Today I Did A Dangerous Thing

Oh, yes I did. Very dangerous.

But before revealing that information, I'll share this: It was a wonderful day.

Up early. Raking leaves (a euphemism, because what the boys did was NOT raking; it was drive-the-tractor-and-vacuuming leaves, thanks to my dad. But it counts, and the yard is leaf-free. Mostly. Temporarily.)

House cleaning. Re-organizing, because yesterday I rearranged the living room (again). I like change, and there are times and moments in my life when I hear change calling my name and I respond. I don't have money to decorate, although I'd love to spend $80 on new, colorful pillows to accent the couch. I don't have money to spend on the house, although our tiny little 5' x 7' rug, purchased in a valiant (and cheap) attempt to 'center' the room and focus a little color, it looks sad. And pathetic. It tries so hard, but it's just. too. small.

I'd love a big new rug; a room-sized rug. Some day.

Anyway, there are many things I'd love to do to decorate, to make things more comfortable, to make our home pretty. But there are no house-decorating funds, and even if there were, I'd probably be paralyzed. I feel incredibly inept when it comes to home decor.

So, what I do is change things.

I have done this all my life. As a child, I used to rearrange my bedroom frequently. As a young parent, I kept my sanity by mixing up the furniture in the house.

Since my marriage to Tony and the combining of our households, the possibilities are more challenging. I get to be more inventive. So with a fall chill in the air, the prospect of my family being home together in just a few weeks for Thanksgiving, and a general itchy feeling for change in my spirit, I started pulling around the furniture.

I am deliberately leaving the pile of folded clothes on the coffee table
as well as the piano bench in the middle of nowhere. And the
little stool. Keepin' it real....

That's the TV antenna laying on the floor by the TV. Which is probably
why the TV reception is not so good.

I like it.

(By the way, I am not so impressed with myself that I think that people want to see pictures of my living room; this is for the kids, who WILL want to see pictures of the living room.)

(Or not.)

Between the furniture moving and the general cleaning and laundry folding, I got some chicken stock simmering on the stove, only because I found a lonely chicken breast in the kitchen that needed cooking.

I put away all the clothes that had been scattered around our bedroom. That took a while. I worked a bit, in preparation for tomorrow.

Then I left to run errands. Goodwill - where I gave away more than I brought home, but I scored a beautiful pair of soft, luxurious leather shoes, a sweater, a book for my son and a chunky, oversized sweater. And a print for the bathroom. All for under $20. And I went to Kroger, where I worked hard to save $56.11.

I came home to put the finishing touches on the soup. And it was then, as I moved toward the stove, that I realized what a dangerous thing I had done.

That's what's left of TWO loaves of pumpkin bread I made this morning. Between David and Tony (and me, with the first few tastes), we polished off an entire loaf of pumpkin bread. Plus some.

The danger?

It's the best pumpkin bread I've ever made.

I'll share the recipe here, although I lay no claim to being any sort of food blogger. I'm just telling you - this is a GREAT recipe.

Slight modification: I didn't have any mini-chocolate chips. In fact, I only possessed 1/3 of a bag of regular chocolate chips that had coagulated into some free-form chocolate sculpture. Somehow, they got hot and morphed into a massive mound of chocolate. I smashed the blob to smithereens with a meat hammer. It worked.

So, uh...if you don't have mini-chocolate chips, don't let that slow you down. Improvise!

And a quick tip - don't skip out on the cinnamon-sugar touch at the end. That sends this recipe from really good to absolute bliss. 

Absolutely dangerous, actually. It's just too good to resist. And nobody needs to eat an entire loaf of pumpkin bread every day.

That would be dangerous.

I stumbled upon the recipe here.

For the record, her pictures are quite fancy. Mine are not. But it sure tasted good.