Halloween

So, what did we do for Halloween?

I was “Booed” by someone in my mom’s group, and I passed on this bag of goodies. It was fun to get to shop like this for someone else.

Beth dressed up as a piece of candycorn. I was very pleased that I managed to come up with this on my own. No pattern. No inspiring costume. I thought to myself, “What is the shape of a sleepsack? Candycorn! Noah loves candycorn. It’s perfect!”

We did a bit of reverse trick-or-treating. I made a huge batch of pumpkin pie spice popcorn (sugar + pumpkin pie spice + pam spray on popcorn), mixed it with toffee nuts, pretzels and M&Ms and put it in some decorated lunch bags. It was lots of fun spending the afternoon as a family visiting our friends with goodies. Plus I got to show off Beth all dressed up and super cute

Back at home, we hung out on our front porch and handed out candy to the neighborhood kids. Lots and lots of neighborhood kids. Then we partcipated in a little neighborhood tradition we cal “Trick-or-Beer.” Delicious

Camping

We went camping with some friends a while back. We had 3 tents on a campsite. One couple coordinated meals (thank you, thank you!) and the rest of us brought what was asked of us. A couple more families joined us for dinner on Saturday night.

It was a blast

Free apples

The other day, I visited the library and in the lobby were a flat of free apples!

I ran them through my apple peeler/corer and froze the pieces on some cookie sheets. Now I have 3 ziplock bags of apples.

The question is, what shall I make with all of them?

Sunday breakfast

Yesterday we went out for breakfast after the race. There were delicious-looking cinnamon rolls. Of course, I could not eat them. In fact, I have not eaten much in the way of frosted baked goods since Beth came along. So this morning, I set out to make dairy-free/soy-free frosting and sweet biscuits.

Now it is hard to tell if these were really as good as I perceived them to be or if I simply wanted frosting so badly that any imposter would do. Either way, I found them to be scrumptious! For any who might now – or at some future point – need to make dairy-free/soy-free sweet biscuits and frosting…

Sweet biscuits

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1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Prep a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
2. Mix 2 1/4 C Heart Healthy Bisquick, 1/2 C Splenda, 1/4 t vanilla and 1/2 C rice milk. I added a few shakes of cinnamon for good measure, although that is entirely optional.
3. I used my cookie scoop to make drop biscuits, but you could roll and cut biscuits if you’d rather.
4. Bake for 8-10 minutes until golden brown.

Beth-safe Frosting

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1. Mix 6 T Crisco with about 2 C powdered sugar to form pea size clumps.
2. Add 1 t vanilla, 1/4 t apple cider vinegar and around 2 t rice milk. Continue to add rice milk to achieve the desired consistency.
3. Use to frost sweet biscuits, cookies, cake, or fingers. Spatulas also make a great delivery implement

I think this frosting could easily be changed around to create other flavors using cocoa powder or flavor extracts. It’s fairly thick, so I also think it may work well for using in pastry bags around holidays. All in all it got our morning off to a great beginning. Hope your Sunday is just as sweet!

See Noah.

See Noah run.

Run, Noah, run.

Noah ran a 5k this morning with our friend Kelly. They decided to run it last night. This is the second race Noah has run, and I am so proud of him. It was a lot of fun to see him rounding the corner into the last stretch of the race. On a side note, that little guy in the front row with the USA shirt on won the whole race. He was bookin’. Kelly came in third.

After the 5k, we all went out for breakfast. I didn’t run 3 miles, but I sure ate like I did