Happy Halloween

We finished carving up the rest of our pumpkins today. I carved two, Rick carved his mega huge one and I even carved a face on Tyler's teeny tiny little pumpkin.

Here is Tyler putting the finishing touches on the pumpkin....poking little holes all over.

Here are mine, a traditional jack-o-lantern face and a ghost.

These are Rick and Tyler's pumpkins.

I tried to take a few pictures of Tyler dressed up in his costume before we left to go trick-or-treating at the mall, but he was being a super goof ball. We got to the mall around 5:30 and several of the stores had already run out of candy. There were a TON of kids there...it's no wonder the candy ran out so fast. I did, however, get plenty of comments on Tyler's cute costume (pat on the back for me). I think next year we'll just stick to trick-or-treating around our own neighborhood....the mall was a little too chaotic for my taste.

As I said before... super goof ball!

Two Down, Three to Go

So far we've carved two of the five pumpkins we brought home from the pumpkin patch. Usually we use those intricate patterns to try and make fancy looking jack-o-lanterns, but we're over that for the most part (with the exception of Rick's Moon/Bat pumpkin). This year we want to make it easier, so we're sticking with regular faces.

Tyler didn't have a problem with the pumpkins this year....no gagging at the stringy guts or anything. He really wanted to be involved with the carving process, but since he wasn't allowed to use the carving tools, he settled for "decorating" the pumpkin by poking holes all over.

Pumpkin Patch

This afternoon we drove out to a U-Pick pumpkin patch, about 14 miles west of Yakima. It's been a long time since either Rick or I have gotten pumpkins from anywhere besides the front of a grocery store, so we thought this would be a nice change of pace. At first, it seemed like the patch was getting down to its last pickings, but we dug around and found several good pumpkins.

This is the biggest one we found (and the heaviest), but Rick insisted that it had the most perfect shape and therefore we had to buy it. It came in at a whopping 50 lbs, which translated into an even $10.

This one is Tyler's pick.....what, you can't see it? It's so tiny, but we really couldn't find any small pumpkins for him. All that was left out in the field were big, bigger, or super huge pumpkins. Everything else was too heavy for him to hold, so he was real proud of himself when he found this little runt. I thought that they'd probably give it to us for free, I mean who else was going to buy it? But NO, we actually had to pay for it!

Here is our haul, five good sized pumpkins plus Tyler's little bitty. We went kinda crazy out there in the field thinking that the price per pound would be fairly cheap considering that it's the last weekend before Halloween and it's U-Pick after all, which usually means a cheaper price anyway. Well, after scouring the patch and dragging back over 100 lbs of pumpkins, we came to learn that physically picking your own pumpkins from the patch is NO cheaper than just grabbing some of the prepicked pumpkins sitting right next to the register. Good to know. So at .33 cents per pound, the total comes to.....Ummmm, Tyler did you bring any cash?

Wait...I can't forget to tell you about the food! They had the best pumpkin doughnuts. Fresh and piping hot....Mmmmm! We bought a small bag to bring home with us for dessert. Tyler didn't get one for dessert though, as he didn't finish his dinner....AGAIN!! Argh!

Pumpkin Pal

This morning we took Tyler over to Lowes to do the Build and Grow craft. It was a pumpkin pal.... a chipboard pumpkin with changeable wooden face pieces to create different looks (think Mr. PotatoHead). Tyler was much better working with the hammer this week, he was holding the pieces and hammering all by himself.

Wham, Wham, Wham.

Finished!! Now I have another badge to sew onto his apron. I need to find some doublesided iron-on adhesive or something to make the process a little easier.

New Recipes

Thanks to Tyler, we've been a couple of trolls this week....staying home and not going anywhere! I don't know why, but he didn't want to leave the house at all. I couldn't even get him to go with me to the movies. That's why it's been quiet around here for the last few days, there's just nothing going on!

I did try out several new recipes this week, though.

Tonight we had Sloppy Joe Manicotti. The recipe is from the current issue of Rachael Ray's magazine...definitely not one of her 30 minute meals! I thought it tasted good, but it took so long to prepare that I think I'd rather just have regular old sloppy joes.

Then I made Butternut Bowties (or wagonwheels, in my case). This is another of Rachael Ray's recipes, but I saw her make this one on her talk show. It's supposed to taste and look like macaroni and cheese, but with a butternut puree sauce instead of a cheese sauce. I thought the roasted squash tasted great by itself, but it was a little too sweet (almost like sweet potatoes) to go with pasta. It was a strange combination in my opinion....and it didn't go over well with Rick and Tyler either.

Then I made Zippy Chicken Coleslaw, a recipe from Light & Tasty Annual 2006. I loved it....I can't believe I've had this recipe sitting around for a few years and just now finally got around to making it. The best part is that it was super easy to make, but it still received a few strange looks from Tyler.

