Halloween snapshots

I meant to post about this last week but got distracted....hope you have a Happy Halloween! We'll be passing out chocolate at our abode while watching the original Halloween movie.

Photos from our friends annual Pumpkin Carving Party (it was the tenth one Doug and I have been to!) Our pumpkin was somewhat lame and I forgot to take a picture of it.

Last week I had knit night at my house for Halloween, mainly as an excuse to make Ham Face again. It was so much fun though and the weather was nice enough that we sat on my patio (especially helpful for those allergic to my cats). Plus it was the day after my friend Kenan's birthday so I made her a cake too.

These are apple-almond teeth made by Kenan, completely awesome.

These are some of my decorations from around the house

Tuesdays with Dorie: Ginger Jazzed Brownies

This week's selection was chosen by Hindy of Bubie's Little Baker. I'll admit this was one of those recipes I was somewhat skeptical about but I've learned Dorie is usually spot-on. I did make a smallish change to the recipe, I hate messing with fresh ginger, it's so stringy and I can never grate it well enough so I omitted it but increased the ground ginger and added crystallized ginger. These particular brownies were super fudge-y and the ginger added a nice little kick. 

Making & baking via Pinterest

I heard about Pinterest a few months ago and was king of 'meh' about it. I didn't seek it out really and figured at some point I'd get interested. Then about a month or so again a friend sent me an invite so I finally joined. I'm still not a pin-aholic, but I do like the fact that it's a place I can gather all the things I want to bake/craft/knit, etc.

In the past few weeks I've made these things that I 'pinned'.

Glittered pumpkins via Martha Stewart. I used glitter and glitter glue from Martha's line at Michael's (thank you 40% off coupon). It was a pretty messy project because there is glitter everywhere, I'm pretty sure I have glitter in my bloodstream now. Also you had to be really careful to not touch the glue/glitter before it dried. I love the way they turned out though.

Felt leaf garland via A Beautiful Mess. This was incredibly easy to make since I ran them through my sewing machine instead of stitching them by hand. I just traced a leaf shaped pattern on a piece of copy paper, cut it out, pinned it to the felt sheet and cut them out by hand.

Chocolate Almond Oat bars from The Pastry Affair. These are delicious and could not have been more simple to make.

White Bean and Parmesan Baked Orzo from How Sweet It Is. A really good one-dish kind of dinner, even Doug ate it!?

Tuesdays with Dorie: Classic Biscuits

It's been weeks since I've made a TWD recipe! But I did participate this week, making biscuits, chosen by Jennifer of Cooking for Comfort. I've made Dorie's Sweet Cream Biscuit recipe half-a-dozen times and the classic recipe is pretty much the same, except with whole milk instead of heavy cream. I baked four biscuits for our Sunday morning breakfast and froze the ones that remained for later use. Doug had his with strawberry jam but I used pumpkin butter for mine. Very good and miles better than those canned biscuits!