Name: Desert Essence’s Pumpkin Hand Repair Cream Purchased At: Under my Christmas Tree Price: $8.99ish Availability: Year Round
My brain is so very fuzzy! I’m in a post holiday funk and my brain wants to nap and watch HGTV and Season 1 of Glee on dvd. The focus necessary for work has been hard to come by these last few days. The holidays were so fun that I haven’t accepted that they are over. I refuse to take down my Hello Kitty holiday lights handing in my office until it’s humiliatingly necessary . . . perhaps Easter.
My wonderful holiday included being gifted several pumpkin themed gifts and the Desert Essence’s pumpkin hand repair cream is one of my favorites. I’m obsessed with lotion, especially at work because I wash my hands numerous times throughout the day . . . probably because at my desk in where I drink my 8 cups of water a day. This lotion smells really unique and it took me a day or two before I decided that I really liked it. The smell is strongly vanilla and slightly caramel but it is still reminiscent of pumpkin. It’s also not greasy. Good stuff and Thank You Lynn!
I recently finished reading the book Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen. I’d say that it was mostly fluff and read more like a movie script than a novel but it was an enjoyable lazy summer read. Mostly I liked the whimsy of it. There was a woman hiding in a closet for almost the entire story, books that would appear out of nowhere and follow one of the characters around town, a possibly magical red sweater, and some fantastical romances.
One of the main story lines is a secret closet. In the main character’s closet is a small entrance to another closet that’s located in a different room. The main entrance to the secret closet is blocked by a giant armoire. No one else uses the closet or remembers the other entrance. In the closet, she stores travel magazines, romance novels, and lots and lots of candy that she has to sneak into the house and hide from her controlling mother. It got me to thinking about what I would hide if I had my own secret closet. There’s no use in storing candy in my secret closet because I’d eat all of it the same day I brought it in. Cupcakes wouldn’t preserve well and neither would pumpkin pies. I think I’d want to fill it with a collection of babushka dolls and Maneki Neko Beckoning Cats mixed with a few garden gnomes thrown in for the sake of being eclectic. A secret closet has so many possibilities!
I picked up the book while at Costco, mostly because I liked the cover and the title. I’d never heard of the author before. When I flipped open the book to peruse its pages, I opened it to this page:
Of course I had to buy it.
I actually had no idea what a pumpkin mellowcreme was until I did a google search. I was imagining something likes those Idaho Spuds candy bars; something fluffy with pumpkin flavor inside covered in chocolate with a sprinkling of pecans on the outside. Nope! It’s those tiny candy pumpkin that taste like candy corn. They’re only available around Halloween time. Those things make my teeth hurt just thinking about them. My initial guess was that it only takes four ingredients to make the pumkin mellowcreme: sugar, high fructose corn syrup, green food coloring and orange food coloring. I was close; they also contain honey. They taste absolutely nothing like pumpkins.
What I also learned from my google search is that people actually go nuts over these things. There’s even an entire website devoted to the pumpkin mellowcreme. Their tagline is “Debunking the myth that eating them incessantly will kill you.” They have a poem, discussion board, photos, and information on the tiny-pumpkin-looking-tooth-decayers. I thought my blog was super nichey but this one makes me look like a generalist!
Sugar Queen is a thumbs up as a mellow read and pumpkin mellowcremes are a thumbs up only as a cute pumpkin cupcake topper.
Finally! After two year’s worth of New Year’s Resolutions, my etsy shop is up and running. I’m still working on filling out the multiple profile information but I’ve got a couple of items listed. Take a look!
I recently saw a recipe for pumpkin waffles and thought I’d give it a try and maybe even blog about it. Now, I’m hesitant to review the recipe because I made the waffles early in the morning before I’d had any coffee and I went out and bought the only waffle maker left on the shelves of a local department store that was a total cost of $6.98 plus tax plus and I had to use LIBBY’S Easy Pumpkin Pie Mix instead of the pureed pumpkin that the recipe requested. With all that stacked against it, the pumpkin waffles were a disaster. They were flat, runny, and burt in the middle.
