All Hallows Eve

         Happy Halloween Everyone!  Since I'm a big girl now and have to work on weekdays (even if they are partial holidays), we celebrated halloween this weekend, so here's a bit of my holiday!  Nic and Lindley went as PopEye and Olive while I was Little Red Riding Hood (complete with wolf Yuma by my side and a basket in hand) and Vlad went as a monkey or big teddy bear if you didn't see his tail...

          Monday we carved pumpkins together, but since the weather was poor we couldn't go pick them out so we settled for grocery store pumpkins and my kitchen table instead of my porch.  But we began the evening by baking pumpkin cookies with cinnamon and nutmeg.  Spending an evening being silly and creative with my friends is the perfect kind of night for me!  After cleaning out the pumpkins and drawing our designs, the boys finished carving while Lindley and I toasted the seeds in olive oil with pumpkin pie spice.  Our finished products, though not as perfect as we might have hoped, turned out so fun and festive anyway!

Halloween at Indigo

          I wanted to surprise the kids I teach afterschool with some Halloween inspired snacks.  They had bags of popcorn, my homemade pumpkin sugar cookies and a ghost lollipop to take home!  It was a pretty cool layout for three seven year olds and a five year old.

          To have a more relaxed and fun day, we made clay jewelry.  They could make anything they wanted, whether it was a ring, bracelet, or earrings.  After that we made creatures out of pom poms, pipe cleaners, and feathers.  I was quite impressed I must say, they did me proud! :D

Halloween Cookies

          This year I celebrated Halloween by trying a new recipe, since three years ago I purchased a pumpkin shaped cookie cutter, and couldn't stand another season to go by without it being used!  But, in all honesty, I had never made sugar cookies from scratch all by myself, so it was definitely an interesting challenge!  Especially since I made the dough, then realized I didn't have a rolling pin and had to rush out to get one.  But that's the learning experience, right.        

          Overall, these cookies were really simple, but personally, I think they could have used a little less almond extract.  But you can try them for yourselves!

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

-1 cup butter

-1 cup powdered sugar

-1 egg

-1.5 teaspoons almond extract

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-2.5 cups all purpose flour

-1 teaspoon salt

Instructions:

In a large bowl, cream butter and powdered sugar until smooth.  Beat in egg and extracts.  Combine flour and sugar in another bowl, then add to creamed mixture and mix well.

Refrigerate for 1-2 hours.

On lightly floured surface, roll dough to 1/8 inch thickness.  Cut with flour dipped cookie cutters.  Place on lightly greased baking sheets.  

Bake at 375 degrees for 7-9 minutes.  Cool. Decorate. Celebrate.

          To finish them off I mixed the icing with food coloring to get the shades I wanted, which gave them all a lovely golden tone with a grass green stem to stand out!  And of course I added a few decorative sprinkles so they'd be a little extra fun!

I hope everyone had a safe and fun Halloween!