Baking Away!

Tomorrow afternoon/evening is our Halloween party!!!! Superman, Batman and I will be going down to Ramstein to see Kristin, Elphaba, and their boys and having a spooky old time! :D It's going to be so much fun! I can't wait!

I'm taking some goodies with me, so today I spent much of my time baking. (And when I wasn't baking, I was cleaning...my house needs it!!!) I had originally wanted to make these Pumpkin Pillows, but there isn't a snowball's chance in H-E-double hockey sticks I'd be able to find wonton wrappers at the Commissary. Granted, I could have done some variation of a pie crust, but I honestly didn't feel like going to the trouble. LOL So instead, I resorted to these 2 ingredient pumpkin muffins!

Unfortunately, I didn't look closely enough at the recipe posted before starting (oops!), and ended up opening the wrong can of pumpkin! So now I have to find something to make with the pie mix/filling. (Which, if you know me, is so heartbreaking, giving how much I love pumpkin...LOL)

The RIGHT pumpkin (puree) on the left and the wrong pumpkin (pie mix/filling) on the right

As I could only find the 30 ounce cans of pumpkin at the Commissary, I split the can in half and made one batch with French Vanilla cake mix and the second with Spice Cake mix. (I can already tell from the smell that the latter is going to be my favorite!) And I know the recipe says you only need the two ingredients, but it wasn't mixing the greatest, in my opinion, and still a bit dry, so I added one egg to the spice mix batch.

While I was waiting for the last set of muffins to come out of the oven, I started in on preparing for the Oreo cookie spiders.

Unfortunately, we don't have the black licorice pull and peel here, so the legs will be red, and I cannot buy black jelly beans if it's not Easter season, so I substituted with M&Ms. I cut the pull & peel whips into the 1.5" segments (I used 4 pre-peeled whips and had about an inch leftover on each whip, ending up with 215 leg pieces). When I sat down to put the legs into the cookies, they wouldn't fit. :( So on my way to the gym tonight, I stopped by the Commissary to pick up Double Stuf Oreos. Wouldn't you know it....they don't even carry them. So instead, I will try shaving off some of the end that is to fit inside the cookie and try that route. And if that fails, then I'll just use Ritz crackers, peanut butter and pretzels to make the spiders! LOL

While I waited on the appropriate time to replace the cookies, I worked on the Mini Witch Brooms.

Each Fruit Roll-Up gave me 15 pieces of the 2" requirement (and I cut the 2" strips and the fringe before removing it from the paper to avoid unnecessary sticking to everything!), and I had leftover the ends that are folded in on themselves.  I had some issues at first, but it turns out I had cut the fringe the wrong direction, which gave it a completely different (and completely unsatisfactory) look.

The one on the left is done properly and how it is SUPPOSED to look

I used a teacup to hold the water and a syringe that the pharmacy gives out to give infants medicine (Don't worry, this one was unused! lol) to dab a drop of water on the Roll-Up. (A cheap, new paint brush would also have worked just as easily.) It was actually a little bit tricky, and while wrapping them the wrong way, I actually contemplated going for the fatter pretzels, but it all worked out in the end.

And let me tell you, between peeling all those Twizzlers and rolling all those little Roll-Ups on the end of pretzels, my fingers got a bit sticky (as did my kitchen scissors)! LOL

I waited on making the sugar cookies until the boys were home to help me cut out the shapes, but that ended up backfiring because of how long everything else took, so I haven't even begun to make those! They will have to wait until tomorrow while the boys are at school.

For those of you that know me well enough to know my baking preferences, you know that it's a pretty big deal that I'm resorting to "cheating" and using pre-made mixes to bake cookies. (I'm of the "bake from scratch or it's not truly baking" camp.) But with all the other goodies I'm making, I just don't really have the time to take to make it the right way. :( So tomorrow, more kitchen time and cookie cutters are in my future!!!

ACK!!!

So I got booted offline. Again. I think that this time it was due to the major storm that rolled through the area. It rained for about 3 or 4 days. They just have yet to get my Internet back up at my house. I swear I blogged about the amazing Trick-or-treat package I got from Bevin Rae and about Halloween festivities this past week, and I saved them to my portable hard drive so that I could post them when I came over to my friend's house to use her Internet, but her computer is evidently not compatible with it. I can't get the computer to recognize it. :( I will get them up as soon as I can, but will be without Internet for I don't know how much longer....I hate this...

