Fall Favorite // pumpkin bread recipe

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If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, chances are you knew this was coming. It is officially fall and that means I can finally break out my favorite sign of the new season. This recipe for Pumpkin Bread has been in my family for as long as I can remember. There have been many loaves made, frozen, shared, devoured, eaten off the counter by naughty Labrador Retrievers...loves that were under-baked, over-baked, or even baked with whole cloves instead of ground...that was an interesting version.

We are fighting the urge to turn up the heat at Woodlawn, and yesterday's cold kitchen called for some baking. So while the girls were off

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Fair week

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I vowed I wasn't going to complain about the weather on my blog this summer, but it may or may not have been the reasoned I climbed into a hole and disappeared last week. 

But the heat is lifting a wee bit just in time for our 4-H county fair to begin this week. 

You can tell my brain is full when I start pasting sheets of lists and schedules to the kitchen refrigerator. There are papers listing everyone's fair entries--cookies, paintings, photographs, cakes. A schedule for the week--what day we take animals in, when sheep get weighed, when we have volunteer duties, when the sheep show starts, and with plenty of room for more "to-dos" as they stack up. 

My kitchen is a massive explosion of fair picnic food, cookie-baking, show clothes and tonight's defrosting dinner.

 

The girls and I just came in from a

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June 12. A list.

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It's another late night but here we go with another list. They're working for me lately.

*No flat tires today! Yay.

*My mother-in-law is visiting all week and today she took the girls to the bookstore for a little shopping trip. Of course, along with books they also came home with this. I put Birdy to bed tonight with cow-spotted fingernails. Seriously.

*Made homemade stromboli for dinner tonight. So good. But, in my opinion, so much better tomorrow. Cold.

*That moment when you look up at your dining room ceiling and see big blobs of paint chips falling down? And then you go upstairs and realize....

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June 9. Free printable jam labels!

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Ask me if I made strawberry jam today in my throw-back blue jam jars. No wait! Don't ask me. Ack! This day got away from me, all that lounging and napping and sitting on the back porch. Then suddenly it was dinner. But tomorrow! Tomorrow or else! I will make the jam.

In the meantime, I spent just about as much time as it takes to make a batch of jam perfecting this year's jam labels. Priorities, I know. So in case you're the jam-labelling type, I'm ...

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June 8. Because I can

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June needs to take a serious chill pill. These days have been chock full and yikes, I've missed three of my days of daily blogging in June. I'll make up for it at the end of the month, I promise.

This morning before breakfast, I ran out to the corner to grab a gallon of milk. Somehow I got ridiculously sidetracked and ended up at a local farm buying strawberries and bags of just-picked salad greens. Strawberry season always sneaks up on me. And word around town is that the season is about to end.

We're down to our last jar of jam from last summer, which I have judiciously rationed all winter. If I missed my strawberry-jam-making window this year, there'd be store-bought jam for the rest of the year.

So when I passed the strawberry sign early this morning, the pull was just too strong and I came home with an arm load of berries.

And apparently in the move to Woodlawn and my crazed de-cluttering, I gave away all my empty jam jars. So I found myself standing in Wegmans this afternoon deciding which size jam jars I want to make this year. And darn if I wasn't a total sucker for the blue vintage throw-backs. I'm thinking they'll look awfully nice full of strawberry jam. 

The girls' grandmother arrived in town today from Wisconsin. She'll be staying for the week, so between a trip to the airport, welcoming her and slipping off to the grocery store, the jam session has been pushed off until tomorrow.  But I'm pretty sure it's the perfect thing for a Sunday afternoon.