Iced Pumpkin Cookies

Hello my friends! As promised, I am back with a recipe for a sweet treat, perfect for cozy days curled up under a blanket with a cuppa tea. It was also perfect for a fundraising bake sale I participated in last week. 

Knowing that fall is just around the corner, and with it the promise of all things pumpkin and spice, I scoured Pinterest to find just the right pumpkin recipe. I found this recipe from jamonkey.com, and it perfectly fit the bill.

These cookies turned out soft and chewy and once the icing was drizzled on top, they were perfect cookies for sitting with a cuppa tea. You could make these with canned pumpkin, but I had some frozen pumpkin that I used for these cookies and they turned out great! They certainly didn't last long on the bake sale table!

Iced Pumpkin Cookies
adapted from Jamonkey.com

Ingredients

Cookies
4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
3/4 cup butter
2 1/4 cups white sugar
1 1/2 cup pumpkin
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Icing
3 cups icing sugar
5 tbsp milk
1 1/2 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice and salt.

In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add pumpkin, eggs, and vanilla to butter mixture, and beat until creamy. Mix in dry ingredients. Using a medium cookie scoop, drop on cookie sheet and flatten with a fork.

Bake for 17-20 minutes, until the cookies are golden delicious on top. Cool cookies, then drizzle glaze on top of the cookies. For this step, it's easiest if you push the cookies close together on a cookie sheet, or on a piece of parchment paper. This way, when you drizzle the glaze on the cookies, it makes much less sticky mess.

For the glaze: In a medium bowl, combine icing sugar, milk, melted butter teaspoon vanilla. Whisk together until you reach a smooth consistency. If the mixture is still too thick, add milk as needed. You want to be able to drizzle over the cookies. Transfer the glaze into a medium Ziploc bag, cut a tiny piece of the corner and use it to drizzle the glaze evenly over the cookies.

I hope you have enjoyed this recipe - let me know if you try it out!



Linking to Joyful Homemaking, Not Just a Housewife and A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Menu Plan Monday - Sept 23, 2013

Hello my friends! I hope you all had an amazing weekend. We were so blessed to celebrate my cousin Kristin’s wedding. The rain held out for the day, we saw a beautiful church wedding, an amazing Chinese tea ceremony, a sumptuous Chinese feast for dinner and glorious cupcakes made from my cousins Amanda and Sara.

Here is a photo from the wedding this weekend (photo credit to my cousin Sinead) of all of the Wynne family that live in Canada. As you can see there are a ton of us! This shot includes almost all of us. A few of the kids stayed home, so you could add another ten to this pic to include absolutely all of us!

I hope to be back during the week this week to share the recipe from one of the cookies I baked for last week’s fundraising bake sale. My friends raised $1069.00 toward their goal! Amazing!!

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you all have a fantastic week!

On the Menu This Week:
Monday: Pan-seared halibut, rice and veggies
Tuesday: Bruschetta Chicken (trying out a new recipe!)
Wednesday: Lasagne Wednesday!
Thursday: Thai coconut curry
Friday: Chicken tortellini carbonara
Saturday: Pizza and salad
Sunday: Homemade shake and bake chicken, roast potatoes & veggies

I’ll be linking my menu plan up to OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday – check it out!!

Menu Plan Monday - Sept 16, 2013

Good morning my friends! I hope you are having a great Monday – ours is a little soggy! It’s almost time to break out jackets and cozy sweaters.

This week some girlfriends of mine are having a fundraiser, and I’m pitching in to help. If they raise $5,000.00 for cancer research, the four ladies have committed to dye their hair PINK for the month of October! If you’d like to donate, please visit their page. They are also having a bake sale this week, and that’s where I come in.

All day on Wednesday while the littles are in school I’ll be baking up some of my favorites. Banana Oat Bread, Sweet Marie Bars, and Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, all packaged up in an easy to transport fashion.

In between all of this baking, we need to eat! So, onto the menu plan for this week.

 

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you all have a fantastic week!

On the menu this week:

 

Monday: Breakfast for dinner! Bacon and eggs quiche

Tuesday: Shake and bake chicken, stir fried veggies and rice

Wednesday: Lasagne Wednesday!

Thursday: Turkey meat loaf (I’m making a HUGE batch to help fill the freezer!!)

Friday: Dinner out for mama! The hubs will be fending for themselves.

Saturday: Going to a wedding!

Sunday: Maui Ribs, baked potatoes and veggies. 
 
I’ll be linking my menu plan up to OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday – check it out!!

Fun, Practical Bridal Shower Gift

Hello my friends! I hope you all are enjoying the same sunshiney day we are having! I am here to share with you a fun gift I put together for my lovely cousin Kristin for her bridal shower this weekend. I love to give (and receive - hint, hint!!) practical gifts. This little gem definitely fits into that category.

After perusing my favorite idea site (Pinterest, of course) I found a cute way to package up household necessities and tie them all together with a poem. After following the pins to Mummydeals.org, I used the poem she had on the site and modified it a little bit to allow for Canadian products.