Trick or Treat!

Wow! Today certainly has not calmed my fear of owls! I received a package today from Bevin Rae that took multiple owls to carry it! I nearly ran away in fright at the sight of all those birds winging their way toward me, but once Rowena and Ophelia C. assured me they carried something for me and were not merely erratic birds (nor were they as over-excited as the bunch of owls that landed me in St. Mungo’s), I relaxed. A little bit, anyhow. :)

The package was for our in-House Trick-or-Treat swap, and I was blown away at how much there was inside! At first I couldn’t believe it was for that swap, as Olive said to use a bubbled envelope. I thought she meant a small one. I almost feel bad for how small and simple mine was that went out. Bevin used a bubbled envelope, but it was a large one.

I got a knit sock pattern, a crochet scarf pattern, a kit to make a Halloween garland, a witch pez dispenser, a post card from California, a candy corn candy holder STUFFED with candy (I don’t know how she got it all in there!), 4 pairs of plastic vampire teeth, and some Ravenclaw blue ink that I used with my quill tonight. :D On top of all that, there was also another envelope in there stuffed with fun craft goodies from her kiddos to mine!

My boys were very excited to see it all and were quite upset with me when I told them it was too late for them to get into it tonight. (I didn’t get the package until my husband got home.) They seemed to be pacified, though, with a sticker each and to each play with a set of the fangs. Tomorrow we’ll be crafty. :)

I’ve been keeping myself quite busy with S.P.E.W. as of late. I still haven’t heard anything about anything officially this term for it, so I’ve kind of just gone my own way and done my own chapter of it, if you will. As October is breast cancer awareness month, I’ve been making free beanie-style hats, some knit and some crochet, for cancer patients losing their hair because of going through chemotherapy. The first 7 I made are long gone, and I’ve got another 15 to send out yet. Over the past couple of days, I’ve finished 3 of those needed 15, and am working on the 4^th.

I am really not happy with the fact that our Internet is down again. I had started to get back into playing WoW, and was actively leveling my paladin, trying to prepare for the expansion by making level 70 before the release on November 13^th. The other night, I got up to two bars away from making level 66 and was in the midst of getting the seasonal achievements for Hallow’s End…and I got booted offline. I’m trying to give the Italians the benefit of the doubt that it was caused by the massive storm that we’ve had going on over the span of the past couple of days, even though it stormed the whole day before it cut off that night and that it was clear out today and we’re still not back online, but given that they’ve shut us off twice in the last 8 months, it’s hard. They had better not have disconnected us again. (The Italians will shut off your Internet without any cause, just so they can charge you the reconnect fee to get a little extra money, and it ticks me off! They get away with it!) If they did, they’d better hope it’s my husband dealing with them, because I’ll have no patience with them. Especially since we’ve been back online from the last time for maybe a month! I guess only time will tell, though…

Tomorrow (Halloween), there’s a carnival going on at the base in the afternoon, so I’m hoping I can get my boys to actually wear their costumes (they wouldn’t the other night) and get some pictures. Here’s hoping!

So, thank you, Bevin Rae for the spectacular trick-or-treat package! I absolutely love it! I feel quite spoiled!

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Now playing: Eberhard Kraus - Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565
via FoxyTunes

Halloween Preparation

What a fun night! The Husband got a brand new video game (Fable II for the Xbox 360) and he wanted a few hours to play without the interruption of the boys, so he “kicked us out” of the house for the day. Not that I was sad to go! We spent the day at Kristin’s. When we first got there, we carved pumpkins. I’ve never carved a pumpkin before! The most I’d ever done was draw a face on it with permanent marker. Kristin had a pumpkin carving kit, but she couldn’t find it anywhere, so we had to use the “medieval” tools of knives and spoons. LOL I actually think they turned out quite well, considering I’d never before done it and had to use, what I hear is, such “primitive” pumpkin carving tools. I picked up two pumpkins from the commissary the night prior, so that there would be one for each of the boys. A really got excited about it and got into scooping all the insides out with his spoons and dumping it into a bag. It didn’t quite smell like what I expected…I guess I just thought it’d smell like pumpkin pie. LOL It most definitely did not! On A’s pumpkin, I did two spiders, and on C’s, I did a ghost. Kristin carved a cat and stars on hers.

