First Fire

It isn't that cold but we bought a box of Duraflame logs and had to light a fire. Now where are those chestnuts...

Pumpkin Roll

Our good friend Chris mentioned that he made pumpkin roll for Thanksgiving and my husband said, "that's sounds delicious!" So this morning I picked up the ingredients to try this baked good. I was also instructed to find the recipe by googling "pumpkin roll recipe" and selecting the second search result from Southern Food or read the recipe below.

Pumpkin Roll

• 3 Eggs
• 1 cup Sugar
• 2/3 cup Pumpkin
• 1 tsp Lemon juice
• 3/4 cup All-purpose flour
• 1 tsp Baking powder
• 2 tsp Cinnamon
• 1 tsp Ginger
• 1/2 tsp Nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp Salt

Filling:

• 8 oz Cream cheese -- softened
• 4 tbsp Butter -- or margarine
• 1 c Powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla

In large bowl, combine eggs and sugar, beating with an electric mixer until thick and light yellow in color. Add pumpkin and lemon juice, mixing until blended.

In separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, spices and salt. Add to egg mixture, mixing well. Spread batter into greased and waxed-paper lined 10 x15 inch jelly-roll pan.

Bake at 350 ° for 15 minutes. Remove from oven. Cool for 10 minutes. While cake is cooling, prepare filling. Beat together cream cheese and butter; stir in powdered sugar and vanilla and blend until smooth

Sprinkle clean tea town liberally with powdered sugar and then place cake on it. From 10- inch side, roll cake up in towel. Set aside.

Unroll cake. Evenly spread filling over cake. Roll up cake (without the towel). Wrap in plastic wrap. Cover and chill at least 1 hour. Slice before serving (3/4 to 1 inch slices work best). Keep leftover slices refrigerated. This pumpkin roll freezes well.

Enjoy! My husband loved it.

Black Friday Shopping

On one previous Black Friday, Nick and I attempted to get up and wait in line at a major electronic store for some crazy deals to find out that the line was way too long and store had decided to let in over an hour earlier than advertised which meant we were shit of out of luck. Since then we vowed to only worry about what could be purchased online. Until this year...

Before Thanksgiving I had received an email from J. Crew indicating that they'd be open at midnight on Black Friday. That was the first crumb... then at Thanksgiving dinner my brother and I discussed the local outlets and what deals would be available...second crumb. Sealing the deal was the fact that most stores would be open and my brother deciding to go to the same outlets I intended on. So at midnight we made our way to the Jackson Outlets amid the throngs of others with the very same idea. Parking was nowhere to be found, my poor husband dropped me off and drove around for an hour (because he probably had nothing better to do) looking for parking. I got my coupons on and made my way to (not in any particular order): J. Crew Banana Republic (thank you for your 50% off plus 10% coupon on top of that), Gap, and Harry & David.

After the outlets at 4am, Nick and I headed towards home in the hopes of finding a diner for a meal at such an ungodly hour there's no name for it. After the meal we were headed to Home Depot for the best deal ever...

A $99 valued Rigid 16 gallon wet/dry vac! That's folks we were psyched over a wet/dry vac. We didn't find a diner by the time we had to exit for Home Depot so we decided to check out the crowd. To our surprise there wasn't a single soul (besides ours) in the parking lot. So we decided to go home and eat this unclassified meal and head back (we live just under 10 minutes from this Home Depot). So we went home made eggs and english muffins and hopped back into the car. This time another car showed up after we pulled into the lot. There were wary looks and respectful nods as we waited in our idling vehicles. Suddenly at about 5:30am a pickup truck pulls into the lot and the driver hops out, grabs a cart and heads for the front door. We realized he wasn't playing any games so us and the other car scrambled to jump out and get on the newly formed line. We did not stay home and suffer to miss out on the wet/dry vac!

Turns out everyone was there for the wet/dry vac because we were let in about 5:40am and everyone bee-lined for the vacs and about 10 minutes later, as we were admiring the Christmas lights, a Home Depot employee yelled, "The shop vacs are gone!" We were immensely successful. We checked out, headed back home and went to bed at 6am.

Who doesn't love bacon?

I had these for the first time at a friend's birthday party and OMG was I hooked! Since then I have made them twice! First at our Halloween party and today for Turkey Day appetizers.

They're called bacon roll-ups and have to be the easiest thing to make ever! All you need is bacon, white bread and cream cheese (and toothpicks, wooden, uncolored). I would say a pack of bacon to a pack of bread and one pack of cream cheese is more than enough.

Begin by cutting the crust off the bread (trust me I tried not to and it's a bit tough since crust doesn't bend so well). then quarter the white part of the bread. If the bacon is the bacon you are used to, big long strips, cut them in thirds. Then spread a dollop of cream cheese in the middle of each quartered piece of bread. Roll the bacon around the bread and fasten with a toothpick. Bake at 400 for about 10 minutes. Be careful bacon and cream cheese are hot! Enjoy!

They're freakin' adorable!

I am in love with mini cupcakes and jump at any opportunity to make them. This time they are for a farewell party for a co-worker who has been given a new assignment in Japan. These are devils food cake with vanilla icing.

I can't decide which to make- mini chocolate chip topped or purple sugar sprinkles... I think I will just do half and half. They so darn cute it hurts just thinking about eating them!

I am addicted

We bought this Keurig single cup coffee maker before our Halloween party to replace our smaller and not so easy to use one. I am hooked by the convenience of it and realized today that I am an addict. I have reached a new record ... on my fifth cup of coffee today.

This is the B70 model and so far it is cheapest at Bed Bath and Beyond when you use their 20% off coupon.

My husband the birthday boy

Yup that's what the candles say.... Birthday Boy.

I picked up similar multi-colored candles that said Happy Birthday but liked the blue better and was $1 cheaper. Well now I know the dollar saved was because a couple of letters were missing.

Hello Santa...

How would this look on our lawn?

I think that we would be confusing the Santa believing children by publicly claiming that he flew around the world in a hot air balloon. What would they think the reindeer were doing on Christmas?

So we decided to leave creepy hot air balloon Santa at Home Depot.

Happy Birthday Nick!

Today is my darling husband's birthday. Another year older and another reason to celebrate. The day started with breakfast fit for a champion made exactly to the birthday boy's specifications.

Roll baked at 300 for 10 minutes, 3 slices of pork roll, real cheddar cheese and one egg over easy. I even busted out the Kona coffee for a pick-me-up.

Happy Halloween

To state the obvious, yesterday was Halloween. The hubby and I threw a lovely Halloween party and got into the festive mood by decorating the house inside and out. We also decorated ourselves, as a pirate and a Desperate Housewitch.

Lots of friends, family, food and fun was had.

We were so excited to have real trick-or-treaters we dashed to the door at the first ring. It wasn't too busy with trick-or-treaters but we had many Spiderman..

The funniest was one boy who came with a friend and his sister. He took his candy and noticed the party commotion in the house. He asked me, "Are you having a birthday party?" I said, "No, a Halloween Party." He looked at the house and back at me and asked, "Can I come?" While trying to formulate a kind response his sister thankfully interjected and said, "Come on, you're being annoying."