East Goshen Harvest Festival

Hello to all!  I wanted to drop a quick note to let you all know that I will be selling my jewelry and accessories at the East Goshen Harvest Festival in West Chester, Pennsylvania.  I'm pretty excited about this one because it is the first time Helen Ethel Studio will be represented at a festival in the Philadelphia region.  

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The annual Harvest Festival, formerly the Pumpkin Festival, will be held on October 22 (rain date October 23) from 10 am -4 pm at East Goshen Park.  It will be family friendly with Hayrides, a Scarecrow Pageant, farm market goodies and prepared foods, music and pumpkins- lots and lots of pumpkins, I'd imagine.  So, if you are free and want to enjoy the harvest season please stop by and say hello!  I plan on having a mug of warm, mulled cider by my side, all day long. 

For more information, please visit the event's Facebook page.

Thick, Chewy Granola Bars

This past Labor Day weekend, a group of friends and I travelled from far and wide to convene on a little patch of land, next to the Juniata River in Central Pennsylvania.  This was our third year participating and Dan and I consider it our last big exhale of the summer, where we can kick back, relax and just enjoy the warmth of the sun, laughs with friends, and nature.  It was especially important for us to really embrace the idea of relaxation because we knew the weeks to follow would be a bit of a roller coaster for us.  The month of September was a whirlwind of travel for a wedding, moving and all of the packing and unpacking that goes along with such things.  And because of that, I did not post one. single. time. in September.

This camping event has typically been a pot-luck sort of deal and it works quite well.  I signed up for salads and baked goods.  I tacked the baked goods onto my list because we had finally received our replacement oven weeks earlier after being without one for nearly six months. Oh, how I've longed to bake! But because our apartment was in a shamble sort-of-moving-limbo state, I didn't want to get in over my head by spending hours baking cookies or a cake or any other time intensive confection.  Instead, I opted for a practical, semi-healthy treat that would give all of us campers an easy snack on the run for our daily floats down the river.  I made these thick, chewy granola bars that I found on Smitten Kitchen.