One of Kristin’s other friends, Liz, came over as well with her 2 month old baby girl. We all ended up going over to the base to try and take the kids to the Trunk-or-Treat and the non-scary hours for the Haunted House. Unfortunately for me, neither of the boys would wear their costumes. I went through all the trouble of getting A a Halloween costume (Spiderman!), and he refused to wear it. I didn’t think of costumes ahead of time enough to order any online or ask my in-laws to send us some, and the options at the BX were little to none. They had infant and adult costumes and pretty mush nothing in between. So I was going to let C decide between his and A’s costumes from last year, James or Thomas, but he didn’t want either. Kristin's son looked really cute in his skeleton jumper, though! If we get to make it to the Halloween carnival on base on Halloween day, maybe I can convince them to dress up then. Or maybe The Husband can. He seems to have that touch.

When we got to base and around to where the line was for the trunk-or-treat, it really ended up not being worth the wait. The line was waaaaaaaaaay too long to stand in with 4 kids aged 2 months through 3 years. It was a little nippy as well, and not good for the littlest ones to be out in. So instead, we went to the food court inside and the boys got pizza. That made them happy. The food vendors also had some candy set out for the kids, so we got a little (and I mean very little) bit anyhow. While I was there, I had to run and grab some diapers (I ran out in the diaper bag before we even got to base!) and picked up a little thing of Snickers bars as well, just so that A could say “trick or treat!” and get some candy in his bucket. I let him hold on to the bucket for the trip back to Kristin’s. That turned out to be a mistake.

Kristin and I were talking in the front, when all of the sudden, an aroma caught my olfactory attention. And we’re not talking about stinky diaper aroma, either. I could smell chocolate. I asked Kristin if A had gotten into the candy, and sure enough, he already had half of the bar gone! (They weren’t the mini-sized…probably about the size of the ones you see at the check-out counter.) I didn’t even know he could open packages like that! Needless to say, he didn’t get to hold the bucket for the rest of the trip. I guess the chocolate-y mess could have been significantly worse than it was, but I was just too miffed (and amused, really) that he’d even gotten it open to fully appreciate that. He got some on his socks and some on his shirt. (He was pant-less due to a wetting accident, just before getting in the car.) No chocolate, seemingly, on his car seat or anywhere on the car’s upholstery, thank goodness! We went back to Kristin’s and baked some cookies. Yum! A was very excited about using the cookie cutter to help make Halloween sugar cookies! In fact, when I turned my back (I know, I know, foolish me!) to put one on the cookie sheet, A helped himself to using another cookie cutter, smack dab in the middle of the rolled out dough! He even had pulled it up and set it aside, with the dough caught inside the cutter! He’s getting awfully sneaky and very independent. He makes his own choices on what he wants to do and acts on it.

After the cookies were all in the oven, the boys played their little hearts out while Kristin and I chatted and crocheted. (I’m teaching her how to make the round ripple afghan!) She and I got to decorate the cookies, too. At first we thought about letting the boys try to do it, but then this mental image of A squeezing the icing tube as hard as he could and making a huge mess just wouldn’t get out of my head! So we had fun with it instead. I looked at the clock at about 10p, and thought that I should start to get the boys ready to go. I really try to not keep them out too late. When they started getting inexplicably cranky, though, was when I finally got around to getting us out the door. Guess why they were so cranky….it was because it was two in the morning!!! I can’t believe we stayed that late! I have no idea how 10-30 minutes turned into four more hours! I still can’t believe that was four hours!

I got home and the boys in bed, and went downstairs to apologize to The Husband for us getting home so late, and I asked him if he enjoyed his 13 kid-free, gaming hours, and you know what he said? “It wasn’t long enough.” *eye roll* Gamers. ;) LOL So today I was going to return Kristin’s cell phone to her (she accidentally left it in the car last night), and he suggested that I take the boys and a movie and that the boys and I stay over there for an hour or two…or five. LOL We ended up getting to have some yummy pumpkin pasta dish that Kristin had never made before. It was quite tasty! Much to The Husband’s dismay, though, the boys and I didn’t stay nearly as late this time around. LOL All in all, I had a fantastic weekend!