Happy Toy Story 2 Halloween!

Here are some pictures from the ward Trunk-or-Treat last night
and Trick-or-Treating tonight!

Jessie, Buzz and Woody!

Buzz Lightyear loved to dance afer the ward dinner! I didn't get any pictures of the dinner, but we had frankenstein frankfurters with blood sauce (ketchup), eyeball juice, (relish) and bat sauce (mustard); fried earlobes (potato chips); chili; carrots and broccoli with swap slime (green ranch dressing); bone cookies; pumpkin bars; and booberry cobbler; and spiders (oreos with legs).

Benjamin on stage for the costume parade by the primary!

Benjamin and our neighbor Marilyn trunk-or-treating. There were several scary cars which neither Marilyn nor Benjamin wanted to visit. I could convince Benjamin that it was all Halloween fun, but Marilyn said she was really scared. (Marilyn moved in right next with our neighbors. They are her caregivers as her parents both passed away. She is LDS and they are not so she comes with us to activities.)

Our spooky, perfect Halloween night complete with temperatures in high 50's and misty fog!

Benjamin was at the perfect age for trick-or treating. Every house was exciting and the huge smile never left his face. He just kept saying "I love trick-or treating!"

Benjamin's quotation of the night was this. "Mom look at those things swirling around the sky. (The huge flood spotlights used for attractions were what he was referring to.) "Yeah, I see them," I said. "I think they are giant lights." "No, Mom. They are flying gooses. See they fly around and around."

This is Benjamin's loot after Stephen dumped half of it into the give-out candy bowl while Buzz was changing out of his costume. We didn't even go to that many houses, but our neighborhood is very generous in the candy department. He got handfuls of candy at each house.

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins

We have had lots of fun with our pumpkins from the pumpkin patch this week. Here are the highlights.

On Monday, Benjamin painted a little pumpkin. It turned out to be very colorful!

On Tuesday, we carved our pumpkins for Family Home Evening. Stephen is teaching an MBA course on Monday nights so we bump long activities to Tuesday nights. Our theme this year is Toy Story 2. Benjamin's quotation of the night was "This is the bestest pumpkin night ever." We all carved our own pumpkins. Can you tell who did which one?

Tonight, we are having dinner in a sugar pumpkin. I waited a bit too long and so it was a struggle to find a sugar pumpkin. Benjamin and I searched for two days at the pumpkin patches around our house. Good thing there are a lot. We ended up finding two because they were small. I told Benjamin that we were making stew in a pumpkin. His smile turned into a frown and his faced scrunched with displeasure. His reply "I don't like stew! I want sugar like sugar pumpkin!" We'll see how much stew he eats tonight!

We are so looking forward to a ward party at church tomorrow including a trunk-or-treat and then trick-or-treating in our neighborhood on Friday. We have definitely had a spooktacular October!

Baked Soy and Lemon Porkchops

I made a new recipe last week. It was really good. Just thought that I would pass it along. Here is the original recipe, but after reading all the reviews and suggestions, here is my version.

Soy and Lemon Porkchops
Marinade
1/4 cup of soy sauce
1/4 water
1 T. worcestershire sauce
1 lemon's juice
1/2 t. of black pepper
1 T. vegetable oil
4 pork chops
a few scraps of fresh ginger

I marinated the pork chops for about 1and 1/2 hours. Then I put the whole pan of porkchops and marinade in the oven at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes. I checked the temperature with a meat thermometer and they were not quite to temperature which is what I was aiming for. I finished them in a frying pan on the stove to brown them a bit. Meanwhile, the sauce went into a sauce pan to boil with about 1 teaspoon of sugar. (I think next time I make it I'll add about 1T. of butter to the sauce to make it really great.) We served the pork sliced up on top of oriental noodles with the marinade as the sauce. It was really good!

Halloween Projects cont.

We have continued our Halloween projects this week. Here are a few more . . .


Halloween Placemats
I just printed some clip art online, and Benjamin cut it out and glued it onto
construction paper to make everyone a placemat. I laminated them, and they have been a wonderful Halloween addition to our table.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
I used a recipe off of allrecipes.com that got good reviews, but it wasn't my favorite. I'm still looking for a good one if anyone has one.

Halloween Book
This project has been one of our favorites. I based it off of Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? book. It took me all evening to figure out how to get it to print both sides and stapled to look like a little book (I did it the hard way where the pages fold to make the story). Benjamin loved making it and reading it. He feels very grown up that he can "read" the whole book by himself. I think that both Stephen and I have heard it twenty times a piece, and he is not tired of "reading" it yet. I found the foam stickers at Dollar Tree if anyone wants to make their own.

Pasta Skelelton

There are much cuter patterns online for using all sorts of different pastas to make this, but we made do with mini penne that we had in our pantry. I copied an outline from online and then Benjamin set to work setting the pasta in the glue.

