Pumpkin streusel muffins with orange glaze

Early February, we went to a Home & Garden Show at the Idaho Center, where Amanda planted a single pumpkin seed in a styrofoam cup and brought it home. That seed nearly took over our pathetic summer vegetable garden and produced some humongous pumpkins. We had all kinds of pumpkin delicacies until we couldn't take it anymore. So we made pumpkin puree and froze it. A lot of it.

Fast forward almost 11 months: we made pumpkin streusel muffins today. Yum. I always cut down on the sugar, and replace a third of the white flour with wheat, and I usually get great tasting, more nutrient dense results. This time, I tripled the recipe and it didn't come out sweet enough. Soooooo, I drizzled an orange glaze over the muffins to compensate. Thankfully, that was a good save.

We shared with various neighbors.

Incidentally, pumpkin is very high in beta-carotene and potassium, not to mention a good source of magnesium and iron.

Yum.

The recipe:

Pumpkin streusel muffins with orange glaze

1/4 c margarine or butter, softened
1/2 c sugar
1/4 c packed brown sugar
2/3 c cooked pumpkin or canned pumpkin
1/2 c buttermilk
2 eggs
2 tblsp molasses
1 tsp orange zest
2 c all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/4 tsp salt

streusel topping
1/3 c flour
3 tblsp brown sugar
2 tblsp cold margarine or butter

orange glaze
3/4 c powdered sugar
1-1/2 tblsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp orange zest

1. In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and sugars.
2. Add the next 5 ingredients; stir to mix well.
3. Mix together the dry ingredients; gradually add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and stir until just combined.
4. Fill greased or paper lined muffin cups 2/3 full with batter.
5. For streusel topping: mix together the flour and brown sugar; cut in the margarine with a pastry blender (or two knives) until it resembles coarse meal.
6. Sprinkle evenly over each muffin batter.
7. Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until tests done.
8. To prepare glaze, combine powdered sugar, lemon juice and orange zest in a bowl, stirring with a whisk. Use a fork to drizzle glaze over cooled muffins.

Makes 12 muffins.

Christmas Tree of Cupcakes

On a quiet evening in mid-December, Amanda and I felt inspired to make something. Poking around the pantry and fridge produced some Cool-Whip, cake mix, and gel coloring. So we made a Christmas Tree of Cupcakes. We used some Ziploc freezer bags to mix the coloring into the Cool Whip, and then we snipped off a corner so Amanda could put the pink ornaments on the cupcakes.

This can be easily adapted to any occasion: daisy, sun, heart for Valentine's Day, etc.

(click on photos for larger images)

Christmas was a snowy blast!

Due to a certain ten-month-old that doesn't travel well, we stayed home and had a quiet Christmas. It began with a frenzied set of feet scurrying down our stairs - sign for Mommy to get up - leading to a very contented little Panda (Amanda's nickname) sitting buried in her gifts. Our family members were quite generous in giving to our girls. { Thank you! }

We intended to drive to Idaho City for some snowy fun, but didn't make it half way before we saw a slew of cars parked near a pretty good sized hill. Everyone donned a sled/toboggan of some sort to challenge gravity, and one family even brought a truck liner to use! Hmmm. We were quite ill-prepared to be playing in snow - only Amanda had on gloves, so almost instantly my hands turned beet red. Ron managed to fish out old work gloves to wear, hah! Can you believe that a family decided to GIVE us one of their sliders? They just said, "Merry Christmas," and handed it to us. I love Idaho and its people. We didn't stay long, but we had so much fun. The best part is that it's so close to us - a mere 30 minute trip.

Look how happy Amanda looks -

(click photo for larger image)

We had a lovely prime rib dinner, then headed out to see Christmas lights - a Lee Family tradition.

A near perfect Christmas. Having our out-of-town family with us would have been perfection. Perhaps next time.

To family and friends - a Christmas letter

It is a great pleasure to have such quality people in our lives. We have much to be thankful for this past year because of you - I hope we will strive to keep in touch and, please, update us often. I will start. :)

Amanda is 4-1/2 years old and leading as full a life as a child this age should without being overworked. ;) She does gymnastics twice a week and has piano lessons every other week. She's already playing Christmas songs for us! Amanda takes a lot of pride in taking care of her younger sister, and spends much time hugging, kissing, and squeezing her! She is still extremely shy when it comes to performing and has just started coming out of her shell when participating in the children's program church events (see the layout I did of one of the performances here, at the bottom.) She is a crafting fiend!!! Definitely a girl after my own heart. In fact, she made me a bouquet of paper flowers, so we made a decoupaged vase for it. I'm thrilled to share with her a love of handmade things. I'm not sure how much Daddy likes our snippets of paper and other crafty paraphernalia about the home.... Her current favorites are Angelina Ballerina, My Little Pony, Hello Kitty, Cyberchase, Super Why!, to name some. She can be found at any given time dripping with Princessy items, head to toe. Her Daddy records her shows on Windows Media Center, and she fast forwards the commercials. Geeky AND crafty. I love this girl. She always has a zest for life that invigorates us.

