Pumpkin Crunch Cake

Here's a fantastic dessert (found on allrecipes.com) that I've already made twice this fall.

Ingredients

• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
• 1 (12 fluid ounce) can evaporated milk
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 cup margarine, melted
• 1 (8 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease one 9x13 inch baking pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine pumpkin, evaporated milk, eggs, sugar, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Mix well, and spread into the prepared pan.
3. Sprinkle cake mix over the top of the pumpkin mixture, and pat down. Sprinkle chopped pecans evenly over the cake mix, then drizzle with melted margarine.
4. Bake for 60 to 80 minutes, or until done. Top with whipped topping when ready to serve.

Felt Travel Car Mat Tutorial

What did you do with your extra hour?

This morning, courtesy of the end of daylight savings time, we were up at 5:30 A.M. Before church, my super duper husband took our two-year old on a hike at 8:30 am. The baby fell alseep for a little nap and I found myself with an hour on my hands.

So I made this.

I started with my abundance of felt.

I chopped up a few pieces. I have a big scrap of blue felt from a bolt (not the little squares) so I cut two 10” x 18” pieces for the base and back. I cut a 4” x 12” piece of gray to hold the cars and a smaller brown piece for the road. I used yellow scraps for the yellow line.

I started by sewing the yellow pieces onto the brown road. Then I sewed the road onto the blue base.

For the gray, I sewed just the vertical lines (I did mine at 3” increments). The horizontal bottom will be completed when sewing on the back blue piece.

To make a connection piece, I used an elastic hair tie sandwiched between the base fabric and the back fabric.

Next, sew the back fabric onto the base.

I added a button to keep the whole thing closed.

I let our little guy take it to church. He liked putting the cars into the pockets. It kept him occupied for a good portion of the service!

My Favorite Jeans: Fixed

This would’ve been the third pair of jeans in about a year that have worn out. I’ve already made two of the pairs of jeans into shorts. Seeing that it is October, I don’t really need any shorts.

To prolong the life of these favorite jeans, I put a patch of denim behind the hole and just stitched some straight lines across the patch.

It isn’t all that noticeable.

If you want to do this to your jeans, the hardest part is getting the knee onto the arm of the sewing machine. I recommend rolling up the pant leg neatly as high as possible to get it around the sewing machine’s arm.

Toddler Belt

I’m not going to bother posting a tutorial for this project! But I wanted to show what I made for my little guy. He loves belts.

My Fabric Stash

I use t-shirts and other repurposed materials quite a bit. However, that doesn't mean that I never buy fabric. Here's a few items in my stash that I *LOVE* yet haven't decided on the perfect project in which to use them:

Tea towels from Target. $1.98 for two of them. I couldn't pass them up. I originally thought they'd be perfect in our kitchen, but when they came home, they're slightly 'off' in color. They'll be repurposed somehow.

I won this fabric about two years ago and *STILL* haven't used it. I was considering making ties for my little boys to wear, but that was before my mom brought over a bunch of bow ties my brother wore when he was little. They're super cute, so I'll have to think of another project for this yard of fabric!

I bought someone's scraps on Etsy! There are some great designer prints in this stack: