Oh, No. Halloween Is Over For Another Year.

This creepy pumpkin ghoul was ready to scare the crap out of the kiddies but none of them even noticed him. I think he was disappointed and may have shed a tear or two.

Well Halloween has come and gone for another year but I had a great time while it lasted. After the big storm on Sunday, the weather turned out just beautiful yesterday and it should have meant that the kiddies would be out in full force. Not that any of them actually walk in our neighbourhood, there’s just too much distance between houses.

When you know that you are only going to get a dozen kids you can afford to max out the contents of the treat bags.

We did end up giving out 8 treat bags out of the ten we had prepared but two of them were for kids who were stuck at home for some reason. The best costume of the day was worn by one of the mothers, she was dressed up as Smurfette and she had done a pretty good job of it!

Smurfette?

Anyway, here are a few pictures of this year’s crew. I hope you like them. Now how long did you say it was until Halloween 2012?

Halloween night was just perfect, weather-wise and the house was all decked out in plenty of time for us to go outside to enjoy it.

It looks like the owl has caught himself something to snack on for later.

This is the first of the two pumpkins I carved this year. Hubby says that he may have a concussion because of the different sizes of his pupils.

Hey, I think this guy is winking at you.

This is my other pumpkin. I’m not sure what he actually is but he looks kinda like Grover from Sesame Street with a new nose.

”Stars and Moons” got a skeleton guardian this year.

Halloween Is Tomorrow, Time To Make Some Bloody Fingers!

Yeah, that's right. Tomorrow is my favourite day of the year. The day when all the ghouls and ghosts come out. Maybe some kids, too. At least they might if this storm eases up. Right now the wind is pounding the house with a hard-driven rain. An hour ago it picked up a plastic lawn chair and threw it from one side of the back deck 40 feet to the other side just missing the kitchen window. We're just feeling lucky though because we aren't getting snow and because we've still got our power on. So with a nice pot roast cooking away in the oven I thought maybe I could share my Witch's Finger cookie recipe with you.

Those are the Witch Finger Cookies under the dome of my cake plate.

Witch’s Fingers
(adapted from a recipe in Canadian Living magazine)
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup icing sugar
1 egg
1.5 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla
2 ¾ cup flour
1 cup almond, whole and blanched
1 tube red cake gel
7 or 8 drops green food colouring


Preparation:
In bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg, almond extract, vanilla and the green food colouring; beat in flour, baking powder and salt. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Working with one quarter of the dough at a time and keeping remaining dough refrigerated, roll into a long snake of dough and then cut into 3 or 4 inch pieces. Squeeze the pieces just enough to form the knuckles of the finger shape for each cookie. Using a fork, press the back of the tines lightly onto the top of the knuckle to simulate natural creases. Press almond firmly into end for nail.
Place on lightly greased baking sheets; bake in 325°F (160°C) oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until pale golden. Let cool for 3 minutes. Lift up almond; squeeze red decorator gel onto nail bed and press almond back into place, so gel oozes out from underneath. Remove from baking sheets; let cool on racks. Repeat with remaining dough.
Makes 3 or 4 dozen creepy and delicious cookies (the number will vary depending on how big you make them)
I usually pass these out to the adults who accompany their kiddies to the door if I can keep Hubby from eating them all! I hope you have time to make some, they’re worth the effort!

Never let a witch play with your hammer, they always seem to manage to hit their poor fingernails.

Here is this year’s crew warming up in the garage before their debuts tomorrow.

You would never believe just how bad it is outside today after seeing how nice it was yesterday.

A Perfect Guess!

Another Halloween has come and gone but it was great fun while it lasted.

It’s always tough to figure out how many treats to buy as you all know. We’re lucky that because we live out in the country however many trick-or-treaters there’s going be it is still going to be a pretty small number. The past few years we’ve had just 4 or 6 kiddies so this year, just to be safe, I made up 10 bags. Each bag had a couple of packs of chips and some chocolate and candies. We also had some loose stuff just in case we had a flood of customers but it wasn’t needed. Ten kids were what we planned for and ten kids were what we got. Perfect guess!

Designing the treat bags is a lot of fun.

I like to add handmade tags, too.

Picking out the treats.

Making ten piles to fill the bags.

The treats are ready!

How many kids came to your house? More than you planned for or less? More importantly, what did you do when you ran out of goodies?

Ten treat bags and ten customers, perfect!

I also decided that we would only carve two pumpkins this year mainly because they take so long to get done that the whole day can slip by while the designing and carving operations are processing. Hubby apparently had other ideas and slipped in a third one completing it just a half hour before the first kid arrived. At least it kept him out of my hair while I did some baking. I made a big batch of Devil’s Food cupcakes and iced them with an orange cream cheese frosting decorated with black and purple sprinkles. Used my KitchenAid, too. I also roasted up some of the pumpkin seeds for snacking at TV time.

