It's beginning to feel a little Spooky in here!

OK October is just a few days away and although I have had Fall decorations out for a month I am sneaking out a few of my Halloween ones, well not actually sneaking them out, I am crafting them out! I wish the Trick or Treat Garland was a better picture but it is small and long and what you cannot tell is that those letters are super Sparkley and I spent a long time making them Sparkly! I think I need to add some Orange Gingham Fabric tied into a bow at the ends, but that is at School in my fabric scraps box so I will have to grab it tomorrow and make me 2 bows to go on it. I also made this BOO sign last year! THey are so fun!I am thinking of making a Welcome Fall Pennant Banner also, Bt I may be to ambitious for this year as I need to make invites for the boys 6th ANNUAL Halloween party, Luckily I only have to make 3 invites, I just got 7 orders from 2 different people for the Name signs I make and 2 desk sets orders from another lady. I MUST GET MY ETSY SHOP UP! I want to put in a few CHristmas cards I made and offer these things also for Teacher or Friend gifts.

Saturday is National Make a card day and I would make cards but the boys are so excited to make a Bat pinata for the Halloween party and get a big branch to spray paint black to make our Halloween tree AND they have to paint their Raingutter Regatas, So I think I will craft a few nights this week and make my card(s) on Sunday after Church while the boys are playing. SOunds like a packed weekend to most but sounds like a well spent weekend with my boys, we might even get Matt back on his bike again for a family bike ride, since he felt so good after going on an hour long ride with Cole's Scout Troop tonight and he played Golf on Saturday with some new people we met at Southmont Baptist. OK I am going to clean my craft room now so that I can get in there and play this week!

Oh YAY! Fall

TODAY is the first day of Fall! I love the fall and everything about it. In fact today, my class' journal entry was what is your favorite season and why and I made a list of why I love the Fall. I love the cooler weather, the changin leaves, Pumpkins, Halloween, my birthday, Thanksgiving, Pumpkins, ghosties, Orange colors the warm feeling I get, Horror movies with cole with the sound turned down, great memories from the Fall growing up, Halloween costumes, baking and again PUMPKINS!

I bought a Halloween mag this weekend and this guy had this collage on his page. If you have a some free time he has tons of cute crafty stuff and a totally adorable Trick or treat banner I am going to tweak and make my own this year, His name is Matthew Mead Just click on his name and it will take you to his website. I feel a crafty weekend coming on soon to get ready for our 6th annual ( can you believe it, 6 years) Cole and Peyton Halloween Party. The boys get so into having this party they have already started telling me what food to make and what to name it, we will have Frankenstein toes, Bat heads and no grave Yard dirt this year, they want Buggy cupcakes or something equally squeamish! I am so excited they love this time of the year I am sure it is only a few more years before they mention having a haunted house, I am sure Papa will start putting a bug in their ear soon. This year we are moving from Toddler/pre-K party to a more sophisticated party as Cole says. We are having a sit down dinner instead of a buffet and more games after we trick or treat since Halloween is on Friday.

Well I am off to bed, I am taking my class to Ci Ci's to work tomorrow so I need to be well rested!

Berry Blissful Sunny Muffins

SO this weekend, as I was preparing for Cub scouts and and enjoying the rainy Saturday, thanks to Hurricane Ike, I decided it was time to bake, because that is the best way to spend a rainy day. I had been craving muffins, so I found a batter Basic for muffins and then went rummaging through my cabinets for something to add to it. I could not find anything there, but my freezer held lots of goodies. I had about a 1/2 cup of sliced strawberries, I had gotten earlier that summer, I found Blueberries I had bought to make cobbler with but only used half of and a couple of old bananas sitting on my counter top and some granola in my pantry rounded it out. I call them my Berry Blissful Sunny Muffins and Peyton called them little bites of Heaven! I think he ate half of them! The pictures do not do them justice, since all you can see are the blueberries, but they were YUM! Here is the recipe.

1/2-1 cup strawberries, chopped
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (if you substitute self rising flour you can omit the baking soda and salt)
Pinch ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
1 ripe banana, mashed
2 large eggs
1/4 cup canola oil
1 lemon, zested
1/2 pint blueberries
1 cup granola

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, whisk together the mashed banana, eggs, oil, 1 cup sugar, strawberries, and lemon zest.

Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until combined. Do not over mix. Fold in blueberries and granola.