I can’t blame the disater on a bad recipe until I at least try the recipe again using all the right ingredients and with a decent waffle maker. I ended up salvaging them by adding an extra cup of flour and making pancakes out of them instead. The texture was a little funky for pancakes but the flavor was delicious.
So, I’m blogging about not wanting to blog about this recipe in order to tell you that this was the first time I’d discovered there is a serious pumpkin shortage in the United States. WHAT?!?! Yes, just go to your supermarket and try to find canned pumpkin. For a good number of places the cans are missing!
My extensive google searching capabilities have solved the mystery: a chilly, damp summer in the Midwest and Northeast has hurt the pumpkin crop. There’s a great two-part series on the shortage at the “Daily News Transcript.” Their conclusion is:
Nationwide, the shortage of warm, sunny days has caused spotty pumpkin growth. Some pumpkin patches were ruined by the rain and many farmers had to re-plant, delaying the peak season in some places. Also, pumpkins are pollinated by bees, farmers said, and bees don’t fly in the rain.
The difference, local farmers have said, is in the soil – if the soil is heavy to begin with, the added rain will drown the pumpkins. However, if the soil is dry, the pumpkins turn out OK.
Name: Sexy Hair’s Pumpkin Shampoo & Conditioner Purchased At: Marshalls Price: $10 each Availability: Year Round
A few years back, I found the pumpkin line of Sexy Hair products. I was so thrilled at the thought of my head smelling like a pumpkin pie that I was willing to overlook the incredibly high price tag. I chose the Pumpkin Whipped Soufflé Styling Crème. I think I went home that very night and tried it out. It was utterly disappointing. My hair was a gooey mess and didn’t smell anything like pumpkin. No, pumpkin smelling head for me, bummer!
With this history in mind, when I first heard about the Sexy Hair Pumpkin Shampoo and Conditioner was on sale at Marshalls ($10 each instead of the regular $20) I wasn’t inspired to promptly run down and buy them.
A year ago I was a firm believer in paying top quality for hair Bumble and Bumble; Redken, etc. My naturally curly hair demands moisture either to keep the curls from frizzing or to protect it from the super high heat of the flat iron. However, when Shannon and I moved in together and then had to plan a wedding in two weeks, money was tight and so I started using her $1.99 Suave hair conditioner. I honestly can’t tell the difference in my hair and so I’ve stuck with the cheap stuff.
First off, the stuff is still overpriced even at 50% off. It’s a big bottle but my hair still feels and looks the same as when I was using the cheap stuff. It doesn’t leave my hair any softer. Second, the scent is pleasant and does smell somewhat like pumpkin…more like a pumpkin pie. The shampoo smells better than the conditioner, which has a somewhat sour scent (Shannon disagrees, she feels the conditioner smells better). Lastly, my favorite part of the product is that the scent lingers but is not overpowering. Directly out of the shower the scent is strong but after my hair dries and I style it, the scent gets faint. Then, eventually I can’t smell it at all until I fluff my hair or it gets wet again. I don’t want such a strong scent so that by the end of the day I can’t stand the smell but I want to catch an occasional whiff of my hair and wonder who’s baking the pumpkin pie.
Overall, I enjoy the Sexy Hair Pumpkin Shampoo and Conditioner. However, once it’s gone I’ll probably go back to my $1.99 conditioner. Maybe not if it’s still $10; the more I use it the more I like it. Thanks for finding it, Chris!
This Labor Day weekend has been spent crafting and pumpkin searching. I even managed to combine the two with this zipper pouch:
I was going to make it for my future etsy shop but it came out a little louder than I wanted. It kinda screams “PUMPKINS!!!” I’m working on a similar zipper pouch but this one will only strongly state “pumpkins.”
In part to having been raised Mormon, I have some skill in several different types of crafts including needlepoint, cross-stitch, sewing, quilting, jewelry making, appliqueing, macrame, and knitting. One method I have not fully learned is crocheting. I can make a decent granny square but that’s all I’ve ever made. Recently I’ve started finding some really cute crotchet patterns that may inspire me to pick back up a crotchet hook.
For instance, I found this pattern on Etsy today:
How freaking adorable! There’s also a cupcake pattern and a candy corn pattern. Check out Lilla Dolce’s etsy shop for more information on the Pumpkin Sugar Cookie Crochet Scarf Pattern.