Devil Seeds are easy to make.

Devil’s Food cupcakes with orange cream cheese frosting, mmm.

Just before the kiddies arrived we rushed around pacing pumpkins and getting the lights set up. It was a lot easier with just the three; we even had time to dig out the giant blow-up spider and set it up on the front lawn. I don’t think anyone was scared or impressed with it though at least no one mentioned him.

My blowup spider finally made it out of storage.

So, as Halloween 2010 fades into memory here is a few pictures of this year’s pumpkins. How many days until the next Halloween?

The Mad Farmer pumpkin in the daylight.

The Mad Farmer pumpkin at night.

The Beaver on Halloween afternoon.

The Beaver at night.

Stars and Moons is becoming a classic here.

The front yard just before curfew.

Good job, guys!

Happy Halloween, Everybody!

If you really want to know how to carve a Halloween pumpkin you should just ask Ray Villafane. So Ithought rather than post a long drawn out saga of pumpkin carving this year I would just post some pictures of our pumpkins from a couple of years ago. I hope you get some inspiration to create your own.

Talking about inspiration, a friend sent me this message in an email and I thought it was cute so I’m sharing.

In case you didn't know...


Women are Angels






And when someone breaks our wings....
We simply continue to fly....







On a broomstick....








We're flexible like that..

Here are a few more of our previous pumkins...







In case you missed the link, here is a gallery of Villafane’s work.

Happy Halloween, all!

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

I love Thanksgiving weekend! Especially this year as I was able to convince the boss at work to give me an extra two days (Thursday and Friday) off. Five day weekends sure beats five day workweeks! I used both extra days just for me (at least as much as I could convince myself to do so). On Thursday I slept in as long as possible and then had a nice relaxing day around the house. On Friday I took myself to the Big City for a fun day of shopping at the Boutique (Value Village) and elsewhere.

Saturday morning I was all rested up and raring to go. Hubby and I made a quick trip to the Small City to visit the Farmer’s Market and do some grocery shopping. Hubby needed some more (!!) plywood for the gazebo so we picked that up, too. When we got home he went off to build and, with him out from underfoot, I settled down to some serious baking time. I made all my fall favourites; pumpkin pie, apple pie and butter tarts! The apple pie was made with Honey Crisp apples that we picked last weekend at a local orchard. They make a surprisingly tart filling and I’ll definitely be using them again. I made all the pastry a couple of weekends ago and then froze it to ease the workload this weekend. That saved me a lot of time. My KitchenAid was a great help, too. This is the first year ever where the pumpkin pie filling didn’t get sprayed all over the walls by the hand mixer!All told I made 1 deep-dish apple pie, 1 pumpkin pie with pastry decorations, 3 pumpkin tarts and a dozen butter tarts. Not bad for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon!

We picked these Honey Crisp apples at a local orchard last week. This will be the first time I’ve tried them in a pie.

I sure am glad that I made and froze this pastry dough last month.

This pastry mat is the perfect device for rolling out dough to the right shape.

The dough is rolled out and is ready for the pie pan.

The apples have all been sliced, spiced and added to the shell.

My pie is ready for the oven.

I used a set of fall-themed cookie cutters to make these decorations from the left-over pastry.

The pumpkin pie filling was mixed in my new KitchenAid!

The KitchenAid did a great job. No splattering of filling on the walls!

Butter Tarts were next.

The KitchenAid was great at this, too.

I wish I had a shop window to display all my lovely baked goods!

After all the baking was done we finally had a chance to break out the Halloween decorations. I have 3 great big plastic tubs full of Halloween-themed stuff and I still manage to acquire more every year somehow. It’s gotten to the point now where I have to pick out just my favourite items to put on display and I end up leaving the rest of it in the tubs. Some of my things haven’t been out for years. Maybe one day I’ll have a yard sale and everything on sale will have something to do with Halloween. Man, would I ever love to come upon a sale like that!

Here are a few of my best pieces. I hope you like them.

This witch welcomes everybody who comes to the front door.

We made this happy pumpkin family years ago.

I found this guy at Winners a few years ago. He’s kind of a cross between W. C. Fields and Humpty Dumpty. He was so creepy I just had to buy him.

This big ceramic pumpkin was another Winners find.

My Dad bought this for me at a yard sale because he knew I would treasure it.

I saw this craft on the ‘net years ago and I just had to make one for myself. This is my favourite set of hangers but I have 3 others, too. One for Easter, one for summer and a birdhouse set.

This is one of Hubby’s efforts. He found the pattern in a book he bought.

I took a stained glass class twenty years ago and this skeleton hand is one of my favourite efforts in that discipline.

The saying goes “Two heads are better than one.” but it seems that three heads just leads to confusion!

Here’s a little Halloween wish for you.

Ratty says that he just wants to give you a little kiss good-bye!