Fancy Pants Pumpkins

I am in a creative burst lately and was once again inspired by Pinterest to decorate rather than carve pumpkins using items I already had. I was in the store today and found these beautiful white pumpkins that were calling out to be decorated. Yes they don't match. So what. Yes, the colors have nothing to do with each other. So what. Each pumpkin wanted it's own style. Using vintage ribbon, lace, buttons and beads, I put the whole thing together using a glue gun. One's a sexy boudoir pumpkin and the other is a retro pumpkin.

The inspiration is in your bathroom: Holiday Wreath

I'm addicted to Pinterest these days and I especially love the DIY section.  I was inspired to save many toilet paper rolls because I wanted to make a holiday wreath inspired by the shape of a beautiful wreath on the now defunct, "See You There" blog. Directions on how to make it are very simple.  The best things about this project were 1. that it was recycling something I'd normally toss and 2. that it was practically free. I had the paint, the glue gun and the paper rolls. All I needed were the berries which I got 60% off at Michael's. So the whole thing cost about $2.

I saved about 15 toilet paper rolls and cut about 4 pieces per toilet paper roll. You may need less, you may want more depending on your design. Then I laid out the pieces around a salad plate for the roundness how I'd like the finished wreath to look. I used a combination of crimson red and bronze acrylic paint. I brushed it on cut up toilet paper roll pieces. Spray paint would have been easier, but it's not what I had on hand. So I painted the inside and outside of each piece with a wide brush. After they dried I used a glue gun to assemble the wreath parts. Last I glued on the berries. I'm pretty pleased with the final result. What do you think?

Pizza Cupcakes

I was really in the mood to make pizza for dinner but knew I didn't feel like pulling out my pizza stone. I recalled last week on Pinterest seeing these little pizza cupcakes and thought that was a great idea. I looked at several recipes. Some made dough, some used bisquick mix, and some used refrigerated dough. The common denominator was that you bake according to the dough recipe states. So I decided that I would use pre-made pizza dough. The fillings are purely your choice. Today this is what I decided to use. I purchased 2 packages of rosemary foccaccio dough from Fresh & Easy. The fun thing is that you can add anything to these pizzas and even change what you put in each one. I'm sure kids would love to help out. My kid however, would rather do chemistry homework. Oh well.

Ingredients:
  premade refrigerated pizza dough- rosemary foccaccio from Fresh and Easy
  sauce- I used sundried tomato pesto from F&E
  prosciutto cut into small pieces
  shredded mozzarella
  black olives sliced
  fresh spinach

How to:
  1. Thinly coat each cupcake tin with olive oil.
  2. Make small balls of dough and with your hands, flatten and pull them until each one is slightly larger than each cupcake liner. Line each tin with dough. I used two packages which made 14 pizzas.

  3. put some sauce in each liner

    4. start layering ingredients and finish with cheese, then olives

    5. bake according to package directions. I baked mine at 400 for 20 min. And they were perfect!