Pumpkin to color

It's fall. It must be fall. The leaves are changing color and I heard geese getting ready to fly back south.

I hope you enjoy this pumpkin coloring page.
Click for a larger version, print, color!

Small jpg version:

Large transparent png version:

Stained glass effect pumpkin gift box

It's nippy outside! After taking an enforced break due to an injury (pinched a nerve in my shoulder and my arm was going to sleep every time it was in the wrong position e.g.: drawing) I'm back and hard at work on my next coloring book.

I hope you enjoy this pumpkin printable gift box!

In other news- I'm still really wanting a pair of knee high Gipsy Dharma boots. I keep winding up on her site and just drooling over the gorgeous boots. 

The Amazing Turnip Girl has Twitter now! Look for @TATG_Kairi if you'd like to follow her. She and I are planning a wand tutorial soon. 

Pumpkin Mandala- Happy Autumn!

Well, it's autumn now! I hope you enjoy this pumpkin mandala to color for the season.
Recipes, crochet pattern, printables and coloring pages - Pumpkins on Don't Eat the Paste

Click the images for larger versions to color.

Small jpg:

Large transparent PNG version:

Pumpkin To Color

I hope you enjoy this simple coloring page!

Click for larger versions

Small JPG:

Large Transparent PNG:

I had planned to do a fancier version, with patterns in each section as well but just couldn't focus well enough, so hopefully that will be in the next few days. I have an awful cold! 

Vegan Chocolate Pumpkin Pudding Recipe

Vegan Chocolate Pumpkin Pudding that's so good my non-vegan teens love it. Also good for pudding lovers who have a lactose intolerance. Another plus is that pumpkin and almond milk are both high in vitamin A and this is so much tastier than carrots!

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup tofu- yes. Tofu. Since this is vegan, it won't have the body and silkiness that an egg offers. Tofu helps! A soft tofu works best. You can skip this if you want soy free.
• 2 cups almond milk- the first time I made this, I used soy milk, but the almond milk tastes so much better!
• 1/2 cup pumpkin butter (recipe HERE)
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup sweetener- I used a raw sugar
• 2 tablespoons corn starch

Blend the tofu, almond milk, pumpkin butter, cocoa and sweetener until very smooth.
Put aside 1 cup, and put the rest in a medium sized sauce pan. Whisk the corn starch into the cup you put aside until the corn starch is well incorporated
Cook the mix in the pan over medium until it starts bubbling, whisking to keep the almond milk from scorching. Pour in the cup you set aside, whisking constantly.
Keep cooking over a medium heat until it's thickened to your liking.

I compare making pudding to making gravy. You use a thickener and cook to let some of the liquid evaporate until you have the consistency you like. For pudding, this takes about 10-15 minutes of cooking and whisking to keep it evenly heated and not let it scorch.

Serve chilled, with pumpkin seeds on top for garnish if you wish. The photos are of a tiny demitasse glass cup and little decorative pumpkins.
Here's another one!

Pumpkin Butter- recipe and printable page

My family always gets pie pumpkins for Halloween. They don't make the best carving pumpkins, but they have a lot of seeds for their small size and the best pumpkin "meat" for making pumpkin butter.

Pumpkin butter doesn't have all the fat that pumpkin pie filling has and it's a fantastic source for vitamin A and C. It does have a fair amount of sugar, but I don't mind that as much knowing that it's not all empty calories. 

Pumpkin butter is not a good candidate for home canning because it doesn't have the acid necessary to keep botulism from growing. So I put it in the freezer. We carve our pumpkins on Halloween itself and put them on plates with led lights in them. I leave them out over night because it's just cold enough here to do that. They won't rot, but without the plates they might freeze to my stairs (it happened once! They were stuck there until a passing moose came up the stairs to eat them)

Click on the images including the one above for larger versions.

Pumpkin Butter - make 5-6 pints

Ingredients:

3 Pie Pumpkins

1 Tablespoon Pumpkin Pie Spice

1 Tsp. Cinnamon

1 cup brown sugar

Apple Juice

To Make Pumpkin Puree

Cut pumpkins in half and scoop out the center fiber and seeds. Pie pumpkins have a lot of seeds, so set them aside to toast and eat or to plant next spring.

Cut off and discard stems and cut the pumpkins into chunks.

Steam in 1/2 cup water until soft. Pull out chunks and scrap the pumpkin meat off the skin. Discard pumpkin skin and put the pumpkin back into the pan.

Use a stick blender or potato masher to make a nice soft puree.

Add spices and sugar, simmer over low heat, stirring often until it's cooked down by about half.

If it gets too thick, add some apple juice, if it's too thin to use as a spread, keep cooking it down.

