Halloween

Seeing all of my friends' kids dressed up for Halloween has made me think back to when I was a kid. Getting dressed up and heading out door to door. There are many things that I didn't like about living in a small town, but Halloween was awesome! There was only between 90 - 100 houses and by the time I was eight, I was out going to every participating house in town. Loved it.

I wish I had a scanner because I'm pretty sure I have a picture of my favorite costume of all time. Smurfette. I loved the Smurfs as a kid and I was Smurfette for two years. And I'm not talking store bought costume either. And yet my mom went all out on our costumes, just like with baking, there is no halfway. My mom painted my face blue and bought a yellow string mop for my hair,  I wore white top like dress and blue pants. And blue gloves. Hilarious. I had to have been about four. What I want to know is how on earth I went for two hours without getting that make up everywhere.

This year, I'm going a bit more lowkey, I'm wearing some purple scrubs with a stethoscope, and I might pick up a surgical mask. I hope the scrubs fit, I bought them when I weighed a bit more. What was your favorite Halloween costume ever?

Pumpkins - another sign of Fall

So later this morning, when I'm taking a quick break, I'm going to whip up some pumpkin bars for tomorrow's tailgating festivities. I'm just using a recipe from allrecipes.com. It should be quick and easy and I make them using a can of pumpkin puree stuff. My sister likes to jokingly ask me if I'm using a real pumpkin or pumpkin from a can. She uses pumpkin from a can. What's so funny?

Well, back when I was living in MI, I had this boyfriend that decided we should make a pumpkin pie from scratch because "it would taste so much better." So we headed to the grocery store that was by my house, which mainly sold fresh produce and bought a baking pumpkin. Then we spent hours prepping this freaking thing - you have to oil the outside, soften it up in the oven and then you have to put it in a food processor or blender, use a colander and beat the bejeezus out of it to get it into a puree. We added all the other ingredients and stuck it into the oven to bake and then cool. Guess what?!? It tasted exactly the same! I was expecting this cosmic experience. Nope. And we'd spent the entire day doing this project. So moral of the story - save yourself some serious time and just use the canned stuff. Unless you have a day to kill - then have at it.

I hope no one at my tailgate tomorrow cares that I used a canned pumpkin. :)

Weird recycling

So, in the summer of 2000, I called home to chat with my parents and they told me that they were tearing down my childhood home to build a new house.  They recycled a bunch of the brick from the 100 year old house, which was used on their basement/garage, reused some ledges from the windows as thresholds for doors and kept the stained glass. Additionally, they kept three inside doors. One for them, and one for my sister and me. I don't currently have my door in my possession and I've been trying to figure out what on earth I'm going to do with it. For the longest time, I was thinking coffee table. But it would be the longest coffee table ever.
But here's the thing. The dining table I have now I'm not really a fan of, it was passed down from my sister's friend (well, mine too), Kristin. I appreciated it at the time and I love free stuff, but not really me. So I was surfing the internet and thinking. These are around 7 foot doors. And then I found this link: http://designspongeshop.com/tablediy.pdf. That doesn't look to difficult. The door shouldn't need a ton of rehab work. The hardest part is going to be getting the hundred year plus old handle off. OH and attaching the legs. Minor detail, right. But should be a fun project in the future. And then I can get some fun chairs to go with it. Woot!

Reality Check

So over the weekend, one of my friends that I've known since 1st grade posted a photo trip down memory lane. There's some superswell pictures of me at age eight if you're interested on FB. She also posted some photos from our junior prom. And as I looked at the pictures, I realized just how out of shape and lazy I'd gotten with my workout regime since high school. I only weigh about 10 - 15 pounds more than I did in the photo and I'm only one dress size larger. The difference maker: in high school I was playing sports or working out five to six days a week, probably almost fifty weeks out of the year. Including camps and sports like track that I did just to keep in shape in the off (basketball and volleyball) season.

I make the lame-o excuse that right now, I just don't have time to work out, because I work too much. I put in around 50 plus hours a week of work, but seriously, it's not like I was sitting at home knitting in my free time in high school. I was pretty active in high school activities and since we lived 17 miles from the school it took an eternity to get there and back. My parents would occassionally ask me who I was when I walked in the door. So now I'm hoping that I can just convince my mom to come over every week and make all my meals for me because while I enjoy cooking, that's my other major timesuck. Chances that she's going to make the cross Iowa trek for me - not good. Maybe when she retires in the January.

One of my birthday gifts to me, was a sweet pair of running shoes. I just need start USING them. In the nice neighborhoods by my house. I'm not going to join a gym until after I buy a house, since I don't want to be driving across town to a gym.

I did realize that I hope I never have an awesome updo like I did in 1996 ever again. It was huge. (I'm wondering if there were any animals hiding in there.) And lots of curly trendil thingys. My hair for my senior prom was much better. I looked kinda like the "Pantene girl." Which probably makes no sense and I don't own a scanner.

CAKE!!!

I'm a big fan of baking. It's fun, it reminds me of so many happy memories from my childhood - making chocolate chip cookies with my mom when I little, decorating cookies for the holidays and all the awesome treats that my mom used to make for us back when we'd have treat days for school. Baking is almost a therauputic thing for me, but at the same time, if I bake stuff, I have to eat it, and I have no need to have an entire cake sitting around my home.

So, this summer, on of my many cousins got married and one of the foods available before dinner were cake balls. After doing a little internet research, apparently cake balls have become quite popular over the last couple years, for all kinds of occassions. Guess I'd been missing out.

So this past week, I decided to bake some up - I wanted to see if this was something that would be easy to make and also be something that I could give out to certain agencies. The end result, they are pretty easy to make, a bit time consuming, but easy. I mean, you use a boxed cake mix, and around a can of frosting. Seriously. The cake balls allow for a lot of variation, you can pretty much put any cake and frosting combo together that you want. I made three different kinds: yellow cake with buttercream frosting mixed in them, funfetti cake with vanilla frosting and chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

After mixing those two parts together and letting it set in the fridge for few hours, I got out my Pampered Chef scoop and scooped them on to wax paper and then put them into the freezer for six hours. Then the cake balls get dipped in almond bark. Here is where I made a bit of a mistake. I'd gone to Hobby Lobby and purchased some red confectionery wafers. I'm not used to working with them, and probably should have thinned them out a bit. I was dipping the yellow cake into the red mixture and after it set I noticed that it was seriously thick. I used white almond bark for the other two, turned out much better. You can see the photo of the end result. I'll probably make them again, maybe experiment with some different mixtures, the chocolate one is really rich.