Halloween Cookies

I love making festive sugar cookies for any holiday, so of course, I had to make some Halloween cookies. I got my big tub of cookies cutters out and was shocked to discover that the only related shape I had was a pumpkin. What....no bat, ghost, or spider web? I couldn't believe it. Me....the person who has endless baking gadgets of all varieties, has no ghost cookie cutter?!

I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe, the same one I've been using for years. Recipe Here. I just added a little bit of orange paste food coloring to turn the cookies a bright orange. The recipe for the frosting I found on allrecipes.com. Recipe Here. I used butter in place of the shortening and it still turned out great.


Next, I want to make some of those Nutter Butter ghosts....you know, the ones where you dip Nutter Butter cookies into melted white chocolate to make them look like ghosts. I just need to pick up one or two of those small $1 bags of Nutter Butter cookies from Rite Aid or Walgreens....I mean, the cookies are cute and all, but I don't need a ton of them sitting around the house.

A House For Three

Tyler was building with his Lincoln Logs today and was very proud that he made a house all by himself...one with two rooms at that.

He was telling me all about how the "Mommy Indian" was reading her favorite cookbook and getting ready to cook dinner. Hmmm, that sounds a little familiar.

Then he showed me the door to the other room and explained how the Indians could use it to keep from getting stuck inside. Tyler likes to admire his creations for awhile, so I expect that this house will stay put for several more days, at least.

The Massive Corn Maze

This afternoon we went over to Union Gap to try out their massive corn maze. Rick saw it from overhead as he was flying in from Seattle the other week, and he said it looked pretty big...and it was! It's spread out over 10 acres and let me tell you, it isn't easy to make it to the end. In fact, we didn't....after about an hour of going in seemingly endless circles, we finally popped back out the entrance! I don't know how everybody else did, but I think we needed a map!

Besides the corn maze, there was all kinds of fun things going on. They also had a straw maze, a straw pyramid with slides, farm animals, a pumpkin chucker, and bonfire pits. We even got mini carving pumpkins (one for each of us) to bring home with us.

This is actually the entrance to a smaller "mini" corn maze for the younger crowd, that is actually a lot more doable.

Inside the larger maze....

Here is the hay bale maze...Tyler had a lot of fun with this one. You can see the large corn maze in the background.

Rick and Tyler roasting marshmallows in the bonfire pit. This picture is too funny...Rick was too busy looking at the camera to notice that his marshmallow was going up in flames! Needless to say, that one was a goner, much to Tyler's dismay!

Success Despite My Best Efforts

I was making salmon with white and wild rice for dinner and wanted to make some bread to go with it. I usually do my grocery shopping on Sundays, so I am still out of Costco rolls and I wanted something a little better than buttered toast. Sooo....I found a recipe for Poppy Seed Rolls in one of my new cookbooks and decided to give it a whirl.

I mixed the wet ingredients together in my kitchenaid and then added the flour. At that point the dough was really dry, I mean DRY! I put the dough hook on and tried to start kneading anyway, but the dough would just not come together. I thought that was a little strange, so I took another look at the recipe and realized that I had only put in 1/4 cup of milk in instead of the full 1 cup that the recipe called for. Great! I tried to slowly add the rest of the milk while the mixer was on a low speed, but just ended up chunks of dough floating around in some milk. Perfect! I wasn't about to give up since I already have 4 cups of flour and all of our milk invested in the recipe. So, I started adding a little more flour and the dough finally started to come together. Phew! I completed the kneading process and put the dough in the microwave for the first rising.

Here are my cute little rolls in the microwave for the second rising. I just turn on the overhead light for the stove, which warms up the inside of the microwave quite a bit.

Ta-da.....the finished product, perfectly edible and everything. Maybe, I won't need to run out to Costco tomorrow to buy more rolls, we still have plenty of these left over.

Mmmmm, Tamales!

We headed to Wapato this morning for the 4th annual Tamale Festival. I've been excited all week, are you kidding me.....a tamale festival! Now that's my kind of heaven. I was even giving Rick a hard time about it, thinking that he wouldn't be able to go. He had made an appointment for the gutter guys to come out this morning and put rain gutters on the house. We thought it might take a while, but the guys were all finished by 11:00 a.m., so we were off to the tamale festival.

Just in time for lunch we stopped to get some of Lupe's "famous" Tamales. She has won the tamale cook-off several years in a row, so we were betting our money on her.

We got a variety of tamales....pork, cheese, and dulce. Well, actually, that's what we ordered, but we didn't end up with any of the cheese. The pork tamales were good though, and sweet dulce one was different.

Mmmmm, tamales! I gave Tyler a dulce tamale thinking it was cheese....Oops.

