Best Pumpkin Cupcake Recipe EVER!

Here in Maryland it is quite rare to get more than a flurry of snow before Christmas. But when it does snow and the kids are off school there is nothing better than baking and drinking hot chocolate. One of my favorite go to recipes for the kids and the adults is Pumpkin Cupcakes.

I can assure you this is the easiest recipe you will ever follow. This recipe is cheap, easy and delicious and most of all picky eater approved. So here it goes......

Pumpkin Cupcakes

Ingredients

• One box of Spice Cake Mix (or any other cake mix you like yellow works well, or carrot)
• One 16 oz can of Pumpkin Puree
• Raisins
• Walnuts (or any other nuts you and your family like)
• Cream Cheese Icing homemade or store bought (icing is optional, the cupcakes come out more like muffins so if you don't want to ice them...don't)

Directions

• Preheat oven to the temperature on the cake mix directions
• Mix cake mix and pumpkin puree
• Add in any extra's you might want (raisins, nuts, dried fruit)
• Mix together
• Fill a cupcake tin with foil cupcake liners (the little paper inserts can be used for art projects for the kids I will be posting a winter snowflake project made with them later)
• Bake for 10-15 minutes depending on your oven
• Let cool, and either enjoy plain as we do, or ice them for a special treat!

Cloth Diapering Our Latest Journey

One of the latest journeys we have taken is to reduce as much trash and waste in our house as possible. My husband has enacted a plan to recycle, and or reduce as much food related waste as possible. I on the other hand decided to make a change with our new addition a beautiful baby girl.  Instead of the traditional disposable diapers we used for both of our other children I opted for cloth diapers and here's why. It is estimated that every year 27.4 billion diapers are consumed in the United States alone and 92% of them make into the landfills the other 8% are disposed of in other ways like dumped under a minivan in the grocery store parking lot.

The real issue is that no one really knows how long they take to decompose but it is estimated that it could take anywhere from 200 to 500 years which is a really long time considering how many diapers are used each year. If this wasn't bad enough disposable diapers contain terrible ingredients like wood pulp, chlorine, dioxin, trubutyl-tin and sodium polyacrylate. I am not certain which of these chemicals was responsible for the constant and horrible diaper rash my two older daughters got but I can say for certain the new baby has had very little while using cloth diapers and the few times we used a disposable or two she instantly got diaper rash.

There are other great perks to cloth diapering apart from the mounting environmental considerations. Cloth diapers seem to leak less, they are just as easy to put on as disposables, much more fashionable, and best of all incredibly economic. My husband and I went back and forth about the cloth diapering situation, we went over the numbers of biodegradable diapers, regular diapers, and much more. Funny enough we were actually applying a key tool used in environmental policy analysis by weighing the cost versus the benefits.

 This type of key analysis showed that the cost of the disposable diapers was not worth the benefits given, cloth diapers on the hand were well worth the benefits for the small cost. On average a good cloth diaper can cost anywhere from 10 dollars all the way up to 20. That seems like a lot but when you weigh in this diaper will be used from infancy all the way up until potty training that is not a large number considering what you would pay for disposables. I will leave some links for anyone who is interested in the wonderful world of cloth diapers. I will most likely do another post about my diaper journey which will include diapers I prefer and why, my wash routine, detergent and much more.

Here are some great links for cloth diaper information:
http://www.diaperdirt.com/
http://www.theclothdiaperwhisperer.com/
 http://www.kellyscloset.com/

Welcome

Welcome to my blog, I am a mother of three, a wife, and an environmentalist. I have had many struggles trying to stay true to myself, keeping a healthy family, and following my own dreams. There are many things I have learned over the years about how important our environment is and how it effects the way we live our lives including our health and well being.
My own mother instilled many life lessons about enjoying our environment, keeping it clean, and being respectful of those around us, and when I became a mother I found this to be a very important and time consuming lesson to teach my own children. I have encountered many struggles to provide a clean and safe household, and have learned many things about raising children, environmental issues, tips and tricks to living sustainably, and what it means to actually be sustainable in an urban environment.
When I first became a mother seven years ago I was young and inexperienced. I was still in collage and aware of the environmental issue that surrounded me, but to caught up in living my life to notice them or to take action. When I learned that I was going to be a mother, I became aware that everything I ate, and everything I came into contact with could harm my precious baby. I started on a path to clean up my life and to learn what I could do to help protect myself and the environment I lived in. I started researching all of the harmful things I would and did come into contact with, I changed my major from Biology to Environmental Management and Policy, I also started to search for ways to live my life without harmful chemicals and additives. I started realizing that living more environmentally conscious also means shelling out more money to gain that lifestyle. I then added another goal to try and live more simply, and this in itself was more helpful than pursuing a marketed picture perfect green lifestyle. Together with my husband we started to carve a path to raising our children to live more simply without all of the added consumerism that plagues our society. This has not come easy and it did not happen overnight.
 This blog will follow my daily life trying to discover new ways in which we can save the environment by trying to decrease our waste and footprint, save money by being resourceful and not tempted by consumerism, teach our children to follow a more simplistic way of living, and much more. I can't wait to share all that I have learned and all that I will learn.....Welcome to my habitat!