Pumpkin Farm

We went to the Pumpkin farm on Saturday afternoon. We got the most amazing pictures ever. I still can't believe the colors. I'll just let the pictures tell the story. . .

New Soup and Rolls

I made two new recipes last night for dinner. One was a knock-off version of the Zuppa Toscana at Olive Garden. Stephen really enjoyed it. He even went for seconds which is pretty rare for him with soup. The other new recipe was for "Rustic Dinner Rolls" from America's Test Kitchen. The recipe was intense and quite complicated. It was an entire page single space in the Cooks Illustrated Magazine. I literally started the dough at 1p.m., then babysit it all afternoon, and then cooked it at 5:15p.m. We were all actually hungry and so the last rise wasn't as long as it should have been. I was worried after all the time that I had put into them, that I would be disappointed. The verdict was that we were definetly not. Stephen thought they lived up to his high bread standards for sure. They were delicious. I will include the soup recipe, but it will take me a while to type up the roll recipe. I made a few changes to the soup just because of convience and what I had. I used the precooked bacon instead of bacon bits, and I also took the sausage out of the casing and just cooked it on the stove top. I also used whole milk instead of heavy cream because it was all that I had. Enjoy!

Zuppa Tuscana (from Recipe Zaar Online)

• 1 lb Italian sausage
• 2 large russet baking potatoes, diced
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1/2 can oscar meyer bacon bit
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups kale or swiss chard, chopped
• 2 cans chicken broth
• 1 quart water
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream

Directions

1. Cook sausage in a 300°F oven for approximately 30 minutes.
2. Drain sausages on paper towels and cut into slices.
3. Place onions, potatoes, chicken broth, water, garlic in pot, and cook on medium heat until potatoes are done.
4. Add sausage and bacon.
5. Salt and pepper to taste.
6. Simmer for another 10 minutes.
7. Turn to low heat.
8. Add kale and cream.
9. Heat through and serve.

Five little pumpkins, ghost suckers, caramel apples, still life painting, and egg carton bat

Here are a few of the "projects" as Benjamin likes to call them that we have been up to these past two weeks. They were almost all things that we chose from our Halloween socks. I have been amazed at how easy it has been. It took me a few days to gather everything that we needed to complete all of the projects and then each day it has just been pulling things out. We have had a great time with our afternoon projects (that now take the place of naps!).

five little pumpkin finger puppets and song

ghost suckers

taste testing the caramel for the apples

caramel apples

Still life that Benjamin created. This was all his idea after watching
Ruby paint a still life on "Max and Ruby."

Benjamin's still life watercolor

Mom's still life

egg carton purple bats

Apple Picking

We went to the farm to pick apples on Saturday. It was a beautiful, sunshiny, autumn day here. Benjamin told us on the way to the farm that in order to pick the apples "you twist them, do not pull the apples off of the tree." Apparently he learned that from an episode of "Max and Ruby." The trees were brimming with glowing apples. We had a delightful time picking and capturing pictures of the farm. This little organic farm was amazing. It is only about one mile from our house, yet we didn't know that it was there. They still had blackberry and raspberry bushes with a few berries on them. We couldn't resist popping a few of those from the ones that didn't get harvested. We now have a new hot spot for our wonderful produce. They also do a co-op produce share that we will have to consider doing next summer. To end the day we had a delicious apple crisp warm out of the oven with vanilla ice cream melting over the top.

Here is Benjamin's story about the experience. "We drove to a apple farm and picked the apples. I love apple picking. The apples were juicy. We twist and pull the apples off of the tree. We say 'hi' to a chicken at the farm. We loved the apples. We also ate some apple dessert. It taste delicious. We love also the apples on the branches. We baked a apple pie. I had so much fun apple picking."

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Fall Festival

I love the little town that we live in. In fact, there are three little towns that make up our ward at church. All of them are wonderful. They each have celebrations during different times of the year, Easter Egg Hunt, Summer Festival, and Fall Festival. Our town hosts the Fall Festival. We missed it last year, but I wanted to make sure we got there this year. I am constantly surprised at how great these activities are. Plenty of free games that are loads of fun along with free food. Benjamin enjoyed playing games, getting balloon sword, taking a free picture by a photographer, jumping in the bounce house, receiving candy, and riding the train. They also had a free fishing pond with live trout that you caught to take home, but we didn't encourage that. We just admired the fish swim around (neither of us wanted to clean it). The free food included corn on the cob, popcorn, snowcones, cotton candy with lunch meals of hot dogs, chips, and a can of pop for a whopping price of $1. We thoroughly enjoyed our time between conference sessions and probably would have stayed longer! It was a great family activity.