the season, it is a' changin'

Halloween is definitely my favorite holiday.  I love everything about fall, and Halloween is right in the thick of it.  Black cats, dancing skeletons, and scary movies!  Chilly mornings, stormy nights, and cuddling by the bonfire! 

You only have to look at my craft stash to see where my holiday love lies.  I've got personalized Halloween stationary, post-it notes, countless rubber and acrylic stamps depicting various aspects of the holiday, skeleton candy sprinkles, Halloween cupcake liners, candy molds, treat bags, scrapbook paper, ribbons, stickers, vellum and chipboard shapes, cookie cutters, cake pans, and paper punches.  Now, I can add Halloween stencils to the list.

Now it's easy to use powdered sugar or cocoa to decorate holiday pies.  Way to go, Martha!

Unfortunately, this year all of my holiday paraphernalia is packed away in moving boxes...much like the rest of the house.  Empty bookcases...

...empty cabinets...empty shelves.  Hopefully we'll be closing on our new house one month from now!  And, while I can't enjoy my own Halloween goodies, I can at least try to appreciate what's around me...like this spooky neighborhood cat with positively glowing green eyes.  A perfect Halloween cat, you might say!

Meanwhile, I've been getting into the fall spirit around here with my usual seasonal bouquets.

I love spider mums, and they seem to last so much longer than 'regular' mums.  I've also been buying lilies.  I didn't use to like the smell...but it's been growing on me.

 

I just haven't had time to get outside with my camera, but I couldn't help but notice this small butterfly perched on our back screen door.

 

 Beautiful large, patterned eyes!

He only perched for a moment before taking off again. 

That's like my blog entry today, too...a brief perch, and now back to packing!

Have a great week!

Hello, marshmallow.

It's December 13th, and there's still no snow. We have lovely frosts, some mornings...

But the ground is lamentably bare. The bare dirt where our tomato plants grew this summer looks especially forlorn.

At least this soft ground means that the squirrels can easily dig up their buried treasures!

To cheer myself up a bit, I spent a morning at Goodwill recently. I started going to Goodwill in high school and, up until a few years ago, was a regular visitor. However, they're raised their prices quite a bit and it's harder and harder to find a really good deal. Sometimes, though, I get lucky. I found this glass soap dispenser for $1...this exact model retails for $13 on amazon.com.

This little terra cotta pots usually sell for around $1 each, but I got these for a quarter. I will use them as garden-themed egg cup displays this spring. Eggs fit in them nicely!

This rubber stamp, which cost $1, still had the original $8 price tag on it. Score!

I got 10 of these silly envelope seals that I'll use for Valentine's Day for .50.

Eddie Bauer sweaters usually start around $55, but I got this beautiful one for $3.

Sometimes I find amazing things that would be difficult to find in a store. I found this German rabbit cake mold - unopened - for $5.

It has an ingenious construction. Included are long metal poles...

...which you slide into the slots around the rabbit form. Then the cake bakes, upside down. After baking, you can slide out the poles and separate the halves to reveal a solid rabbit. This will be perfect for Easter!

Another amazing find was this picture frame. At first glance, it looks like a large cross-stitch that probably sat in someone's attic for years.

But if you look closer, you will see that the cross stitch is contained within an amazing wooden frame.

It's a beautiful rich color, and the leaf design is perfect. It's solid wood, with no nicks. It was an absolute STEAL for $5. The woman behind me in line noticed the frame right away and lamented the fact that she hadn't seen it first.

It was a good trip!

Since I decided recently to cut down on my sugar intake, it was only natural that I would immediately go out and purchase a candy thermometer.

I discovered a recipe several years ago that I've been meaning to make. I learned that if you mixed copious amounts of sugar and corn syrup with a single box of gelatin...

...you can make homemade marshmallows. They make great gifts this time of year. Martha Stewart has some beautiful ones in her magazine - peppermint flavored and marbled with delicate red swirls. I decided to try the basic model first, and I apologize in advance for the photo quality...dark day + dark room + Todd's point and click camera = poor photos.

Basic Marshmallows
Martha Stewart
Makes one 9 x 12 pan full

Ingredients
4 envelopes (3 tablespoons + 1 1/2 teaspoons) unflavored gelatin
3 cups white sugar
1 1/4 cup corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar

Directions
First, line a 9 x 12 pan with wax or parchment paper, and brush the bottom and sides with vegetable oil. Set it aside.

Mix your sugar, salt, and corn syrup together with 3/4 cup cold water and bring to a boil. The recipe says to boil it without stirring until your thermometer reaches 238 degrees, or about 9 minutes. My thermometer goes from 200 - 250 degrees, so judging 238 was a bit difficult. In the end, I decided to just boil it for 9 minutes and move on.

While your mixture is boiling, put 3/4 cup cold water into your mixer bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin on top and let it sit until your syrup mixture is completed.

After your syrup mixture has boiled for about 9 minutes, pour into the mixing bowl. Starting at low speed and gradually increasing to high, mix for about 12 minutes. I wasn't sure how stiff the mixture should be - like egg whites? It became glossy and moderately stiff after 12 minutes, so I hoped that was enough.

Pour the mixture into your prepared pan and let sit at room temperature for at least 3 hours.

