My Fall Color Palette

My Fall Color Palette by pamela-s1 featuring a coral dress

Lela Rose tulle dress
$2,495 - net-a-porter.com

Lela Rose bow dress
$1,295 - farfetch.com

Oasis coral dress
$75 - oasis-stores.com

Ready For Fall

I have been looking at so many great outfits lately I just had to make a set of my own. Here in Texas it has been in the nineties all week but we are FINALLY getting a cold front and I can actually start changing into Fall mode. Yay! Now, if I could only procure the money to afford all of these great looks. In real life (you know, outside the wonderful dreamy blog-life) I am super picky when it comes to buying outfits. If only it could be as easy as going online and putting things together like this:

That pop of red-coral is MY pick for color of the fall. It's so pretty! I picked up a steal on a mini-trench last Spring for Audrey at the end of the season that she is now wearing in this color, and it is an instant mood-lifter. Love it!

Happy Fall shopping everyone!

It's a Doughnut. It's a Muffin. It's Both!

Oh Monday, my old friend. I have a genuine love and hate relationship with you. I love starting everything new each week with your presence but at the same time I can see the long list of things that have to be accomplished before you come back round again. 

One thing I do not mind doing, however, is Muffin Monday. This week, I happened upon a good-looking muffin recipe while searching through Pinterest. You can see my own Pinterest page here. Anyway, it's a Doughnut Muffin. The recipe came from Once Upon a Chef & I just could not resist making them. What could be better, right. I know! We've got another winning recipe here. Everyone loved them. Corey did think they tasted a little 'off' at first but he snatched one right after I pulled them out of the oven and before the topping was put on. He said once the topping was on it straightened the taste up and was very good. I wouldn't know what they tasted like straight out of the oven because I have, ahem, self control. What? I do. Ok, sometimes I do. Here is picture of this double-duty muffin:

And don't skip that topping. It really does make it taste like a cinnamon sugar cake doughnut!

The recipe can be found at Once Upon a Chef. Check it out.

Feeling Crafty

This is the best time of day for me, just after the kids are off to school and the chaos dies down a bit. The morning sun is casting the perfect light for beautiful pictures, like this:

I have a gazillion pictures of the sky, most in the morning, but not exclusively. Does anyone else take this many pictures of the sky? I just love natural beauty, hence why I have so many of the sky, of flowers, & of my girlies.

Here's a few more, just cuz I want to share the stormy sky and because we are finally getting some much needed rain here in Texas and the sky has been void of any clouds all summer that it just makes these that much more gorgeous.

So, anyway, I'm sitting here, wishing I could work on my goods for my Etsy store but need to start my regular work instead. So I put it off anyway and I go to order supplies and lo and behold everyone(!) is out of the tiles that I JUST discovered that are perfect for necklaces that I plan to sell in my shop: Pixie Feet Photography. I originally bought 4 squares and 8 circles to see how those would work. Turns out the squares are perfect but now they are nowhere to be found. Every resource I had found them on a few weeks back is out of stock for some reason and I cannot find them in any of the local big box craft stores. Poor me. I went ahead and ordered the smallest squares to see what I could do with them because I needed to get glaze anyway so I might as well get everything at once. So, crossing my fingers I can do something with those. Also, ordered another batch of photos I am excited to get. I wonder if someone else had the same idea I did and ordered those tiles all for themselves? Boohoo. Guess I'll start on the headbands, which is my 2nd idea. Here is a sample of what I'll be doing:

I have a huge collection of buttons that my grandmother collected over the years and am going to be adding them to the headbands. I believe they would count as vintage. She passed away in the late nineties and many of her buttons were still on the original strip, with copyright dates in the sixties. In this shot you can kind of see one of them. I am glad to use them for something pretty and useful and hopefully others will like them too.

So, on to boring work (bleh) and then hopefully I can squeeze in a little time to create!

Pear & Walnut Muffins...Hooray

Whoa, so I almost missed Muffin Monday but alas I am here, just after 8 p.m. with no less than 1 million things going on at once. Maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but not by much.

After one crazy fun but busy weekend, the girls both started the many clubs this week that their awesome elementary school has, including jump-roping, running, dancing, and choir. I volunteered to help out with 3 of them so between an hour and a half today at their jump roping club and another hour and a half at Zumba (1 hour class & driving there and back) I had a big portion of my day taken away. Add working for 4 hours, getting the grocery list ready, dinner, and soccer practice and I'm one tired mommy.

