Trick Or Treat

Last weekend was our ward's Halloween party. In my opinion, it was better than ever. Good job to all those who were involved with that! A plea went out for more treats for the cake walk, so I made another batch of caramel apples. This time, I wrapped them up real purdy.

Karen decided that the party only needed one plate of the apples, so I got to pick a couple of families and treat them (since it's quite the trick to put up with me as a friend). 

I also signed up to bring cornbread. Here's how I made it... I have several boxes of cake mix that only makes 12 cupcakes, so it's 1/2 the normal size of a box of mix. I mixed that up according to the back of the box as though I was going to make the cake, then I added to that a box of cornbread mix and the necessary ingredients it called for on the package, which in this case was only water (I know, you thought you were getting a real recipe. I guess that is my trick to you today). I briefly mixed the two together, and baked it in a 9x13 pan for 30 minutes. It was scrumptious. Yep, a real treat. Okay, now go answer your door- there are little ghosts and goblins waiting for candy. Oh, and Happy Birthday to my B-I-L today.

What Number Is This?

Guess what? This post marks my 1,000th post. That must be some kind of a milestone, don't you think? So because of that milestone, I figured we needed something pretty fancy for just such an occasion. Enter, gourmet caramel apples (yes, this is another recipe from OBB, thank you, Sara. Click over for the caramel recipe and excellent directions).
Here we have the thermometer telling us the caramel has almost cooled enough to begin dipping.  

Let the fun begin! 

That's beautiful! 

I thought this was a fun addition. The only kind of worm I want to find in my apple is right here. 

All right, let's get fancy now. 

Taste tester, how do they taste? 

Mmm. Her's had Snicker bits all over it. 

Here's the tray of apples before we drizzled. Yes, there was drizzling. 

Ta-da! Karen tried making caramel apples last week with Caleb, but had a few problems, most of which I believe stemmed from using caramel that was too hot and it slid right off the apple. 

This caramel is heavenly and stayed put. 

We promptly gave all but three of these away. 

The dentist around these here parts is retired now, so my teeth can't afford to eat these all by myself. 

I believe this one is coated with toffee bits. It was specifically requested by a lady at Karen's work. 

And just for fun, I'll show you how Bud prefers his apples. 

I guess that leaves the third caramel apple that we kept available for someone else. 

Who wants it? 

A Messy Situation

Karen made a to-do list for me the other day. What prompted it was her inability to find anything to eat in the refrigerator despite the fact it was so jammed full that you could barely fit anything in there. The pantry had a similar problem. So I decided to show you a little peek behind the scenes.
Here's the pantry "before."

And here's the pantry "after." Hopefully, you can see some differences!

While we're in here, I want to show you my flour vault. I love this bucket. Instead of using up all my flour in the #10 cans in the basement, I buy a huge bag of flour and dump it in this bucket. I love the easy spinning lid that lets me in and out, slick as a whistle.

After dinner, I looked at the kitchen and asked Karen why it was so messy. She said it was because I was always in it making stuff. When I was a kid, I shared a room with one sister or another. Mostly I shared with Cheryl. She hated the bedroom being messy and would make me clean up my stuff. She would count to a certain number and I had to have "thus and such" picked up by the time she got to that number. In that same method, I set the timer for 5 minutes and raced to see how much of the kitchen I could get clean in that amount of time. What I didn't know at first was that Karen was documenting it!

This was my expression right after that first click of the camera. See the mess???

Hurry! 

Go faster! 

Oh, no! The timer just went off. I had one thing left to put away...this picture frame. 

Didn't quite make it, but hey, I can live with that. 

How do you get your house clean? 

Soup and Sweets

My sister was sick and needed some medicine. It's right here in this jar.

Because it is what makes this bowl of chicken soup so devine. I took her this big bowl of soup...we'll see if it makes her all better soon.

I think the best part of this soup is the big fat dumpling sitting at the top of the bowl.

After dinner, we needed a little treat. I have this marble slab that lives in my freezer, like a miniature version of being at Cold Stone. We finally decided to break out that gigantic Reese's peanut butter bar. We thought we needed a little caramel sauce as well, but we decided against it, once we got going.

How do you like these fingers? She's always been able to grow the most outstanding fingernails. I keep mine super short, therefore, this cannot be my hand.

We decided it would have been a little easier to use the Reese's mini baking bits instead of going through the trouble of chopping up Mr. Huge Reese's bar. 

Here we go! 

Mix it up...

Smoosh it together...

Ready for yumminess... 

and...?

Yes, it was delish! I wonder what our next concoction will be. 

Danger Will Robinson

Unless you are old like me, you probably have no idea what the reference is to the title of this post. It doesn't matter though. You can Google it if you're curious.
Last week I went to Gygi's. Maybe you don't know about the problem I have with Gygi's. I can't go in that store without them holding me for ransom and I have to give them a minimum of $100 to get out again. There should be a law about that, don't you think?
So here you have a portion of what I traded for my $100 so they would let me out of their store.

They have unbroken pretzel rods there. It makes it much easier than trying to find a decent package at the grocery store that hasn't been manhandled to the point of being unusable.

Karen brought with her the perfect dipping glass from Arizona. I've confiscated it for pretzel dipping.

And there you have my $100 pretzels. I know you've already seen them, but the problem is that I'm going back to Gygi's again this morning.

I wonder what they are going to make me trade for my $100 this time.

Party Number Two- The Youngsters

Here are some pictures of the party we had for Caleb on Saturday. Karen made orange Jack-o-lanterns and filled them with fruit salad. The picture we got this idea from actually carved their oranges. Yeah, not going to happen here today.

Dirt and worms

You can't quite tell, but there's some mighty fine brew happening here.

Take another look...

Leftover caramel popcorn

Leftover cookies, cupcakes and donut holes

Jones is trying out the cool brew. 

Mummy dogs (not leftovers!)

Are we having fun yet? YES!

Look at that look! 

At the last minute, I decided we needed more sugar around here. I didn't have time to get fancy. In fact, I didn't have time to frost this before the party started. It ended up that we didn't even eat it at the party. We ate it the next night at Cheryl's house (we conveniently invited ourselves over for dinner. It was very sneaky of us). 

Let the games begin! Pin (glue) the nose on the Jack-o-lantern. 

a little peaky-peak going on here!

Then there was bowling. TP for the pins, a pumpkin for the ball. 

That about wraps it up. Two parties in two days.