pumpkins and pumpkin spice cookies

Good morning 

Below are some cloth pumpkins that I made yesterday, for my daughter at her request.  

They are circles, with a running stitch pulled up, then stuffed with polyfill. 

The stems are made from strips of brown fleece, tightly rolled and hot glued.  

If you want to make pumpkins but don’t want to sew or can’t sew, I found this really cute and simple method to make pumpkins from old clothing items. 

No Sew pumpkins by Fresh Vintage 


Below is our front porch, decorated for fall.  

The mum has lots of buds but they aren’t opening.  If they don’t open soon,  I’ll take them back to Lowe’s.  

Here is the recipe I used for Pumpkin Spice cookies, if you’re wanting to do some fall baking.   It’s a cookie recipe I’ve baked many times.  They are great made with just vanilla and they taste like fall when the DIY Pumpkin Spice is added.  

Chewy Oatmeal Cookies

1 C butter, softened (I use real salted butter, not margarine or spread for baking)

2 C brown sugar, packed

2 eggs

1 t vanilla (I omit this when adding pumpkin spice) 

2 1/4 C flour 

1/2 salt

1 t baking soda

1 t baking powder

3 cups of oats- rolled or quick- both work fine 

Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric  mixer until smooth.  

Add eggs, one at a time and beat to combine. 

Add vanilla and/or pumpkin spice as desired and beat about a minute. 

Add flour, salt, baking soda and powder. Beat at low speed until combined. 

Add oatmeal and stir until combined. 

Now preheat the oven to 350.  

Line your cookie sheets with parchment. 

Make large balls with dough, I use a 2 ounce cookie scoop. 

Put dough balls on cookie sheets about 2 inches apart.  Slightly flatten each ball, use your fingers or the bottom of a glass. 

Bake about 12 minutes, or just until set.  

With a 2 ounce scoop, one recipe makes 3 dozen good size cookies. 

DIY Pumpkin Spice 

3 T cinnamon

2 t ginger 

2 t nutmeg ( I left this out because my nutmeg didn’t smell right)

1 t cloves

1 t allspice 

Mix together and keep in a tightly closed container.

I added a little more than 1 T to the oatmeal cookie recipe.  Yes, I know eating raw eggs in cookie dough is a No-No but I tasted the dough before I baked it and after adding more spice,  I think a slightly rounded T of spice mix is just right.  

Happy Fall Y’all 

🍁🍂🐿🍂🍁

Peppers and tacos and cookies

Hello, on my to do list was to deal with a bunch of jalapeños my husband grew.  

For some of them, I used my friend Dawn’s recipe.  

Dawn’s freezer jalapeño poppers

I think these will be so nice to pull out and bake some whenever we like.  

With the rest of the jalapeños, I found a very simple candied jalapeño recipe and did that to the rest of them. 

Candied jalapeños are really good on a cracker with a smear of cream cheese.  

Supper was lentil tacos in crunchy shells with naked okra.  


My grandsons that live on a farm gobbled up the lentil tacos.  In fact the oldest grandson ate 4. 

He is not a picky eater but he never mentioned anything about the lentil tacos being different from the beef tacos he has always had before.  

I really think the lentil tacos would appeal to anyone that likes tacos.  They are seasoned up just like beef taco meat.  

Gavin and Braeden really do live on a small farm.  Their daddy has beef cows and their momma has dairy cows. The boys help with both.   

This is one of their guernsey calves right after they showed her at our county fair.  

Yesterday, I baked 2 batches of cookies.  Most of them are for this weekend’s cookout.  

I used this recipe for the chocolate chip ones except I used semisweet chocolate chips and I made mine just regular cookie size 

Cookie Madness

Cookie Madness is a great blog, written by a regular mom who won the Pillsbury Bake Off maybe 10 years ago.  She bakes lots of cookies and other desserts and you can trust her recipes and advice.  

The other is a recipe I’ve used for lots of years but I added homemade pumpkin spice blend.  They have no real pumpkin in them.  

That’s what’s been cookin’ here. 

❤️