Let cool and ladle into freezer safe containers. Put one in the fridge for immediate consumption and the rest in the freezer.

My family loves to eat grilled pumpkin butter and cream cheese sandwiches. We butter two slices of bread and spread pumpkin butter over one (plain butter side down). Then cut 1/4 slices of firm cream cheese and put that on the pumpkin spread. Put the other piece of bread over it, butter side up. Put it in a frying pan over medium heat and cook until it's browned and toasted on one side, flip over, repeat. The cream cheese melts at a fairly low temp so by that point,it's ready to serve. 

For the seeds- my daughter likes chili pumpkin seeds, so after cleaning off all the fibery bits, we toss them with olive oil and 1 tsp. good chili powder, 1/4 tsp each garlic powder, cumin, onion powder and oregano. Then spread them on a cookie sheet and toast until just barely browned. 

Another Halloween coloring page

I hope you like this little kitty and pumpkin coloring page for Halloween.  Click the image to download.

The font used is from Apostrophic Labs massive Komika family. Look here for the Komika fonts, Komika Boo is with the poster fonts. These fonts are free for personal OR commercial use. The readme that came with my download says " If you do use them in commercial projects in which you make some profit, please take the time to give a small fraction of that to your favourite charity."
It's a wonderful family of fonts that will fit all your comic book style font needs. Definitely recommended for digi-scrappers.

Little Pumpkin Crochet Pattern

This cute diminutive pumpkin gets it's shaping from using different stitches.

I was going to use black safety eyes, but decided I really loved the scale of the buttons, which came from my button stash.

You will need :
small amounts of orange and green worsted weight yarn- I used Peaches and Creme Bright Orange and Bright Lime
Size F hook
Scissors
Yarn needle
Eyes- I used buttons.
Stuffing

ch= chain
sc=single crochet
hdc= half double crochet
dc- double crochet
st or sts= stitch or stitches
sl st= slip stitch

Instead of working in rounds, the body of the pumpkin is worked flat then seamed. The rows are worked alternately in the front and back loops of the stitches to create the ridges.

Chain 13 loosely
Row 1: Sc in second chain from hook, sc in next st, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hdc in next 2 st, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 2: ch 1 tightly (doesn't count as first stitch here or throughout), working in back loops of the previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 3: ch 1 tightly, working in front loops of previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 4: ch 1 tightly (doesn't count as first stitch here or throughout), working in back loops of the previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 5: ch 1 tightly, working in front loops of previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 6: ch 1 tightly (doesn't count as first stitch here or throughout), working in back loops of the previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 7: ch 1 tightly, working in front loops of previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 8: ch 1 tightly (doesn't count as first stitch here or throughout), working in back loops of the previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 9: ch 1 tightly, working in front loops of previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 10: ch 1 tightly (doesn't count as first stitch here or throughout), working in back loops of the previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 11: ch 1 tightly, working in front loops of previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 12: ch 1 tightly (doesn't count as first stitch here or throughout), working in back loops of the previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 13: ch 1 tightly, working in front loops of previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts.
Row 14: ch 1 tightly (doesn't count as first stitch here or throughout), working in back loops of the previous row: sc in first 2 sts, hdc in next 2 sts, dc in next 4 sts, hds in next 2 sts, sc in last 2 sts. Break off leaving long tail to sew the piece.

Put eyes in place on different rows lined up on the dcs.

Stitch seam along the 12 stitch length making a tube that's tapered on both ends. Pass needle and thread through the sc crochets on one end, and gather them tightly to close the bottom. Keep needle on yarn. Stuff the pumpkin and pass the needle and thread through the stuffing, pull it just a little in and knot, then gather the stitches on top. Pull tight and tie off securely.

Stem:
With the green yarn, chain 2.
Round 1: 6 sc in first ch, sl st to first sc to join.
Round 2-4: ch 1 tightly, sc in each st around, sl st to first sc to join.
Break off leaving a tail. Weave tail through last stitches and pull tight, pass the needle and thread through the pumpkin to the bottom, go around a stitch, and pass back up through the top, knot securely in the bottom of the stem and weave end in.

So very quick and easy. I hope you enjoy this project!

Pumpkin Boxes

This one, I did 3 versions of. One is just the outline for children to color in and add their own faces to, one is the one pictured, and one is colored in, but no face, so you could cut one out with a craft knife and put an led electric candle in it if you wanted to. If you do that, I suggest backing the inside with yellow tissue paper. As usual, click on the small images for the full sized versions.

I have a couple more Halloween boxes up at my main printable page which is here.

 

 

 

I also posted a couple things up at Deviant Art, but it's it's really not my normal style and I'm rather shy about them. SKerri13 at DeviantArt