More things that I've accomplished

Oh boy it's been awhile since I blogged:  whoops!  I don't realize it until I see how many new pictures I have on my camera.  I've been busy, though.  Here we go!

I made these lovely sugar cookies.  The dough was super easy to work with, and felt very "perfect dough"y.   I would recommend it, especially with the frosting I talked about last time with almond extract instead of vanilla.  So yummy that they were gone in about a day.   Even though the recipe made about 55 cookies.  ugh.

Also, I made applesauce!  We visited an orchard quickly and although the you pick apples were finished, but we got a couple of bags.  I spent a few hours, made the biggest mess ever in my kitchen, had a blender catastrophe that made me really regret not peeling the apples, but in the end we got a few jars of applesauce that hopefully will help get my husband off high-fructose-corn-syrup-added pre-packaged-and-wasteful individual cups of applesauce that he takes to lunch.  Now all we need is some lightweight containers for him to dish applesauce into to bring to work for lunch.

 We also carved a couple of terrifying pumpkins for Halloween weekend.  Mine is a spider, Dillon's is a ghost.  His is a little hard to see in the light, since it was one of those cut out the white space pumpkins.  His was also a very stubborn pumpkin that broke two of those little pumpkin saws and was a beast to carve.  But it looks very spooky!

 Next up, I made bread.  Here's the dough before rising:

 20 minutes later, the dramatic removal of the towel revealed this:

 Nothing.  So, I thought maybe another 20 minutes would make it even better:

 Nothing again.  So I thought maybe I'd roll it into the loaf shape and make some cheesy garlicy biscuit shapes and then let it rise again:

 And guess what:  NOTHING.  I think I killed the yeast by using too hot water.  Failure.  Dang it.  Oh well!  Lesson learned for next time.


Then I organized our closet, which has been driving me nuts for a few weeks.  Nothing makes me feel better than a stack of clothing in a perfect pile.  Oh I love it.  Hopefully it will stay that way for a while.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween weekend!  We might go to a party on Saturday, I'm thinking of dressing up as Jimmy McMillan (of The Rent is Too Damn High Party in NY) if I can get motivated to make myself a beard. 

Also in the news, I finished my mom's birthday present!!  You will just have to wait until after November 18th to see it.  I used my new glue gun to finish it off, and got (no joke) the most severe burn of my life on my finger.  Dear Lord the pain was incredible.  Oh mom, the sacrifices I make for you.  (just kidding, thanks for, you know, the whole BIRTH thing ;)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!