Pumpkin Party! (And the best pumpkin cake recipe ever...)

The fifth annual pumpkin party happened over the weekend and it was another great celebration of the fall season and it's most famous fruit...Pumpkin!  A lot of people have pumpkin parties this time of year but they are usually pumpkin carving parties.  Not this one.  The first year we carved pumpkins.  But then we realized that the best part of the party was the FOOD.  So now instead of carving...we eat. Price of admission is a pumpkin dish and there are so many different kinds you can make.  Pies, pastas, drinks, soups, cakes, breads, dips, salads and on and on and on.  It's a delicious affair.  Also, yes, I had to google to find out if pumpkin was a fruit or veggie. NOW WE KNOW.

• Inspired by Pinterest, I got two pumpkin trick-or-treating pails and put some flowers in them for the doorway.  In the pin I saw, they suggested filling the pail with water, like a vase. So I started to do that...only to realize there is a hole in the bottom of each of them. So I put the flowers in a plastic cup and put that inside the pails. I think it looked better!
• For the food table, I got a roll of brown mailing paper and taped it as a covering. I left out markers and everyone wrote down their name and the name of their dish.
• Forgot to take a picture of the soup station, but my collection of coffee mugs is what we used to eat the pumpkin soup. A true cup of soup!
• Brought in our bistro table from outside and used a festive table cloth to add seating in our cramped apartment.
• Painted a few pumpkins and had a bunch of little pumpkins all around that were all fair game for painting during the party.

Conversation, eating and pumpkin painting!

These kids were still cooking during last year's party

Sisters!

Owen taking it all in.

My first plateful. Notice I said 'first'

It was so much fun having a new world of babies and kids at the party.  This has always been a ladies-only event but this year we had two new babies join the party and a friend had her cousin and her kids visiting, so there were three little boys running around.  We're all growing up, y'all.

Four boys and a door

But the piece-de-resistance that I really wanted to share with you is this...The Pumpkin Dream Cake.

How I spent my Friday night

You saw a slice of it on my plate above (bottom right) and it is what I baked for the party. Ohemgee. This cake is something you have to make if you like to bake.  Rhyming is fun!

Found the recipe via Pinterest and it belongs to The Novice Chef, whose blog is a food lovers dream. The cake is actually called "Pumpkin Dream Cake" and it lives up to it's name.  I found it super easy to make and think that putting the cake pans in the freezer for 45 minutes after removing them from the oven is a stroke of genius.  The cake was moist, fluffy and just delicious.  The icing is sweet without being overpowering and went on perfectly since the cakes were chilled.  And everyone...and I mean everyone...raved about it as they tried it.  I'm not saying all this to pat myself on the back.  I'm patting The Novice Chef on the back because her recipe provided a flawless cake that was a crowd pleaser. I've never seen an entire cake get eaten at a party but I had to quickly hide a slice away for my husband to try when he got home because this cake was GONE by the end.

You can find the PUMPKIN DREAM CAKE recipe by clicking this sentence. It's a dessert that Owen will know well in his life...because I plan on making it for every Thanksgiving here on out. Forget pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake is our new tradition.  

Who am I kidding? There will always be pie too.