Recipe for Pumpkin Spice Cheerio Bars, pairs great with leggings and slippers and oversized shirts.
Imagine this. It’s mid-August and your Pinterest home feed is starting to fill up with orange-y fall vibes. Lots of pictures of fashion bloggers in those thigh high boots and corduroy skirts. Leaves. Coffee cups with leaves. Girls with pretty hair holding a coffee cup standing in leaves. You get what I’m going at, right?
Okay now that we’re there, imagine that someone mentions PUMPKIN SPICE CHEERIOS to you and your head begins to spin because what could be more delicious than that? Without having ever tasted a bite of them, you take advantage of the grocery store’s 4 for $4 sale on Cheerios and you buy BOXES of Pumpkin Spice Cheerios, only to find out…
What you were REALLY jonesing for were Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s. The O’s are bigger and crispier and destroy the roof of your mouth LIKE ALL GOOD CEREAL DOES (lookin’ at you, Cap’n Crunch).
You force yourself to finish at least a box before you cave and buy the Pumpkin O’s. But now the problem is you have BOXES of Pumpkin Spice Cheerios. Whatever shall you do?
If you happen to relate really deeply to this, then you’re not alone because it is EXACTLY what happened to me.
I stared at the Cheerios for awhile and then a lightbulb went off. I’d try something. Rice Krispie Treats, BUT WITH PUMPKIN SPICE CHEERIOS. Maybe out of a bowl they wouldn’t be as disappointing.
Man, was I right. and I’m here to pass my right-ness on to any of you looking to sprinkle a little more pumpkin spice into your life (and if that’s not you, bye for now).
Ingredients:
ONE // Grease a dish for holding your PSC bars. I have this cute one I found at Goodwill with a cute design on the edges. I just used Trader Joe’s Coconut oil spray.
TWO // Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a large pot over medium heat.
THREE // Add in 4 cups of mini marshmallows and stir constantly until the mallows become all melted with the butter and becomes a fluffy, sticky paste-type thing.
FOUR // Pour 4 cups of Pumpkin Spice Cheerios into the marshmallow mixture and stir very well, coating all of the cheerios.
FIVE // Pour the cheerio mallow mixture into the greased pan. Pour is a loose term. You’re mostly just scooping it out, then press it down as flat as you can. Press it real good so it all sticks together.
SIX (Optional) // if you have chocolate chips, go ahead and sprinkle some on top before it cools. Great for people like me who want to sprinkle chocolate chips on top of basically everything.
Let it cool for awhile, then cut it into whatever size squares you feel are acceptable (I’m not gonna judge).
Also speaking of not judging, I figured since I’d never actually tried this recipe I should probably test it before I posted it. If you’re wondering what I thought of it, check out this photo I realized showed the damage I did to this pan of tasty treat:
In case you can’t tell, I ate a whole bunch of it…. for research. also for motivation to get out of bed and feed the baby again. I mean, I would have fed her no matter what but this made it a little easier.
Y’all are so welcome π
As a first time mom, one of the things I obsessed about for about a month and a half was what to pack in my hospital bag. I looked on Pinterest, read my friends blog posts, and reached out to my Instagram peeps. After one big trip to Target (and one to Walmart, where I found my actual hospital bag), I was pretty much set.
Was I planning on taking a really nice picture of everything in my hospital bag for this post? Yes.
Did I ever end up taking a really nice picture of everything in my hospital bag for this post? Absolutely not.
Let me start with what I ended up buying and packing, because I remember it all.
ALSO:
Because we were induced, I had time to put my bag together and walk into the hospital super prepared. Well.. as prepared as you can be to walk in a family of 2 and walk out a family of 3.
I’ve had a few people ask me what we packed in our hospital bag and what we used. I listed what we brought, and now to tell you what we used..
Out of all of that, I used my own pillow (pictured above!), the sound machine, a nightgown (on our last night) and my hairbrush. That is literally everything I used. Although I used my favorite cat pillow, I also used roughly 237 of the hospital pillows to make a nest for myself on the hospital bed the first night and during the second day. From the minute she was born, we turned on the sound machine so the baby wouldn’t have to experience big empty silence for the first time right after being born.
Honestly, everything went SO FAST that I didn’t even really think to get my stuff out. I got the hospital gown on when we first got to the hospital, spent all night trying to sleep, and then had so many people coming in and out before they started the contractions that I didn’t even think about changing. After she was born, I realized that my nightgown allowed for easier skin to skin than the hospital gown, so I wore it the second night so we could snuggle closer together.
Before we were discharged, I took a shower with the hospital’s all in one wash because I was trying to pack and didn’t want to dig around for my stuff, and then I used my hair brush to destroy the one big dread my hair had turned into because I put it into a ponytail and literally never took it out. Don’t do that, it’s rough.
So basically I spent hours researching and collecting supplies and packing and barely used ANYTHING, but you know what… I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Here’s the thing.
There comes a point in your pregnancy (I’m guessing I should add your FIRST pregnancy because all second+ time moms pack their bags at the last minute) when you’ve done everything there is to do. Your nursery is ready, the clothes are washed, the car seat is installed and you just need to DO something. I had NO IDEA of what to expect. When I first started packing my bag, I was assuming we’d experience spontaneous labor and so I kept thinking “well, tomorrow it could happen.” There’s only so much emotional preparation you can do before you need to do some tangible preparation.
All the things people said were right; the hospital gives you everything you need. The water bottle, the socks, the disposable underwear and everything to put in it.
If I were to do it all again, I wouldn’t change a single thing. Yes we ended up making multiple trips to the car when we were discharged (we got flowers! and snacks!), but I needed the opportunity to DO something for a week. I ended up using everything I purchased during the postpartum period, so it’s not like any of it went to waste.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, where I love to drink coffee and adventure. I blog because I think life matters too much to let it go by without noticing.
