I love pumpkin. I really, really love it. Last year near the end of winter, Lindi and I were talking about how it's harder to find pumpkin on the shelves at the grocery store during the summer. I panicked, and promptly went and ordered a flat of 24 cans of pumpkin puree from Amazon so we would have enough to tide us over. Well... although we do bake with pumpkin all year, apparently we only bake LOTS of stuff with it during the fall and winter, so we're still using up the entire shelf of pumpkin we have in our pantry.

But! It's fall again, and we've baked lots of pumpkin-y things lately. Pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, baked pumpkin oatmeal. Mm. I love pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie, certainly, but it's fun to see what else we can make with pumpkin. Here are a few ideas:

This style is really easy and works best with slightly texturized hair. I used a dry shampoo (we just have the store brand) at the roots after running a brush through my hair. The dry shampoo gave it a bit of a lift, which it severely needed after a night of sleep.


After that, I made a deep side part and separated a small chunk of hair near my forehead on each side.  Starting in front of and above my ear, I french braided the hair on one side (where the hair was 'parted to'), following the hairline down toward the back of my neck. I then made another smaller french braid on the other side in the same way. I secured both ends with ponytail holders left them alone while I made the remaining section of hair into three small twists or buns. I didn't want a neat up-do, so I didn't pay a lot of attention to how I twisted the hair. If you want something more neat, I imagine this style would also look great with careful twists or pincurls.


Once I had secured the twists with hairpins, I took the braids and twisted them over and around the buns. I secured them with hairpins also and tucked the ends beneath the buns. Use hairspray to secure the style and voila! You've got a messy, bohemian looking up-do!

Today I'm guest posting over at Not The Marrying Kind about how I never was one of those kids who cut out pictures of wedding dresses or imagined my future wedding extravaganza, and then all of a sudden (that is, roughly a few decades later), there I was, getting married! Hah. Go check it out, and while you're over there, take a look at the rest of Marty's blog, because it's pretty excellent (just like her!)

Photo by Darby Ironside

So, cupcakes are pretty delicious. And what's a surefire way to make them even more delicious?

Put even more deliciousness inside of them.


These are oreo devil's food cupcakes and Rolo devil's food cupcakes. Normally, we bake cakes and cupcakes from scratch, but we usually have a few boxes of the premade mixes in our cabinet just in case we make a recipe that calls for it. Lindi used a package of devil's food cake mix because she wanted to focus on the decorating, not the cake mixing. They were still pretty freaking amazing.



For the oreo cupcakes, twist an oreo open and place the half with the cream, cream side up, in the bottom of a cupcake wrapper. Spoon batter (homemade or cake mix, in any chocolate flavor you wish) over the top of the cookie. Bake as directed in your recipe. When cool, use buttercream frosting and decorate with the other half of the cookie that's inside the cupcake, either whole or crumbled.


The Wilton website has some really helpful information about how to decorate with icing tips. That's how we got that beautiful swirl!

psst! I'll be guest posting at one of my favorite blogs tomorrow! More on that in the morning. 

So, I've known about Pinterest for a long time and sort of vaguely looked at others' pin boards sporadically, but today was the first day that I actually tried it out myself. Oops. I love it. (Because I needed something to waste time with.... right....)

Really, though, I actually think it will be very helpful. Even if I save things in my bookmarks, I'm always losing track of recipes I want to try and crafts I want to make. Enter Pinterest. All you do is add a 'Pin it' button to your toolbar, and then you can pin left and right all over the internet, from any website, or upload images rom your computer.



With Pinterest, you can make 'Boards' of basically any subject you want. Recipes, sure. Pretty hairstyles, sure. Tools to use during the zombie apocalypse, probably. (I haven't seen that last one yet.)

I've already made eight boards. Eep.


Titled made up words like 'Craftyness.'


And 'Sweet treats.' (Can you tell that I love that it is finally fall?) Yum!

Are any of you on Pinterest? I want to know! And if you want to follow me, just click here:

We went location scouting on Friday evening, and it was so much fun. The weather was stunning, and it was so lovely to be out walking around in it. We found some really beautiful tucked-away places, too.

Sometimes I think about how much of our lives is taken up by photography, and I'm pretty delighted about it. I love that sometimes even when I don't have my camera with me, I look at the world and imagine how I would frame this thing or that in a photograph. I love that it is something that Lindi and I love together, and that we have fun finding new places to take photos, trekking through the woods with clients to take photos in a river and having people stop to say things when we're doing a shoot downtown. Like I said, lots of fun.

Seriously, you guys, this is the BEST frosting EVER. It's so good that when Lindi made it recently, I almost didn't eat dinner because I had eaten so much of the leftover frosting. Out of the bowl. (Yes, with my finger. So what?) Lindi learned how to make frosting from her grandmother, with the 'keep adding stuff until it looks right' method. (I understand, because my mother does that, too, so when I ask her how to make things she says 'Oh, maybe about two cups of this thing, and then a tablespoon or so of this thing, and a few shakes of that.')

