college.  On Wednesday the older two children will come home. We may be having friends from work over on Thanksgiving... AND their new baby!!!  And at some point we may be seeing Crissie, Aaron's sweet, sweet girlfriend.  I am currently wrapping Christmas presents (to "hide" them in the office), and finalizing my menus for the week! And I am a sick, sick woman because I love it!!!  :-)

I hope that each of you has a lovely Thanksgiving!!!!!

BBTB - Cornucopia challenge

Well, the weekend is over and hope you had a fabulous one! And that means it's time to reveal a new challenge for Bitten By The Bug. This week, our hostess is the amazingly talented Donna Mundinger. If you have not visited Donna's blog, you are missing out! This girl is so talented with the Cricut and the Design Studio Software! She constantly amazes the heck out of me!! Well, this week, Donna challenged us to use the Cornucopia from Paper Doll Dress Up. Oh sheesh...the cornucopia...the horn of plenty.....Now.... no offense Donna, but I have always hated cornucopias. LOL! I don't know why, I just don't like them. And had it not been for this challenge, I would never have cut it. Never. LOL! So I did my best, but what can I say. I don't like it. I didn't want to do the typical fruit in it, so I played around a little, and of course the cornucopia represents things being "plentiful". So I wanted to with everyone a season full of love, So I filled mine with hearts.

Now even though I don't like the cornucopia, I have to say though, that I enjoyed the heck out of myself making it! Why?? Because this entire card was made using my brand new Gypsy!!! I'm so excited to have one of these machines that I can hardly stand it! So I've got most of my cartridges loaded onto it, and I am amazed at how much I love this little machine! No more searching through handbooks, no more changing cartridges. This thing is fantastic!!! And it's available right now over at Hallmark Scrapbook! The shaped card and the frames were cut using the Gypsy and A Child's Year cartridge. This is quickly becoming my favorite cart for frames. It's amazing! The hearts were cut using Plantin Schoolbook. The paper used was Basic Grey and cardstock is Bazzil. I got a little irked with the hearts cause I used a coordinating orangish paper from the same pack of Basic Grey, but for some reason, it photographed pinkish, and I could not photoshop it to the true color, no matter what I did. I used some white chalk ink around the edges of the black frames. That's it for this card. Simple, easy, and I'm really glad it's done. LOL! Please be sure and pop over to Bitten By The Bug to check out the fabulous creations by the rest of the team. Thanks so much for stopping by to see me today, and hope to see you back again soon! hugs!

You're Tea-riffic featuring 60's Magnolia Tilda

Happy Sunday everyone! Hope you're enjoying your weekend! This is one of the Magnolia-licious raining cards I sent out last month and never posted. Both of these stamps are from the Yummy For Your Tummy collection that is available right now at Magnolia-liciouss! I used #385 60's Tilda and #627 tea cup all colored with Copic markers. The circles were cut out with Nestabilities and I did some machine stitching as well as some faux stitching. I cut the hanger off the tea pot charm and glued it to the center of the word circle which was created on the computer. Added some silk ribbon with a big old button, and this one was done!

Thanks so much for stopping by to see me today, and hope to see you back again soon! Enjoy the rest of your weekend! HUGS!

CWTC Crafty Girl Saturday - Guest Designer

I am dreaming of a white Christmas, with every cupcake that I bite!!!!  It is Crafty Girl Saturday at Christmas with the Cricut and I have been busy in the kitchen AND in the scrap room!!!  Here in South Carolina the only snow we will see at Christmas will be cut with my cricut and wrapped around snowy white frosted cupcakes. 

These cupcake wrappers were so easy to make; I was disappointed that I had never thought of this before.  To create wrapper number one I placed a two inch circle from the From My Kitchen cartridge on the Design Studio mat and added evenly spaced  (1.9 inches wide and 2.3 inches high) snowflakes from the Winter Woodlands cartridge at evenly spaced intervals around the circle. 

To create snowflake number two I placed a two inch circle from the From My Kitchen cartridge and added five evenly spaced snowflakes (1.75 inches wide and 1.5 inches high) from Winter Woodlands.  I cut both of the snowflake cupcake wrappers in Bazzill Bling cardstock.

