Dinner In a Pumpkin

1. Pick a small to medium size pumpkin and clean out the innards.
2. Feed the innards to the composting worms that you keep on your porch.
3. Think of something cool to paint onto your pumpkin. Then, have at it. Use the dollar acrylic craft paints—you know, the ones with the flip tops.
4. Take pictures of your cool design so you can blog about it later.
BYU: Adam, Face: Anna

5. Fill with stew and cook with top on at 350° for about an hour or until pumpkin is tender. There is a specific recipe that goes with this, but I'm not passing it on. I am convinced any one of your favorite stews will work just fine. Chili or a hearty meaty stew would be delicious.

6. Put entire pumpkin on a plate and place on the table so you can get weirded out about serving out of a pumpkin head.
7. Don't forget to eat the pumpkin meat as your veggie!
Have fun!

NaNoWriMo

Founder of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty suggests all you need is a pen and a clean pair of underwear to begin a deadline driven literary marathon experience. What am I talking about? A national novel writing frenzy that takes place within 30 days. Rules: 50,000 words in one month (That's about 175 pages). No pre-writing allowed; it's by the seat of your pants.


It's called National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Which month would that be? November. It's almost here. Should I join? I can't decide. The timing is perfect and this creatively whacked idea appeals to me on some level. Click here for details, it's not too late to join.

(Dwynne, my sister, pointed me to this and she's going to do it. Adam on the other hand, is running in the opposite direction.)

Need some extra encouragement? I picked up this book to see what Chris Baty had to say. It took only a few hours to read the first half of this very entertaining book. The second half is meant to be read week by week to help writers overcome their noveling woes.



Who knows? You may end up producing some National Best Seller that gets a ton of movie offers, thus spurring a demand for a sequel, changing and influencing our culture as we know it! Or you may just discover you never want to write a novel again. At least you'll know.

French Toast Frenzy

I was craving french toast. The good kind. That meant it had to be made out of homemade bread, thick slices. Homemade syrup had to be on the menu too. And since we were at it, why not orange juice and sausage and . . . . are you hungry yet? Oh yeah, and friends. Don't forget to invite your friends because there's NO WAY you'll be able to keep the goodness all to yourself.

I tried a couple of new recipes. The links are below if you'd like to try them as well. They ALL made fantastic french bread.

From left to right:
1. Dad's Dutch Oven French Bread. Click here for recipe.
2. Wheat Applesauce Honey Bread. No recipe. I made it up. The french toast turned out delish but the bread itself was very thick and didn't cook evenly so I'll be refining that one.
3. Lion House Cinnamon Raisin. Click here for pdf recipe.
4. Maple Syrup (You'll be ruined for store bought—you've been warned.) Click here for pdf.

Enjoy my friends. Enjoy.

Poor Gecko

We found a little friend in one of our bowls this morning. Sadly, it was dead, I'm not even sure how he got in there in the first place.

I've never seen a gecko up-close because they are so fast. We see them cross our path often around here. So I couldn't resist getting a photo.
Kind of pretty don't you think? Too bad he didn't live long enough for me to let him go.