Pumpkin is our Word of the Week

It’s a pumpkin theme around here! There’s a popular saying that if you can’t beat them, then join them. In terms of seasons, our favourite is actually Summer. In terms of celebrations, we love Christmas the most. It’s close to our birthday and we just love the vibes. The pumpkin season though is slowly growing on us.

It started during the first lockdown of the pandemic when we stayed home and watched so many Youtube videos of people (mostly Americans) doing up their homes for Fall (Autumn). The bug bit and so we are embracing the season since there is nothing much we can do about it. Embracing it helps to keep us sane. Fighting it doesn’t help, does it?

So this week we had a bunch of Fall/Autumn ideas in mind to make use of our downtime, have some fun and relaxation, and also create and keep fresh content on our YouTube channel. So pumpkin cooking and crafts were the highlights of our week.

Fabric pumpkins

After watching several Youtube videos of making pumpkins with various materials including clay, wood, yarn, and fabric, we opted to make use of some bits of fabric we had. Last week we also purchased 2 second-hand cushions at the charity shop so we could use the stuffing for the pumpkins. We also bought second-hand scarves, a hat, and two t-shirts with Fall/Autumn colours on them. This made our little project quite frugal as we bought nothing new or expensive.

Other than those materials all we needed was some thread, twine, ribbons, a glue gun, glue sticks, extra-long needles, and scissors.

It was a really relaxing session one morning as we both sat at the table with all our supplies and got to work cutting, sewing, glueing, and chatting. At one point Leisa was ‘cussing’ and I was laughing. She was frustrated (just a bit) as she had cut one of her pumpkin fabrics too big and so ended up with a massive pumpkin that was hard to manage. I convinced her that she could do it so she kept trying and trying and the thread kept snapping when she tried to pull up her running stitches. That was a good laugh, enough to fill me for the day!

Here is a photo of some of our pumpkins. They are all cute and unique in their own way. In my eyes they are. What do you think?

The burgundy one in the foreground was made from a charity shop hat.The stem is too long but that adds character and a talking point, lol. Can you see the big plaid one in the middle? That’s the one that almost gave Leisa a fit.

Pumpkin Spiced Muffins with a twist

Be honest, do you really like pumpkin spice? I know that around this time of the year, you will hear it a lot being used in all sorts of recipes, including and hot and cold drinks from several popular coffee chains. Well, we tried it once and we don’t like it at all. It tasted so artificial! So we’ve been giving it a think and thought we should have the skill to be able to come up with our own version of a pumpkin spiced muffin!

We sure did! So we put the vote out to our Youtube subscribers to choose what we should bake for our live cooking show on Wednesday this week. Thankfully, the pumpkin-spiced muffin was the winner. So we had to put our two heads together to come up with a recipe that would work. Guess what? We used some real grated pumpkin and also spiced it up with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, mixed spice, and vanilla.

It was a lovely success which we loved and so Leisa has done up the real pumpkin spiced muffin recipe for you to try out if you wish. Our subscribers thought it was a hit too and were impressed with our presentation using tulip paper cases.

If we had to do it again, we would definitely go this route rather than any fake flavouring with God knows what additives included.

Here is our Live cooking video and our interaction and reaction from our subscribers. We had the best time.

And a drink to match

We also dreamt up a cold pumpkin spiced drink that we could use when we felt for a cold drink. This time we used boiled pumpkin that was then frozen, the same spices and some almond milk. It turned out to be a beautiful colour and the flavour was similar to egg nog (or maybe it was the colour that fooled us). Anyway, it was so yummy and so refreshing. To enhance the flavour, we added a pinch of salt and a spoon of our favourite no-calorie sweetener.

Has pumpkin featured in your week this week? Do you like pumpkin spice and all that? Or are you a more natural girl/guy? Do let us know in the comments below.