Halloween

I love Halloween.  I love how Halloween is the kick-off to a three month long holiday season.  I love the crafty projects that start coming up on blogs.  The candy.  The food.  I fall victim to many new projects and recipes each year.  Some recipes become mainstays in our house.  This pumpkin fudge recipe is one of those recipes and something I will be posting in the next few days. I have a feeling this much-blogged-about Halloween bark recipe will become another go-to Halloween recipe and something I’m planning on making this weekend.

Craft projects are usually related to Halloween costumes, my step-daughter’s to be more exact.  Last year we took a cue from Food Network Magazine’s food themed costumes and turned her into a McDonald’s french fry box.  This costume was fun to make and looked great at her Halloween parade at school.

Halloween 2009

It was not, however, functional for trick-or-treating, and my husband ended up carrying it behind her while she went from house to house trying to keep up with the other kids.  Tears were involved and drama ensued.  So this year we were looking for something a bit more practical, but still cute.  I came across this easy owl costume while blog hopping and knew this was just what we needed.  A long sleeved black t-shirt and leggings?  Count us in.

Halloween 2010

The tutorial came with a printable mask that you could attach to sunglasses.  I decided to make my own mask out of fabric and rigid interfacing.  The result is super cute, and highly more functional than paper.  It will at least hold up in the rain!  The feathers are cut out of fabric and sewed or glued onto the t-shirt.  We had a fun time picking out fabric and Jessica helped cut out the feathers.  She had a lot of fun helping with her costume and cannot wait to wear it to the parade tomorrow and trick-or-treating on Sunday.

Halloween 2010

SMS – Peanut Brittle (with a twist)

Sorry for such a long absence!  Summers around here are usually pretty busy and three days of the week are spent at our cabin with no internet access.  I do plenty of cooking and baking, but very little documenting.  We had a great summer.  Beautiful weather, a lot of late days on the lake, and late nights on the deck.  We can’t wait for next summer to do it all again, but for now are enjoying what has so far been a very gorgeous, yet very busy fall.

For this week’s Sweet Melissa selection JoVonn of the Givens Chronicles chose Sweet Melissa’s Peanut Brittle.  I love peanut brittle and have never made it before.  I actually kind of like making candy, though it does terrify me a little bit.  I just have this thing against getting burned, even little minor finger tip burns freak me out.  I successfully managed to make this brittle without incident, and found the recipe to be quite easy.

I was in the mood for some fall flavors, so I added 1 tsp of pumpkin pie spice and replaced 2 TBS of the butter with 2 TBS of canned pumpkin puree.  I think the pumpkin made the brittle a bit chewier than normal and the pumpkin pie spice gave it a nice kick.

 

I love the orange color of this brittle.

Great selection, JoVonn!  Please visit her blog for the recipe and check out what the other Sweet Melissa bakers made this week!