Yesterday was chilly here in Los Angeles. Walking from the train station to the office, the hair on my arms was standing straight up and I had goosebumps all over. It really felt like Fall. Typically, the weather will cool down for a short time in August to trick me into believing that Fall is here early and then September will be hotter than hell.
While the Fall temperature may not be here to stay, pumpkin products have already started showing up on the shelves of several retailers. The first pumpkin display I saw this year was at JoAnn’s Craft & Fabric store back in July. Even for a pumpkin fanatic like me, this seems way too early and lots more displays have crept up since.
Just this past weekend I saw Disneyland staff stocking shelves with pumpkin memorabilia and they even had a Fall window display. I think it was the sight of a Mickey Mouse hat decked out as a pumpkin that finally got me excited about the upcoming 2009 pumpkin season. I’m really looking forward to seeing Disneyland all pumpkin’d out and now that we just got out pass I’ll be able to take lots of pictures.
The 2009 Pumpkin Eatin’ Season is shaping up to be a good one. Only two more weeks until the official start! Woo Ho!!
I am not admitting anything but I’ve been told that I have an obsession with cute, fat, Japanese things. Examples of this would be Hello Kitty or Studio Ghibli films. I now have something else to add to the list, Yayoi Kusama’s “Pumpkin.” I’d seen similar photos to the one above but hadn’t looked into them any further. Today, I did the follow-the-Google-trail thing and was completely WOWed that I’d missed her art work up until now. She often gets put into categories next to Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara —both of whom I love’s .possibly because a considerable amount of their work would fall into the “cute, fat, Japanese” category.
What most interests me in Kusama’s work, besides her use of pumpkins, is her life story. Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan in 1929. She labels herself as an “obsessive artist” covering surfaces of just about anything in polka dots.
“Kusama has experienced hallucinations and severe obsessive thoughts since childhood, often of a suicidal nature…The vast fields of polka dots, or “infinity nets,” as she called them, were taken directly from her hallucinations…
‘One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness. As I realized it was actually happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened. I knew I had to run away lest I should be deprived of my life by the spell of the red flowers. I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs straining my ankle…’
Today she lives, by choice, in a mental hospital in Tokyo, where she has continued to produce work since the mid-1970s. Her studio is a short distance from the hospital. ‘If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago,’ Kusama is often quoted as saying.”
Kusama has become a well-known pop artist here in the states. She moved to New York City at the age of 27 after having corresponded for several years with Georgia O’Keefe. She’s so well know that one of her works recently sold for over $5 million at Christies in New York, a new record for a living female artist.
The pumpkin sculpture pictured above is found at the Benesse House in Naoshima Japan, Kusama has done other large pumpkin sculptures elsewhere. I’ve been trying to find photos of an installation she did in the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale back in 1993 but haven’t found much. The exhibit consisted of a mirrored room filled with tiny pumpkin sculptures in which she sat in color coordinated magician’s attire. I love this quote that seems to surround discussions about her, “Pumpkin came to represent for her a kind of alter ego or self-portrait and remains one of her signature series of works.”
In my head, I’ve already begun planning a vacation to Japan in order to see the Benesse “Pumpkin” sculpture (I’ve also wanted to visit the Studio Ghibli Museum for years now) but for now I would settle for one of these Kusama tea towels:
Oh! So very pretty!!! I have spent too much time looking up Kusama’s pumpkins today but I’m glad I did. I still can’t believe that I hadn’t heard of her before today. I kind of thought of myself as a dilettante art nerd.. Anyhow, I leave you with this video from a Kusama documentary.
The photo at the top of this post is courtesy of RubyVrooom.
on the shelves of several retailers. The first pumpkin display I saw this year was at JoAnn’s Craft & Fabric store back in July. Even for a pumpkin fanatic like me, this seems way too early and lots more displays have crept up since.
that finally got me excited about the upcoming 2009 pumpkin season. I’m really looking forward to seeing Disneyland all pumpkin’d out and now that we just got out pass I’ll be able to take lots of pictures. 
