peanut butter and jelly crumb muffins

A couple weeks ago I made peanut butter and jelly crumb muffins from How Sweet It Is.

They're great for breakfasts, snacks, and desserts. Basically any time of day is a good time of a day for a peanut butter and jelly crumb muffin.

The crumb topping turned out really crumbly. REALLY crumbly. It tastes good, but it's very messy. I won't make as much topping next time, and I won't make it so crumbly.

Also, Jessica suggests pressing the jelly in between the base muffin and crumbly topping. I'd like to try mixing the jelly into the muffin batter so that you get a more even peanut butter and jelly taste.

 Overall I'm happy with the first attempt and think that I could really nail it with a second attempt. If you love classic peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and are looking for a relatively easy versatile muffin recipe, give it a try. Again, the recipe is available at How Sweet It Is.

What have you been baking lately?

B is for By the Way...Happy Thanksgiving!

Are you ready for another round of Alphabe Thursday? Let's go!

To those of you celebrating the holiday today, Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you enjoy it, regardless of how you're celebrating. I'm sharing a few quick pictures of the pumpkin pie that I made last night for the family festivities this weekend. I wasn't in charge of cooking a whole meal this year, but of course I still volunteered to do some of the baking.

Check out what the other Alphabe Thursday participants posted today for the letter B right here!

the start of fall baking

I haven't shared any pictures of food that I've been making in quite a while because I just haven't been documenting food making lately. When it's 70 and sunny, I don't always feel like spending a lot of time in the kitchen with the camera. Of course as we get further into fall, the natural indoor lighting gets trickier, but I do what I can. Anyway, I got motivated to document some of my first fall baking this month.

Believe it or not, this is the first time that I've ever made zucchini bread. My in-laws grow it and gave us one of several baseball bat sized zucchinis that they had left at the end of the season. I only used a third of it in this bread. I shredded and froze the rest for future loaves this fall.

I saw this recipe on Instagram within days of picking a wealth of apples at Apple Holler, immediately clicked over to the blog post, couldn't believe that it was such an easy recipe (six ingredients and you don't mess up a bowl!), and made it within a week.

 As we have this wealth of apples, I also made apple pie. I refuse to use store bought pie crust and always forget that pie crust from scratch is so much work but so good. I'm hoping that I stay motivated to make a few more pies this fall.

I used the zucchini bread and apple pie recipes in How to Cook Everything. The apple tart recipe is from Jenny at Picky Palate and available online right here.

What have you been baking lately? Has anyone else been slacking on the food pictures in recent months?

the making of Chai tea cupcakes

I never imagined when I got serious about improving my photography skills that I would enjoy taking pictures of food. I enjoy cooking and baking (particularly the latter) and have fun capturing some of my endeavors. Recently I've been on a bit of a quest to find some new dessert recipes that don't include chocolate. Om's Chai Tea Cupcakes were one of my newest projects. I've made two batches now, which have gotten rave reviews, even from those who don't love drinking Chai tea. The tea flavor is subtle and complemented nicely by the orange and cinnamon.

What have you been baking lately?

Where I Linked Up Today: 

sneak peaks

While I was on my metallic kick recently, I put together this mix for another skinny fringed cuff.

I may take out a couple of the finishes when I start to bead it if they make the piece too dark or just don't really fit right.  It's hard to tell at this point.  But it should be a neat color palette for me.  As I'm sure you know, generally I don't work exclusively with neutrals.

And while I'm waiting for my new Art Beads blogging package, I've also been working on this piece again.

I really don't have the patience to work on one delica cuff with no breaks for other projects right now, but it's nice to have one to pick up when I have a few minutes.  It's much easier to do this than get out my cross-stitch or try to squeeze in one small section of a right angle weave piece.  So slowly but surely, I am getting this piece finished.

In other creative endeavors, I made chocolate chip cookie bars this week for one of the conference nights at school.  My floor is cooking the meal for all of us teachers, and of course, I signed up for dessert because I still love baking over all other kinds of cooking.  You can get this recipe here.  I left out the nuts this time.

I also had my ever present little helper to assist with my most recent photo taking sessions.

new listings, sneak peak, other random happenings

I listed two new items in my Etsy shop tonight.  The first one is Tortoiseshell Cat Button Charm Bracelet.  I think that the name is fitting for these neutral shades.  Some of you may remember that I created a custom bracelet like this for someone I met at the Arts Festival earlier this summer.  I liked the result so much that I decided to create another version to sell.

Also, continuing with my red theme for this week, I finished and listed my newest red earrings: Red Striped Beadwoven Peyote Triangle Earrings.  If anyone missed the red items earlier, these earrings coordinate with this peyote cuff and this peyote triangle pendant.

I finally set up the beads for my next Turquoise and Red Fringed Peyote Cuff Bracelet.  I sold the original last summer!  How has it taken me this long to make my next version of this awesome design?

This version will have more variety in the shades/colors for the cube beads and a little different fringe combination.

Finally, here are a couple other random pictures from this week.

My latest baking project: oatmeal chocolate/peanut butter chip cookies.  It's the Quaker Oats recipe (which I can't find online, believe it or not) with chocolate chips and peanut butter chips instead of raisins.  I also used half whole wheat flour/half white flour.  They're pretty awesome.

I know that this picture is dark, but Jake thought it would be cute to take a picture of Angel in her towel for medicine time.  She was diagnosed with a hypothyroid back in February and has to take a liquid dose of medicine twice a day.  Living up to her name, she's about the most well behaved cat ever when she has to take them.  It's taken some training, but she'll sit like that in the towel with me for a minute after the medicine (before she jumps down to get a treat).

pink/red rock garden bracelet and other weekend projects

As promised, here is my pink/red rock garden bracelet that I listed today. :)


Red is one of my favorite colors. I enjoy incorporating it into my pieces all year round. So I didn't plan for this to look like a Valentine's Day piece, but it works well with the holiday coming up! I really wanted to use the rose quartz chips and red coral chips together as soon as I got them. I was a little worried that the contrast would be too harsh, but other beads in contrasting pinks and reds in the bracelets pull everything together nicely. This is the first rock garden bracelets I've made that doesn't actually have any leaf beads in it. I have other Czech glass beads and cubic zirconia hearts mixed in with the rose quartz and coral.

Unfortunately that ones that I used in this bracelet are currently out of stock, but there are lots of other colors still in stock in the cubic zirconia Valentine's Day section. I just put my latest blogging order in this weekend, which also included some of the hearts from the Czech glass Valentine's Day section. I'll post more details about my full order and all of my plans for my new hearts later.

Since last night, I've taken and edited pictures of my newest leafy bracelet, completed a new celestial themed bracelet, and put together partial mixes for several new pieces. During the week when I don't have as much time to work on jewelry, I sometimes get frustrated when I spend most of a night resorting beads from an old project, then sorting beads for a new one, and not having much time for the actual assembly of a new piece. Hopefully having new project mixes already partially assembled will help this process go a little quicker during the week.

Today I also did some baking. I made bread pudding and monster cookies. I'd never heard of monster cookies before I moved to Iowa, but they're very tasty. Different people's recipes vary, but the recipe I use (which Jake got from one of his research co-workers in the summer of 2008) has oatmeal, chocolate chips, peanut butter, and M&Ms.




I start student teaching (in my own classroom) and my last master's class tomorrow. That means that things will be that much crazier than usual until the end of April, but then I have ALL of my coursework for my master's finished!

Disclosure - I received my ArtBead's products free of charge through their blogging program. I am honestly reviewing their products and have not been paid for my endorsement as it pertains to the products I received.