Next, spread some powdered sugar on your counter and flop the solid marshmallow brick on top of it. Cover it with powdered sugar...

...and start cutting! You can use cookie cutters, but I just cut mine into logs...

...and then squares.

The final step is coating each square in powdered sugar, which is easily done by swirling them, a few at a time, in a bowl of powdered sugar.

Now you've got a big stack of marshmallows, ready to be dunked into hot chocolate, wrapped up in cellophane as gifts, chopped up and mixed into cookie dough, or whatever you'd like to use them for.

They last about a week, stored in an air-tight container.

Enjoy!

Be Mine, Valentine

Traditionally, I've never cared one way or another about Valentine's Day. It ranks well below Halloween and just barely above St. Patrick's Day on my radar. Yes, it's nice to acknowledge and to receive acknowledgment from your significant other, but the commercialism has always been a bit of a bother. This year, though, I felt inspired to embrace the season, in a major "do it yourself" way!

I love my husband. I mean, I'm really crazy about him. I risked arrest (or at least a fine!) in Italy a few years ago by, as tradition dictated, clamping a Todd-inscribed padlock onto a structure on the Ponte Vecchio and tossing the key into river below, ensuring that we'd have true love forever.

So far, so good (wink wink)!

This year I decided to make Todd a little book filled with expressions of my love. It took a while to make, but wasn't too difficult. I gathered a stack of same-size envelopes and cut two pieces of cardboard to size...

Then, with a nod to tradition, I stitched various red, white, and pink buttons in a heart shape onto a piece of neutral-colored fabric.

Once completed, I wrapped the fabric around the first piece of cardboard, secured it with pins, and embroidered a quick border.

Then, I did the same thing with the other side. Book cover and back completed!

Next, I determined how many envelopes I wanted for my book and laid them edge to edge, securing them with a piece of scotch tape.

I had quite a stack! If you decide to make these, make sure your envelopes aren't overfilled...I learned that the hard way. They won't lie flat and your book will be very untidy.

Now, to fill those envelopes! I filled mine with lots of little things. Some miniature cards...

...and some homemade ones. This one was so fun to make. Make concentric cuts into a heart shape, with a little "pull me" tag in the middle...

Secure the heart to your card. When the recipient pulls the tag, your message is revealed!

One envelope was filled with haikus I'd written in the traditional 5-7-5 meter. These were so fun! The paper I chose made the envelope too thick, however, so I ended up typing them out and filling my envelope with small slips of paper.

What's a celebration without confetti?

Since Todd and I have a great love of board games, I decided to use the ones we played most frequently to stage messages, which I then photographed and printed off on small 2 x 2 pieces of paper for one envelope.

Scrabble...

Royalty...

...and Boggle!

Many other little things filled the pages of my book, and I felt really happy when I surveyed my filled envelopes.

To finish off the book, I attached both covers by stitching a wide ribbon onto their edges.

I covered up the frayed fabric edges and the cardboard with card stock. If I would've had more time, I would've made it look a lot nicer, but I was on a deadline!

With his Valentine's Day card tucked into its front, this was a really happy little book that brought a lot of joy on the big day!

It was really fun.

Gift done, I had to decide what to make for "the big meal." Todd and I don't go out to eat very much since I really love to cook, and we didn't want to compete with Valentine's Day crowds. I decided to make something warm and filling - our favorite chicken noodle soup with homemade french baguettes and salad.

But it was Valentine's Day, so...carrot hearts!

I got this idea from last month's Martha Stewart Living. It didn't take much time at all. Peel and slice your carrots normally, and then you can use a cookie cutter to make the top of the heart on each carrot...even the really small ones!

Use a knife to chop off the sides and even up any sharp edges.

Then I decided, on the spur of the moment, to cut my potatoes into hearts, too.

It made a really warm, delicious meal, and it was so much fun to eat. Todd was absolutely amazed!

I'd been planning the dessert for about two weeks. It was a big project, inspired by I Am Baker's wonderful site. I was initially afraid to make this, thinking that I didn't have enough experience or that it would be just too much. I don't ever want to be afraid to try, though. I decided that I could whip up some quick molten chocolate cakes if this was a bust.

First, I made plain white cake and vanilla cream cheese frosting...four of them. When I had two stacks of layer cakes with a layer of icing between the two layers, I used these broken skewers to measure out identical circles on both stacks of layer cakes.

With one layer cake stack, I hollowed out the center in a cone shape, carefully saving the crumbs.

With the other, I made the same cone shape, but with a little upside-down 'v' shape in the center.

I combined the crumbs from both cake stacks, dyed them red with food coloring, and patted them into place securely.

Then I stacked the "v" cake on top of the cone cake. I gave it a crumb coat...

...and put it in the freezer until Valentine's Day.

When the big day arrived, I made another batch of cream cheese icing and fully iced the cake. It was meant to be all white, but I couldn't resist a few sprinkles along the edge of the cake.

Here it is, fully iced and ready to go...

And here's the surprise! When you cut into it, a heart appears!

My uneven sawing (what is the proper way to saw through 4 layers of cake?!) caused some cracking around the top of the heart, but overall, I was really pleased with how it turned out.

I hope everyone had a great Valentine's Day! These are fun ideas that aren't just limited to February 14th...they'd be great for birthdays, anniversaries, or other special days.

Enjoy!