Assembling the cupcake wrappers is super-easy.  I affixed a tiny glue dot to one side of each snowflake and after folding the snowflakes toward the center, I overlapped the edges to seal. 

To create the embellishing sticks I cut scalloped circles from the FMK cartridge (two per stick).  I embellished the scalloped circles with snowflakes from the WW cartridge and cupcakes from FMK.  I chose chocolate brown cardstock to cut the cupcakes and white cardstock to cut the frosting - this could be especially useful if you are serving several flavors of cupcakes.  The sticks can be personalized to match the cupcake flavors.

I affixed the embellished circles to long plastic party sticks (near the toothpicks at your local store).  I made the ebellishment sticks double sided to ensure that the buffet table looks great from all angles.  Each cupcake was speared with two sticks, a flavor stick and a snowflake stick.

Have you been by Jeannie's blog, A Place For My Cards, yet today?  I can't wait to see Jeannie's Crafy Girl project - she is so amazing. I have to say that sharing our week as Guest Designers has been wonderful.  Jeannie is an amazing artist and a truly kind and caring woman.  I have so enjoyed having her as a team mate.  If you are not already a fan of her blog this would be a great time to sign up!

The cut file for the cupcake wrappers and embellishments has been added to the downloadable cut files section of my blog under the title of Snowflake Cupcake Set.  I hope that you enjoy these easy cupcake wrappers and that they look fabulous on your holiday buffet!

Quite Rightly

I wanted to finish this focus on mustard, a hue that seems to be a rather 'mellow yellow," with a round-up of images that feature this color paired with shades of blue-- a pairing that sounds like it could be very primary, but in it's execution, is anything but!

Top: House Beautiful. Middle- L: Nate Berkus R: Anna Williams Photography.
Bottom: Amy Neunsinger.

And because I used the word "swoon" in two of the three previous posts about this shade, the last photo in this group seems to be a very fitting close to this mustard mania!

CWTC Fancy Card Friday - Guest Designer

It is Fancy Card Friday at Christmas With The Cricut!  I have to admit that I am not a fancy card maker... my cards are normally more in-line with Simple Card Monday.  But here goes:  today's card features multiple layers and multiple embossing techniques while showcasing cricut stamping and this week's two featured cartridges at CWTC, Winter Woodlands and From My Kitchen.

The A2 base card was cut in white cardstock with a light pink snowflake print cardstock topper.  An A2 frame was dry embossed with the Wizard and a Cuttlebug folder and then was attached to the card with pop dots.

The print layer cup shadow was attached to the light pink snowflake topper and layered with two additional light pink cardstock layers.  I hand trimmed the steam off of the top layer cup and then stamped the cup with a cricut cut stamp using Cricut's starter stamping kit.  A hint for using the cricut stamps - use a new mat on which to cut the stamp material.  Also, a simple design will cut better, hence my use of the holly cut.  I used Stampin' Up ink and hand edged the stamped images with Copic Markers.  I then applied Glossy Accents to the top layer of the cut to create a glass/china look.

The two pink snowflakes were cut at 2.25 inches in Core'dination cardstock.  I lightly sanded the cardstock and heat embossed.  First I applied embossing ink to the top of the snowflakes and added holographic embossing powder.  I then used the "melt and move" technique with the embossing gun to heat embossed the snowflakes.  I used pop dots to apply the snowflakes to the card.

The final cricut cut element was the round message tag.  I used red and pink cardstock to cut the scalloped circle and plain circle as well as the Warm Winter Wishes sentiment.  The cuts were assembled in layers and topped with white gel pen and Stickles.  I appled red Stickles to the words and icicle Stickles to the tag edges.  I also applied icicle Stickles to the steam coming from the cup.

If you have not already done so, be sure to head over to Jeannie Phillip's blog, A Place For My Cards, and check out her amazing Fancy Friday Card. Jeannie makes THE MOST beautiful cards so be prepared to be totally awed!!! 

The cut file for this card has been added to the Downloadable Cut Files list on the left of the blog under the title "Warm Winter Wishes - Fancy Card Friday".  Enjoy!