Mean Muggin' Santa

So the past few months Lincoln has developed into this bashful little thing. Instead of just hiding his face (which he does also) his reaction to people he isn't familiar with is to give them dirty looks. We call it his mean muggin' face. He does it GOOD. Granted, hes pretty much been doing it since birth, he just never did it as a reaction to being around new people before. It's pretty hilarious...sometimes. Other times I feel awful and apologize because I don't want the people to take it personally.

Well, now onto Santa. We are big, and I mean BIG, Christmas people around here. We usually decorate the first or second week in November because Christmas just makes me happy, I LOVE it, and with as much effort as I put into my decorations I need to enjoy them longer than just 30 some odd days. So we have been decorated over here for a couple weeks now, and I knew I wanted to take Lincoln to visit Santa soon. Mainly because I knew the lines would be shorter. Bass Pro Shop has had Santa for about a week now and we made the mistake on going the FIRST night. My thinking was "perfect, first night no one will be there". WRONG. Every person in Southern California was there. Apparently they had a whole event that night and so we had to turn around and come home. I was super bummed. So we decided to make the trip down there tonight hoping for a small crowd, and that's exactly what we got! A whole FOUR people in front of us. With a toddler a short line is a must. Especially Lincoln, he is SO energetic and never stops. Ever!

I was worried for poor Santa though. I knew what would happen if we tried to sit him on his lap. I didn't want to do that to Lincoln either. Sure, crying pictures with Santa are hilarious...10 years down the road, but I wanted Lincoln to have fun, not cry. We attempted to have him walk up to Santa and there it was...the mean muggin' face. My Dad picked Lincoln up and decided to just take a family shot instead of forcing Lincoln to get on the big scary red guys lap causing melt down central.

We got to look at the photo after it was taken, and there it was. The mean mug. A slightly less dramatic mean mug, but a mean mug none the less.

I asked the girl if that was the only shot they took, she said it was the best one and once I got home and saw it on the computer screen I realized MY EYES ARE CLOSED! CLOSED! I was so bummed. It was a great shot, but oh well. 

We then went and road the carousel after Santa which he really enjoyed and then went and had dinner. It was a great night! Mean muggin' face and all.  

Pumpkin Pancake "Muffins"

So fall is one of my favorite times of the year, I love the change in weather (this cali girl HATES summer, go figure) the smell of fall, the pumpkins, apples, spices. All of it. Especially because it leads towards my FAVORITE time, Christmas time. But that's not what this is about. Usually on the weekend my husband makes a special breakfast. If we don't have time in the mornings because it's busy on the ranch that day, he will make breakfast for dinner. That was the case today. I also decided to make homemade apple sauce in the crock pot so fall was in the air at our house. He mentioned to me he might want to make pancakes but it's such a mess we figured to just put them in the muffin tins. Since fall is approaching, and the applesauce was cooking away smelling SO good I told him we should make pumpkin pancakes since the can of pumpkin puree in our pantry has just been staring at me lately. 

Holy moly. I had no idea the deliciousness we were about to experience. The pancake "muffins" turned out SO good that I had to share them with you all. They would be fantastic to make the night before also and have for quick on the go breakfasts in the morning as well.

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups milk

1 cup pumpkin puree

1 egg

2 tablespoons coconut oil

2 cups all purpose flour

4-5 tablespoons brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

4 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice 

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In one large bowl mix your milk, pumpkin, egg & coconut oil until combined. If the pumpkin or coconut oil is a little lumpy that's ok. 

In a separate large bowl combine your flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice & salt.

Slowly incorporate your dry into your wet ingredients. The important rule of thumb here is to not over-mix. Once the wet and dry are mixed together you're pretty much good.

Spray your muffin tins with non stick spray.

Use a 1/3 cup to scoop your pancake mix into the tins. All together this ended up making 17 pancake muffins for us. 

Bake for 13-16 minutes, or until it passes the tooth pic test. I want to add that our bottom rack cooks faster than our top rack so watch out for that with your oven. Our bottom rack was done at 13 minutes and our top rack was done closer to 16-17 minutes. 

These were SO moist and delicious. 

But putting a little syrup on top took them to a WHOLE other level!