Scoop batter evenly into muffin cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of muffin comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

Nerd Scouts...Er... I mean Cub Scouts

Well here we are in our Cub scout uniforms. Actually the boys look super cute in theirs but Peyton said that ll the adults in the uniforms looked like nerds. I have to agree, i do look nerdy so they are calling me their Nerd Scout leader. Cole has his first Den meeting Monday night and, I, the woman who said she would not take on any more this year, volunteered to be Peyton's Den leader. Not we are not Den mothers anymore, the Boys Scouts do not have those we are Den leaders. I am still not sure what we are doing Tuesday night, but I am going to Cole's meeting and I am sure I will just do what they do until we get it figured out. They gave us a plan to follow but my Co Leader who was never in boy scouts either is clueless also. I think w e will do fine once we get going and I get back into the swing of working with little kids again. The only thing I dislike about this year is when they are a Tiger cub, like Peyton, one of their parents must attend the meetings with them and there is nothing I hate worse than having my house full of parents while I am trying to have fun with the kids, I feel like they must be entertained or they distract the kids or even worse they could be worse than teachers and talk during the entire meeting. I am going to have to set ground rules down for the kids and the parents. OH YEAH and get this, for the meeting on Tuesday, they had in the cub Scout manual for us to make Scrapbooks the first meeting! How great is that for me! I know I have the craft portions of the meetings down pat! :)

On a positive note, Peyton's principal''s son will be in our Den, I am hoping if I can build a good relationship with her, I might be able to find a way into Denton ISD this next year. It is hard to get into Denton Schools because they like to hire their student teachers and subs and rely heavily on refferals from other Denton Teachers.

If I am not too busy this week I will post more stuff, I got a new stamp set and made a couple of new cards.

An Ode to Cafe Du Monde

I hope that at this moment Cafe DuMonde in New Orleans still stands after Hurricane Gustave has hit, I think damage to NEw Orleans was minor but I am not sure yet, but I have made and Homage to all that is NEw Orleans Greatness today; I made home made Beignets. If JD can claim his cajun heritage, so can I! Actually I have been saying for the past few years, that I was going to make Beignets and Hot cocoa for breakfast "Next Weekend" Well guess what?!?! Next weekend finally came and I made Beignets, and Uh...THEY WERE AWESOME!


The best part about this, is I finally used the dough hook on my Kitchen Aid Mixer, OMG! I might just have to make bread, it was so easy to do! Here they are after they pull away from the sides of the bowl. THen all I had to do was to take them out, roll them out and cut them into small rectangles. BTW. I did not cook all of these, I did not even cook half of these I need to find a way to half this recipe.


Here they are frying up, they cook so fast that I needed Cole to help finish making the cocoa so I did not burn these.

I did put a lot of powdered sugar on them, but only Matt made the huge mess I had to clean up!

Well here is the recipe I used and I have added the few tweaks to it, to make it more my recipe, I think next time I might try another zest like lemon or lime and maybe make a lemon glaze to go on a few of them, YUM!

*****Oh Yeah I forgot the MOST important thing I learned from this entire experience.... YOU MUST ALWAYS CRACK YOUR EGGS ONE AT A TIME INTO ANOTHER BOWL BEFORE CRACKING THEM INTO YOUR OTHER INGREDIENTS OR YOU TOO COULD LOOSE 2 PACKETS OF YEAST AND 4 EGGS! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I did not crack but one rotten egg out of my new carton of eggs, I had 2 rotten eggs in my batch, luckily I had another carton of eggs in my fridge to go, although I bought both cartons at the same time UGH!*****

Ingredients:

1 envelope active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup evaporated milk
7 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup shortening, softened
2 TBS. Vanilla
1 TBS. of orange zest
oil for deep frying ( I used Canola)
LOTS of powdered sugar

Preparation:

In large bowl, sprinkle yeast over the warm water; stir to dissolve and let stand for 5 minutes. Add sugar, salt, beaten eggs, and evaporated milk. Whisk or use electric mixer to blend thoroughly. Add 4 cups of the flour; beat until smooth. Add shortening; gradually blend in remaining flour. Cover with plastic wrap and chill at least 4 hours or overnight. Roll out on floured board to 1/8-inch thickness. Cut into 2 1/2 to 3-inch squares. Deep fry at 360° for 2 to 3 minutes until lightly browned on both sides. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle generously with powdered sugar.