This, then, is an attempt to nail down that 'until it looks right' recipe, because after trying dozens of different frosting recipes, this one is still the best.

Ingredients:
1 pound confectioner's sugar
3 sticks butter, softened to room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla
~1/4 c milk

1. Mix the butter on low speed until it is softened and blended, then mix in the vanilla.
2. Blend in the confectioner's sugar, a cup at a time.
3. Add milk slowly until the frosting is the right consistency. You may need a little less or a little more than 1/4 cup.

Now, try to hold yourself back from eating half a cup of it right out of the bowl!

(Also, don't you love that adorable pink striped cupcake wrapper? Tutorial coming soon!)

On Wednesday we met up with Carolyn, whom we've known for a long time, and Trysten, her adorable girlfriend. We explored the town square and the streets and alleys and buildings around it, and found some really beautiful tucked-away spots to take photos in. It was so much fun! Carolyn and Trysten were so giggly and happy together. Thank you, girls, for a really lovely evening. (More photos from this shoot are on our Facebook!)

Have you all seen the fall publication of Styled, the online and print magazine over at A Subtle Revelry? It's pretty fantastic.


It's full of fun recipes, photos and DIY projects.


Even better? You can read it all online!

Check it out here. I love it!

Carolyn and Trysten are so adorable. So, so adorable. Oh my goodness. We had so much fun taking photos with them!

Oh my gosh. I want to put this in my mouth:


...but I hate making pie crust. Maybe Lindi will make it for me. It's the super delicious-looking recipe for 'A Nice Berry Pie' over at 101 Cookbooks. Yummy!

So, Lindi and I watch a lot of television (really, Netflix- we don't actually have real live TV), because we like to have it on in the background while we craft. We both like the background noise, and often find that we don't have to pay a lot of attention to a TV show, as opposed to a movie. This way, it works out if we're focused on gluing or stitching things together instead of looking at the television the whole time. We tend to stick to light, funny shows or crime shows or silly shows that were probably meant for teenagers, because all of those don't really take a lot of attention to know what's going on. (By the way, no poking fun at our sometimes ridiculous television preferences, okay?)

Anyway, I've noticed a trend: we tend to watch a few episodes or a few seasons of a show, then get distracted and watch something else.

So, here is a (probably) incomplete list of shows we have watched part of together during the last four years, but not all:
Heroes
Brothers and Sisters
The Walking Dead
Mad Men
Dollhouse
Torchwood
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Angel
Gilmore Girls
The L Word
The X-Files
The Gates
Big Love
Lost
Deadwood
Lip Service
Flash Forward
Hoarders (We had to stop watching this because it was too sad.)
The Vampire Diaries (We gave up on this one, too.)
Life Unexpected
Private Practice
Survivors (The British show, not the one without an 's' on the end where they're on an island.)
Law and Order: Criminal Intent

And shows that we've either finished or actually kept more or less up-to-date with:
Lie to Me
White Collar
Leverage
Bones
Grey's Anatomy (We started watching this because our first Valentine's Day together, we both had the flu, so we stayed in bed all day watching the first season.)
True Blood
30 Rock
Doctor Who
Law and Order: SVU

And some shows that were easy for us to finish because there was only one season:
Journeyman
Life on Mars
Firefly

Right now we're watching Castle, and I love it. We're most of the way through the second season. The premiere of the fourth season was this week, and I want to be caught up so I can watch that! It will take us a little while, though.

My overall recommendations, for anyone, would probably be Leverage, Castle, Lie to Me, Bones and Doctor Who. More specifically, though:

If you like science fiction? Doctor Who, Firefly, Torchwood
If you like shows based around a whole team of awesome people who work together to stop the bad guys? Leverage, Lie to Me
If you like zombies/epidemics that wipe out most of the human population? The Walking Dead, Survivors
If you like crime shows and don't mind a show that starts out with 90s fashion and talks about sex crimes all the time? Law and Order: SVU
If you like Tina Fey? 30 Rock
If you like really, really trashy and addictive supernatural stuff? True Blood (I hate that I like this show. But I totally, totally do.)
If you like crime shows with a really good dynamic between the two leads? Bones, Castle, Law and Order: SVU, The X-Files
If you like snappy comedic life stories and don't mind 90s TV quality (and hair) for the first few seasons? Gilmore Girls
If you like TV dramas? Brothers and Sisters
If you're 12 and like vampires? The Vampire Diaries

There you go. Happy birthday. I'll recommend some books sometime soon, I promise.

Images via: 1, 2, 3, 4.