All in all, I was pretty disappointed with the whole thing. We had to drive out to Wapato, which isn't too far away, but still. The whole festival consisted of only two booths that were selling tamales and another that had Filipino food. Nobody had any drinks either, we had to go into a convenience store to get something to drink. How silly is that? Couldn't they have had a stand with those giant jugs of Mexican drinks like Horchata, or something like that? For entertainment they had a mariachi band playing and and that was about it. Who knew it was possible for me to come home from a tamale festival dissatisfied? Oh well, but we did buy a 1/2 dozen tamales to bring home with us and eat later.

One Good Idea, Followed By a Few Bad Ones

The day started out good, of course, with my one good idea. I thought it would be fun to (c'mon guess) do a craft with Tyler. His newest High Five magazine shows how to make bird feeders using pine cones and peanut butter. There aren't really any pine trees or pine cones around our house, so we brought a few home from the park yesterday. Who doesn't love slathering peanut butter all over pine cones and then covering them with birdseed?

There's Tyler's pine cone hanging from the tree behind him.

And mine....yeah, we're still waiting for the birds to realize we put out such extravagant treats, as they remain untouched.

And then came my first bad idea....trying a new recipe for dinner. I made the Beef Polenta Pie from this month's Rachael Ray magazine. I thought it tasted fine, but Tyler barely took two bites before he wanted to get down from the table. And this after he proclaimed that Beef Polenta Pie was his "favorite"...well, he did say that while he was starving and before he had actually tasted it. I didn't have quick cooking polenta, like the recipe calls for, so I just used regular cornmeal and cooked it up in the same manner. I think Tyler thought the cornmeal layer was mashed potatoes or something. He took one heaping bite and didn't say anything about it, but he didn't eat any more after that either.

Then came bad idea number two...trying to make my own bread to go with dinner. We've been buying the big bags of dinner rolls from the bakery at Costco, that we keep in the freezer. I usually take a few out each night to eat with dinner, but we are currently all out. I tried my hand at a homemade buttermilk biscuit recipe, and that didn't go so great either. I am terrible at making biscuits, but I have to admit, this was my best try yet. Not good enough though, Tyler was missing those yummy Costco rolls.

Making the Rounds

This morning I took Tyler around town to do some of the kids crafts. First, we stopped at Lowe's for their "Build and Grow" clinic. It was our first time attending and it's actually pretty neat. Tyler got his own apron and a pair of goggles to take home. At the end of each project, the kids are given a certificate of completion and a badge (like you get in Girl Scouts) that you can sew onto the apron.

Today's project was making a spooky skeleton that glows in the dark. Tyler did a great job putting it together. He had fun hammering the nails, but his accuracy could use a little work. Just like everything else, he wanted to do the project himself with NO help. I had to help hold the nails in place while he hammered them in, but he started to freak out and worry that I was helping too much!

Our next stop was at Michael's for their pumpkin decorating event. You buy a hollow craft pumpkin for $5 and decorate it using the provided supplies.

I really wanted to make ours look like a mummy, but Tyler made all the decisions on this one. That's why the pumpkin ended up with 5 noses....don't look at me!

Now I'm headed outside to start cleaning up the garden boxes. The growing season in over and I want to start clearing out the garden before it starts getting uncomfortably cold outside. There are still a number of tomatoes left outside, but with temperatures in the 20's at night, I'm not sure how tasty they will be anymore.

Martha Stewart was Here

Okay, not really.....just me crafting and cooking.

Here is the pumpkin that I finally completed last night. I started sewing it last Fall, but ended up getting stuck making the leaves. So I just put it away with the other Halloween/Fall decorations. Now a year later, I pulled it back out and with renewed determination finished it already.

Spooky.....huh? Tyler and I made this cheesecloth ghost yesterday. I seem to remember using a 2-liter soda bottle and a Styrofoam ball as a form when I made these as a kid. But with none of that on hand we used liquor bottles and one of Tyler's softballs for the head. I used a large rum bottle for the body and used bottles of Kahlua and Coconut rum for the arms. Rick and I almost never drink the liquor (we just have it on hand) so I'm glad it came in handy for something!

Last, but not least, my homemade tomato sauce. I made a batch last night to eat with our pasta for dinner. Using fresh tomatoes from the garden, the whole process takes around 30-45 minutes. Besides making salsa, this is the best way to use up a large amount of tomatoes. The temperature is supposed to come down to freezing tonight, so I don't know what will happen to the rest of the tomatoes that are still left in the garden.

Eeek, Is That a Spider!

Last night Tyler and I made spider hats. Well, actually, I tried but my head was too big. I need to get some of that extra long construction paper or something like that or maybe glue together strips of 12" paper. At any rate, we only ended up making a hat for Tyler.

I think it came out really cute and we even got to use some of those huge googly eyes to make it even more spectacular. Tyler really loves making crafts and he keeps telling me that he wants to make another Halloween craft so that he can decorate the whole house. I'm trying, but it's hard to keep coming up with stuff to make.