Abigail is 10 months old, yet she thinks she's older. She likes to help sister with her art projects by tearing them apart, and she insists on eating the food we're eating. She especially enjoys stir-fry and rice. Whadda little Ron. Abigail adds a lot of joyful baby squeals to the Lee cacophony/symphony. She's now starting to stand on her own a little at a time, but can be found tearing through the house on all fours. If you're not vigilant, she'll be eating a white cap off of a door stopper - and fishing them out of her mouth is a hazardous activity, because she can potentially sever your finger off with her ten teeth. She loves to read her books - especially Baby Beluga and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. While she's only been with us for ten months, it is hard to imagine life without her.

Ron is on his fourth year at Mercy Medical Center in the IS Department, as a doctor of computers, if you will. He had the opportunity to represent Mercy on a billboard! Seeing your husband on a billboard is amusing....

Ron has gotten back into tennis, and is playing in a league, Boise Team Tennis. When Ron gets into something, boy is he dedicated. Not only does he play, he reads tennis message boards and reviews on rackets, fine tunes the weight of his racket, and strings his own rackets. He and Amanda frequently go on Daddy-daughter dates, usually swimming or to the park.

I (Heather) am up to my ears in all things kid, and I do it happily and willingly. We spend a lot of time at the Rec Center. We practically live there, in fact. Sometimes we go twice a day. It's really helped me get back into shape after having Abigail, and gives me a little alone time while the girls go to the Play Center when I work out. I absolutely love my instructors and the ladies I work out with. My newest hobby/obsession is playing with Photoshop to make digital scrapbook layouts. This is my contribution to the collective family geekiness. On my free time, I do contract work for Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children as a mentor and lead assessor for six counties in Idaho. I also have conducted trainings. At church, I teach a delightful group of preschoolers (including my Amanda) and lead the music for the Sunday School. I love to bake all kinds of goodies with my girls; our kitchen always seems to be abuzz with some concoction. :) In September, the girls and I participated in the St. Luke's Women's Fitness Celebration 5k along with 12,500 other women. Amanda wasn't too thrilled with the distance at one point, but once we crossed the finish line and sampled the breakfast they provided, she said she wanted to do it again next year. This is going to be a family tradition. (Abby lost her socks early on in the race, so I had to hold them to keep them toasty!)


2007 was definitely a year of hellos and one significant farewell. Abigail's birth was the greatest highlight, punctuated by my brother Josh's marriage to his lovely wife Betty in May, the birth of our nephew Elias Gabriel in August, and a great visit with Josh and Betty in November. We said good bye to my Aunt Kim in August - we miss her dearly. I am so glad that she and my Uncle Kim were able to visit in April, as we got to spend some time with them and even have photos of them with my children.

I am deeply grateful to God for His provisions and blessings. May you be close to your loved ones this Christmas and throughout the new year.

12/16 Digi Challenge

For today's tutorial, I am taking us to the Photoshop Creative Elements website. This website is heavily tutorial laden, so you might not be able to tear yourself away from it, beware! The specific ones we'll be looking at involve a photo treatment, called a cutout effect, and the part-two of the tutorial, using the cutout effect.

The author of the tutorial provides these photos to illustrate the techniques:

We'll be going from a raw image such as this


to this in the first tutorial,


then she shows us what to do with the cutout, like this


and this



Have fun! Hope this isn't too hard... you KNOW it's my job to stretch us so that we'll "boldly go where no man has gone before." (I live with a Trekkie husband, so I'm a closet Trekkie myself, although I enjoy Next Generation more than the original)

12/12 Digi challenge

Today's fun involves Jessica Sprague's Photoshop Friday 2006 Issue #9, blending modes. You will have lots of flexibility here, so go buck wild!

I am admittedly running amok, trying to wrap things up on Christmas gifts and festivities (pun intended, heh heh heh), so I don't have an example for this one or the last challenge yet. But some of you are really cranking these LOs out! So, for you select folks, here is another challenge - a nice Christmas tree template freebie from Traci Reed's Hawt Mama Team Blog to gussy up!

Christmas decor

This is the Lee Family, snowpeople version. Amanda was so excited to create them.

This is the 3D snowflake I made thanks to the great tutorial! It fills in the window on our half wall nicely and adds the right amount of Christmas whimsy:

The tree: