Monday, November 26, 2012

Pumpkin Patch


I'm not quite sure where November went. I feel like I blinked and it was over - though I guess technically we still have 5 days left. I just feel like it's December immediately after Thanksgiving. I did have grandiose ideas of making Christmas ornaments over Thanksgiving with my sister. However, when I opened the instructions for the ones I brought, those ideas went out the window.


I realized that if I started making these adorable Santa's, I'd have yet ANOTHER 1/2 finished project, so I decided to just keep-on-keepin'-on with my knitting. Anyways, coming off of Thanksgiving weekend, I thought I'd post about all the pumpkin themed desserts I made (for Halloween).


My friend Megan loves making iced sugar cookies. She brought over the candy corn and pumpkin cookie cutters for a baking day.


The royal icing was just thick enough that the ridges in the pumpkin stayed!


I also made a "pumpkin patch" courtesy of my Hello Cupcake! book. Unfortunately I didn't really get a good picture of the final product - but I think they turned out cute enough. The book says to use green licorice as stems, but I couldn't find any at Teeter, so improvised with tootsie rolls (which taste better anyways). Then used string gummy candy for the vines - though they didn't really twist prettily like they did in the book. The best part of these cupcakes? I used spice cake! mmmmm, I could go for one of those right now.


Also, this has nothing to do with pumpkins, but my Halloween Reddit gift-er gave me the BEST COOKIE CUTTER EVER:


AND I can use it again for non-skeletal gingerbread men this month! (Though maybe I'll have a few nightmare before Christmas ones heh)

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Cottles in Wonderland


The Disney trip was AWESOME. So many things to post about. I'll start with Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party since Halloween is quickly heading further and further into the past.


The costumes we saw there were great! A lot of Disney themed ones of course - but also some random ones - one woman had a dress and matching wings that all lit up.


One of the best parts is you get to trick-or-treat around the Magic Kingdom!! They even hand out decent candy. Sure you get a lot of tootsie rolls, and some bottle caps, but ALSO - twix, snickers, and peanut butter cups!


And where else can you DANCE WITH WOODY?? All in all it was a fantastic night of dressing up. We did sign a few autographs until we were told to stop. Sorry little kids!! A few more pictures after the jump!


Thursday, November 1, 2012

We Survived!!


This was probably my favorite picture of Sandy. I had great intentions of posting all this week, but as I drove home from Florida on Sunday (13 hours in the car woohoo!) and passed about 50 cherry picker trucks heading north...


I knew things weren't going to be good. Being in FL all of last week, we didn't watch the news or talk to anybody from home. So while I knew Sandy was somewhere out there, I really only paid attention to whether or not it was going to be raining at the Magic Kingdom. (it did a little, but only sprinkles - otherwise the weather was perfect all week!)

On the drive home I start getting texts from my coworkers asking if I think we'll have to go in the next day because the government, schools, and the metro are all closed. WHAT IS GOING ON?? I went to work Monday, grabbed my computer and headed right back home. EXTENDED VACATION!!!! I managed to clear out my DVR in my 2-day Hurrication AND get some knitting done :) We did have some minor damage:


But thank God it fell in literally the only direction it could have to not hit anything. I have to admit I was a little sad our power didn't go out because I had the candles and a book at the ready!

Because of the days off, Halloween ended up being crazy. I had 3 days worth of work to do in one. Then when I got home I had to throw up as many Halloween decorations as I could since we had to take them all down for the hurricane. I had about 38 trick-or-treaters and was half way through Hocus Pocus when my power went out. A belated present from Sandy!! I went to my neighbors house for a few hours then went home and read by candle light before hitting the hay. Halloween isn't over for me yet though! I am having a party on Saturday... so time to start writing up my menu and get some more decorations out!!