This morning we went to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua. I was sure that Tyler was going to enjoy it because it is a "talking dog" movie, but that wasn't the case. He did his bored out of his mind routine where he climbs all over the seats, tries to lay across as many seats as he can at one time, meanders up and down the aisles, and (my personal favorite) constantly asks me if the movie is almost over. I try to take him out and show him a good time, but I don't think I succeeded today.

Blueberries and the Mystery Chef

Tyler and I went back to the orchard last Sunday and picked a ton more blueberries. We got a bunch of big fat ones even though the bushes are getting down to their last pickings. I'll be sad when I run out of my supply...I've really been enjoying them in my cereal every morning.

Anyway, this is what we made with a select few of them this morning. I found the recipe on allrecipes.com, it's called Oatmeal Blueberry Muffins. I thought they were okay, but in their defense, they were a bit on the healthy side. The batter wasn't very sweet on its own, so it's a good thing I was using fresh sweet berries.
By the way, I cooked the muffins in reusable silicone cups (Rick will not believe I am saying this) and they came out great. I was resistant to use the silicone cups because simply, I hate washing them! But I have to admit that silicone cooks more evenly than the metal tins and they release (even cornbread) like a dream.

Hey, who's that mystery chef in the kitchen? You can't know........okay, it's Tyler testing out his Halloween costume. I'm loving it! I'm going to let him take that colander with him as his trick-or-treating basket....cool, huh?

Progress in the Backyard?

Rick is out of town this week working in L.A. It's pretty quiet around the house, so instead of twiddling my thumbs, I thought I'd show you how the backyard is coming along.

Here is how the yard looked earlier this year in June.

and today....still in the process of trenching.

Here is the other side of the backyard 4 months ago.

and today....the trenching is done on this side and the piping and sprinklers are in the ground.
BTW...Tyler and I have both fallen into the trench next to my garden more than once, so I'll be glad when they are finally covered up. The temperature will start dropping down to freezing at night this week, so it looks like we will have to wait until next Spring before we can lay down the sod. That really stinks, because I am so over the dirt...pulling weeds, cleaning Tyler's filthy clothes and shoes after having been in the back, sweeping up the dirt that is dragged into the house, you get my point.

It's Kid's Club Time

It's the first Saturday of the month, so we went over to Ace Hardware this morning to do the craft. It was a small pumpkin treat bag that the kids decorated using pieces of felt. One of the mothers at the store told me about the kid's clubs at Lowes and Home Depot, so maybe we'll start going to some of those as well. But apparently those have more hammer and nail sort of projects, so I don't know if Tyler is quite old enough for that.


The bag is really small, so I think we'll use it more as a decoration than an actual treat bag. Oh, and by the way, those green things on the pumpkin are leaves of course (I know you thought they were freckles or something silly like that).

Look, I'm so impressed with myself. I finished the chef's hat today...it's super cute and it was actually pretty easy to make. Now I just have to sew the pants, but that's the easiest part of the costume. I'll probably be finished in another day or two.

Hello, wind!!! It was pouring down rain all night long last night...and I mean dumping! Then this morning, the sky cleared and it got really windy. I bet Rick is having a grand ol' time outside trying to work on the sprinkler pipes. Ahh, there's nothing like a little mud and wind to make the job more enjoyable. Yeah, you read that right....Rick is still working on digging the trenches and laying the sprinkler pipe. That means the backyard is a long way from being finished.

Thank you fancy patterned paper

I only have one single layout to show for this week...my creative juices are running dry. That's where the fancy patterned paper comes in. It's so decorative on its own, that all I needed to do was put some photos on it, add a title and call it a day.

The title says, "A little bird told me". I even stamped some swirls onto my journaling block and inked the edges too.

I spent most of my time this week working on Tyler's Halloween costume. I finished the chef's coat last night, except for the velcro closure in the back. Now that it's finished, I realize that I could have gone with the size 4 instead of the size 3. The fabric doesn't have much elasticity to it, so it's a little hard to get on and off. That's fine, I'll just have to put him in some spanx on Halloween....no, I'm kidding!!

Next, I'll get started on the hat...Ohhh, I can't wait until everything is all finished. Tyler is going to be such a cute little chef!

Be Nice to Me

I gave blood today! It's been what, 6 years since the last time I donated. Ummm, wow...that's kind of a long time! I heard that the mobile van was going to be over in my neck of the woods today, so I made a point to stop over there this afternoon.

The woman in front on me was turned away for low iron....that's only happened to me like a million times! Not today though, I ate salmon for dinner last night and I even put spinach in my BLT for lunch yesterday.

The NW branch of the red cross is giving away a big screen plasma tv at the end of the month to one lucky donor...so who knows, maybe I'll be the lucky winner.