Here's a Treat for You!

While blog hopping a few days ago, I found this recipe.  For the life of me, I can't remember whose blog it was on!  So, if you are reading this and are that blogger, or if you saw it yourself and know which blog it was, please let me know!  These Sparkling Candy Corn Cookies are so easy and so cute, I wanted to share them with you.  If you need a quick treat for Halloween this weekend, this is my suggestion. (I say quick, but the recipe says three hours - that's including the chill time in the fridge.  You could probably speed that up a bit in the freezer.)  You can click on the link to get the recipe.  Enjoy!! (We did!)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Bakerella I'm not. But I tried.

Have you seen the cute cake pops that Bakerella is famous for? If you haven't, you must pause right now and head to her website (http://www.bakerella.com/) and check them out right now.  Once you've done that, you can come back here and see how to have fun TRYING to make them. 

The premise is easy.  Bake a cake, crumb it up, add some frosting, make cake balls on a stick and decorate!  (I learned to make a photo collages just so I could show you all how I made a mess of my kitchen!)  After I baked a  Duncan Hines chocolate cake mix and used my decades old food processor (Christmas 1979 or thereabouts) to turn the cake into crumbs, I added about 2/3 of a container of cream cheese frosting.  One mistake here was probably not waiting until the cake was completely cool.   But proceeding along, I used a little ice cream scoop to make the balls, rolling them around in my clean hands to make them completely round.  I chilled them in the freezer slightly before "sticking" them.  You can see that there must be a better technique to this step.  I found that they stayed better once I put a little of the candy coating on the stick first. Styrofoam did help stabilize them while they waited for their turn to be dunked in the container of orange candy chips that had been melted in the microwave.  I found some food safe markers at Michaels that I thought I could use to draw cute little jack o'lantern faces on each one, but they didn't work.  I resorted to mini chocolate chips and green tic tacs.  After about three hours of this, I only had about four good ones and several ugly ones.  Since little D was coming over for a few hours, I placed the remaining cake mixture in the fridge to tackle the next day.  My cake pops might have been ugly, but they definitely passed his taste test!

Moving on.  The next morning I decided to take the easier route and turned my cake pops into cake truffles.  This I could handle!  I see some possibilities for Christmas cake truffles here.  Maybe red velvet cake mix, white candy coating and any number of holiday sprinkles or decorations.  Bakerella has lots of ideas on her website.   While I was there, I found this recipe for Pumpkin Butter Dessert Bars.  This is more my type of baking!  Our subdivision had a fall festival/potluck supper last evening so I took a plate of the bars and cake balls/truffles to share.  A good excuse to make a mess of my kitchen and try a fun new recipe !

Other than these kitchen adventures, I spent some time in the sewing room this week too.  Now that they've received their package I can show  the three little embroidered shirts for three little spooks.  Do you know how hard it is to find nice plain colored t-shirts for little kids? 

Have a good week !

Finished Something!

Done!  This little kit was purchased from Daisy Cottage Quilting this summer and I finally finished it up this week. (See, Sharon? !!)  At least it's still a few weeks until Halloween so I can leave it out for a while.  The fabrics are Minick and Simpson's Halloween Night. Got to love that purple mixed in with the orange, black and chartreuse!

I had enough scraps left to make a little runner for my hall table too.  The pumpkin guy has been hanging around for a couple of years so he found a home here too. 

 We've had some beautiful weather here the past few days - once the summer temps finally left.  We haven't been out on the motorcycle as much as we'd like lately, but last Sunday we did take a short trip up through the Jackson - Washington County State Forest.  Most of the trees were just beginning to turn, but we found this one portion of a little scenic road that was in full color.  Pretty nice - huh? 

                                                                         HAPPY FALL!

Scenes From the Weekend - and Today

We had the pleasure of attending the wedding of the daughter of our friends this past weekend.  The new Mr. & Mrs. L are an adorable couple!  The wedding and reception were both touching and elegant. The mother of the bride knows how to organize a beautiful event.   Some of us think she should begin a new career as a wedding planner!

On a completely different note - we ventured out to an area flea market on Sunday.  To be honest, flea markets aren't really my "thing".  My father-in-law is visiting this week and helping us out on a few little projects so we were happy to give him a break and explore "The Most Awesome Flea Market in the World"!

I tried to take a few photos of some of the more interesting junk booths, but some of the vendors were looking at me strangely, so these are all I got. 

This booth had quite a collection of well loved Tonka trucks and tractors.

There were more vendors inside than out. At least it was a nice breezy fall day for wandering around the grounds but we actually came away without purchasing anything.  But I think the guys enjoying poking around the booths and doing a little reminiscing.

One of the projects my FIL is working on is the (faux) rock on the bar front in the basement.  I'll post a photo when it's complete.  Today he had help from a little great grandson! Just carrying on the family tradition of being another talented craftsman!