 

Here are all of the supplies I used to put together the present:

• Dawn dishsoap
• Joy dishsoap
• Brawny paper towel (couldn't actually find this in Canada)
• Mr Clean
• Shout stain remover
• SOS scrubbing pads
• Easy off oven cleaner
• Tide laundry soap
• Dial soap
• Bounce dryer sheets
• Fantastik cleaner
• Zest soap
• Pledge furniture polish
• Snuggle dryer sheets
• A Squeegee

I picked up a few little odds and ends to fill the basket, like air fresheners and sponges and tied it up pretty with clear cello wrap, ribbons and bows.

The poem goes as follows (thanks Mummydeals.org for the great idea!!):

As we gather with you to celebrate the DAWN of a new era.  Marriage is a journey.

Some days will be filled with pure JOY, but let’s take a moment to talk about the others.

There may come a time when you realize your big BRAWNY guy isn’t necessarily
MR. CLEAN.

When this and other little glitches occur, don’t SHOUT or send up an SOS.
Go EASY on him.

Hopefully the TIDE will change quickly, just DIAL back the anger and things will BOUNCE back to normal.

 We think you and _______ are a FANTASTIK couple with a ZEST for life and a sincere appreciation for each other.

We fully support you as you and ________PLEDGE to spend your lives as one.

We wish you all the best including love, happiness, lots of SQUEEGEES and time to SNUGGLE.

Here is a photo of me with my beautiful cousin, Kristin! She's going to make a lovely bride in a few weeks! Thanks for stopping by today, I really appreciate it!

Linking to Joyful Homemaking, Not Just a Housewife and A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Menu Plan Monday - Sept 9, 2013

Hello my friends! I hope you had a fantastic weekend. My weekend was full to the brim with excitement and adventure. We started out the weekend by heading down to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. It was absolutely amazing! 

 

Miss E  LOVES her penguins!

We left the house before dawn and got home well after dark, but it was well worth the drive.

This week we are finally back to our regular life schedule. Miss A should finally find out who her teacher is and Irish dancing starts this week - Miss E starts dance for the first time! I can’t wait to watch her prance around the house doing 1,2,3’s in a circle just like her big sister.

Recipe for this cheesy concoction!

I am hoping to spend my afternoon tomorrow getting a batch of freezer cooking going. With our crazy schedules, having meals pre-made and ready to go makes our lives just that much easier. I’m going to put together a few batches of our favorites: Baked Ziti, Chicken Pot Pie and Tex Mex Lasagne and Spicy Taco Filling on the side.

On the menu this week:

Monday: Salmon with rice and veggies

 

Tuesday: Freezer cooking day! Baked Chicken Ziti
Wednesday: Lasagne Wednesday!
Thursday: BBQ chicken, potatoes and grilled veggies
Friday: Pizza night!
Saturday: Dinner out with friends
Sunday: Spicy thai chicken, stir fry noodles and veggies

I’ll be linking my menu plan up to OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday – check it out!!

Back to School!!

Back. To. School. I can't believe summer vacation is over and we are back to school, dance, swimming lessons and everything else that comes with September.

 

Another thing I can't believe? That my firstborn ginger baby, Miss A, is all grown up and starting grade two! She has grown so much this summer and I couldn't be prouder of my seven year old! Here she is all dressed up and ready for her first day of school. School only lasted an hour today (? no idea why!!) but we got all dolled up for the first day nonetheless!

Miss E starts preschool tomorrow! One more year and my baby girl will be in kindergarten. This year she gets to spend learning and playing and making a million memories with the most amazing preschool teacher, Miss Leona. She was Miss A's preschool teacher and Miss E can't wait for school to start tomorrow. 

I thought I would have a whole bunch of organizing posts and how to be ready for back to school posts, but instead we played and partied right to the very very end of summer vacation. I think we'll have to work on some fall projects to share with you all.

Hope you all had a great first day of school!! More later this week,

Menu Plan Monday - Sept 2, 2013

Hello my friends! I hope you all have enjoyed your summer vacation, I know we certainly have enjoyed ours! School starts tomorrow, and with school comes the back-to-reality grind of life. One thing we do in our house to make life a little easier is menu planning. The hubs and I sit down together at the beginning of the month and make a menu plan for the month ahead.

We have been menu planning for about a year and it's been amazing. Not only do we always know what the plan is for dinner, but having a plan keeps our food budget in check and means that we aren't constantly running around after school trying to find something to eat.

Recipe

Another menu planning tip that we find really helpful in our house is to have a stockpile of ready-made freezer meals all ready to go. We have a pretty jam-packed schedule during the week so having some meals that just need to be popped in the oven makes life so much easier.

On The Menu This Week:

Monday : Pasta Alfredo with Chicken

Tuesday: BBQ chicken breasts, baked potatoes and grilled summer veggies

Wednesday: Lasagne Wednesday (it's back!!)

Thursday : Perogies and sausage

Friday: Brinner! Breakfast for dinner!

Saturday: Dinner out! The girls and I are heading to Seattle for the day!

Sunday: Turkey burgers and fries

Thanks so much for stopping by today! If you would like to check out some amazing recipes and menu plans, check out Org Junkie's Menu Plan Monday!