But I did it! I got my muffins a-made! And, they turned out great. Corey said he liked them even better than muffins with apples which is a huge deal since he thinks apple pie is the greatest dessert ever invented and loves everything apple, except maybe I-tunes. But that is a whole 'nother story.  Anyway, are the muffins:

And here is the recipe:

Pear & Walnut Muffins

Topping:

• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup flour
• 2 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces

Batter:

• 2 cups flour  2 pears, cubed
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 2 pears, cubed
• 1/2 cup walnuts, chopped

PROCEDURE:

1. Stir brown sugar & flour together. Add 2  tablespoons cold butter and, with hands, mix together until butter starts to break down into mixture. Put mixture in fridge until you are finished mixing muffin batter.
2. Preheat oven to 350°.
3. Stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, and nutmeg in a large bowl.
4. In a smaller bowl mix eggs and milk.
5. Add pears and walnuts to the flour mixture, stirring with hands.
6. Add egg and milk mixture and melted butter to flour mixture.
7. Stir with wooden spoon or spatula until flour is mixed in thoroughly.
8. Fill muffin cups evenly that have been either sprayed or cupcake liners added to.
9. Sprinkle evenly with topping mixture.
10. Bake for 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy tomorrow's breakfast! 

First Rejection

Wow, yesterday was a tough day. Rewind to the 2nd week of school when my oldest was told of an opportunity for a district wide Honors choir tryout coming up in a few weeks. Only five from each elementary were allowed to try out. She was chosen as one of the five out of twelve from her school and we were very proud.

Two weeks and a lot of hard work and last Saturday the audition came and went by quickly. Two minutes and one song later she came out smiling. She is a confident child. Sometimes, too confident for her own good because she just assumes she has everything in the bag. She told me on the way home that she missed her queue but caught up quickly. First red flag. I tried not to think about it but it bothered me. Especially when I knew that there were 300 kids going up for around 100 spots.

not MY daughter

As you can expect from the first few hints, she got the letter yesterday that she did not make it and was devastated. This is the first tryout she has ever had and it ended in rejection and oh my, it hit us hard.

It's easy to say from an outside view that it will be okay and she will learn from it, no doubt she will. But, she is also a child that feels everything and it was just a very hard day. Hard for her and maybe even harder for me. Children have a way of brushing off and getting going pretty quickly. Adults know that certain events could be pivotal and remember what they went through as children. With that in mind, hopefully Corey and I reacted in a way that would teach her to let this be a lesson instead of it being something that knocked her down. It's a little better today but it still stings.

I wasn't prepared for the magnitude that comes with your child being rejected for something but I'll just have to learn to toughen up for her sake. Our advice was this: It's over, it's the past already, there is nothing we can do to change it. You can be sad today but everyone that has ever earned something important has gone through some type of rejection. Next time you want something really bad think about how bad it felt to not get what you wanted and use that to push you even more. Wish your friends well that did make it and move on to the next thing.

I think she'll be okay. Me, on the other hand.....well, I'm still working on it.

Dear Ella, you'll get'em next time!

Cinnamon & Chocolate Chip Yumminess

Good morning and welcome to Muffin Monday #2. I skipped last Monday because it was Labor Day and also the day after someone's birthday celebration and well, let's just say I, um, I mean that someone wasn't up to feeling like muffins that morning, or afternoon, or even that evening. Yikes! That was a rough morning if I'm being honest. Really felt all of those 30-somethin years.

Anyhoo, daughter #1, big E, Ella Bean as I call her, requested something with chocolate chips for this week's recipe. I only had about half a bag of mini chocolate chips available because we had gone to a pot luck and I made The Pioneer Woman's Cleta Bailey's Toffee Squares with the other half. Let me just say I have not tried a Pioneer Woman recipe that wasn't sensational. She is an inspiration!

So, I was looking for a recipe that didn't just have chocolate chips as a main ingredient. I decided to just mix it up a bit and came up with this Cinnamon & Chocolate Chip Muffins recipe:

Cinnamon & Chocolate Chip Muffins


Dry:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 packed brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups chocolate chips (we used the mini kind)

Wet:
1 large egg, beaten
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 400°. 
2. In a large bowl, sift all dry ingredients together. 
3. In a medium bowl, combine wet ingredients. 
4. Add wet ingredients into dry and stir just until moistened. 
5. Mix in chocolate chips.
6. Fill greased muffin tins or cupcake liners 2/3 full.
7. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until lightly golden.

Then, try not to stuff your face because these are scrumptious! Enjoy!