Treats, Tortellini, and Chicken

This week, since the weather has started feeling more like fall here, I decided it was time to start working through my Recipes I would love to try board on Pinterest.

scarecrow treats ingredients

First up was Scarecrow Treats! Candy corns are one of my favorite fall treats, so combining them with some of these other yummy ingredients sounded like a hit to me. And it was! The original recipe calls for using a 15x10x1-inch jelly roll pan though. Guess I read over that part, because I made these in a 13x9-inch pan. This will work as long as you bake the cake part of the recipe just a little longer than the recipe calls for. Oh, and I did add just a few more candy corns than the recipe called for, just couldn’t resist…

chili tortellini

Next, was Chili Tortellini! I just love making soups for dinner in the fall and winter. Soups always make the best leftovers for lunch the next day. This recipe came together so quickly and was so filling! I did change it up a bit. Since I wanted this to be more chili-like than soup-like, I did not add any chicken broth. Instead I added a can of water. Also, I used tomato sauce and diced tomatoes, as well as black beans and white beans. Since I doubled this recipe, I used pasta shells and cheese tortellini. My husband gave this recipe 5 stars!! It was that good!!

kitchen after dinner

This last recipe took a little more effort than the other two combined (and used every counter available in my kitchen!)! One of the very first recipes I pinned on Pinterest (2 years ago!) was a recipe for Lemon Chicken. We all love the Orange Chicken at Panda Express, so I thought I would finally give this one a try. The flavors on this one were really good, but without help from my kids, there would have been no way I could have gotten this all together myself, unless I had eight arms. Oh well, at least I gave it a try, right?

Have you found any good Pinterest recipes lately?

Capture Your 365

Time for a few more Capture Your 365 photos to share with you!

hats off

ISO 800, 50mm, f/2.0, 1/20 sec

Day 274 – Hats Off: My son’s Civil War hat is collecting dust for a couple of reasons. One, we haven’t been to a Civil War reenactment since March! Two, this is his 20th Maine Union hat. He hasn’t worn this hat since he joined the 43rd Virginia at the beginning of the year. Guess he thought it was time to see how the other side fought.

seasonal colors

ISO 100, 50mm, f/1.8, 1/50 sec

Day 275 – Seasonal Colors: Since our trees have not started turning colors yet, I thought this photo of my book page leaf project would work for this prompt, thanks to my friend Kris who shared the tutorial on her blog.

my everyday

ISO 400, 36mm, f/5.0, 1/40 sec

Day 276 – My Everyday: My kitchen, the one place in my home that I spend a good deal of time most every day preparing meals for my family.

stormy

ISO 800, 18mm, f/3.5, 1/10 sec

Day 277 – Stormy: We are still enjoying some nice, early fall weather here with daytime temperatures warm enough to leave the front door open. So what can I choose to photograph that is ‘stormy’? My closet, ugh. Time to do some fall cleaning in there, and soon!

What have you captured this week through your lens?

Photo Treasure Hunt: Keep Searching!

If you have stopped by looking for my recap of purple photo treasures from the past week, you are not going to find them yet. Jill and I are giving everyone one more week to capture those purple photo treasures!

boysenberry cookies

In the meantime, here is a peek at some purple I found this past week, yum! Be sure to come back next Tuesday to share your collection of purple photo treasures with us!

One Meal One Day

Photo credit: Compassion International

Feed the hungry and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon.
—ISAIAH 58:10, NLT

Do you know that more than 140 million children still experience real hunger around the world today? And over 6 million children die each year from malnutrition? (Source: www.un.org)

Six million each year! That is a big number, so let’s try to break that down:

6 million divided by 365 = 16,438

So, every day, 16,438 children are dying of malnutrition. In comparison, that would be like 78 percent of the population of my town dying in one day. Can you even imagine that?

I sure can’t. But I know of a way that each one of us can help.

Skip a meal and donate the money you would have spent on that meal to help children in extreme poverty. It really is that simple!

Sometimes we get caught up in the big things that need to be done to tackle big problems. But here is a simple way to do your part to make an impact.

You might be thinking, “What if I want to make a bigger impact than just the money from my one meal?”

Then you are in luck! Grab a group of friends, your family, your church youth group, your whole church, or even your social media contacts and multiply your impact!

Or you can visit my fundraising page and donate today!

Candy Corn Jar Candle Holder

A couple of days ago, my blogging friend, Kris, shared a Book Leaf Banner tutorial on her blog. It was just the inspiration I needed to put together a fun project using a couple of my favorite fall items.

Do you like candy corns? I sure do. And do you know if you pair them with peanuts for a snack, they taste like Payday bars? Yum! And candy corns are made from great fall colors!

Anyway, back to the project…

The materials needed for this project are pretty simple:

• half pint jars
• mod podge
• orange, yellow, and white tissue paper
• foam brush
• scissors

When I am working on a project like this, I like to use a sheet of wax paper to keep everything from sticking to my table.

First step, cut the tissue paper into strips. You really don’t need exact measurements for this, you just want to make sure all three strips will cover the jar.

Next, brush the whole outside of the jar with the mod podge.

Then wrap the white and yellow tissue paper around the outside of the jar on top of the mod podge. You can use two strips of white tissue paper if you don’t want the top of the jar to be too clear.

 

At this point, you will want to add more mod podge around the middle of the jar, then add the orange strip of tissue paper around the jar. Then carefully, cover the whole outside of the jar with more mod podge. Let the jar set to dry.

Once the outside of the jar is dry, add a tealight or votive candle to the jar and enjoy this cute fall decoration in your home!

Giveaway!!

Since I made two of these jars today, I would love to give one away to one of my lucky readers! To enter, leave a comment below. Want to earn extra entries? Pin, tweet, or share this post and you will receive extras entries! Please be sure to leave a comment below for each thing you do. (Open to U.S. residents only. Winner will be drawn next Friday, October 11th.)