Chalkboard Pumpkin Countdown

Fourteen days until Halloween! I have a snowman that countsdown to Christmas but nothing else. And my kids love to know exactly how many days are left until a special event. This year I created a chalkboard pumpkin to countdown the days until Halloween. Each day we wipe off the number and write the new one with chalk. After Halloween I'll change it to read Days Until Thanksgiving.

Just start with a good sized pumpkin. This one had a rounded front shown here and a nice flattened back that worked perfect for the countdown.

Apply a few coats of chalk board paint. And you're done.

Huge added perk to this simple craftiness is the kids can use the chalk to create different Jack-o-Lantern faces on the other side.

Happy Halloween!

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Butter Pecan Pumpkin Cake...The One Fall Cake You Need To Make

If you make no other Fall sweet treat with pumpkin, you need it to be this one. If you're not a baker you can still do this very simple three ingredient cake. I promise. You can even eat it without frosting. It's incredibly moist and delicious. The pumpkin flavor is subtle; it just tastes like you're eating Fall.

Here's all you need for the cake: Betty Crocker Butter Pecan cake mix, canned pumpkin and three eggs.

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Easy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

The cookies are entirely too simple, perfect for fall and completely adaptable to your tastes. They can be made with only a handful of ingredients...ingredients you very well may have lurking in your pantry right now. Great for Halloween or Thanksgiving get-togethers or just for this afternoon.

All you need is cake mix, canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling), chocolate chips, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. I'm a big fan of Betty Crocker cake mixes. I always stock up when they're on sale.

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Second Annual Open House Thanksgiving

For the second year we've done Thanksgiving a little untraditionally. Instead of sitting down to a meal with guests at a specific time. We've created a Thanksgiving Open House Party. We put out food from 9am until the last person leaves, this year that was around 11pm. I was so happily preoccupied with cooking, eating and chatting with friends and family I neglected taking hardly any pictures at all. But I'm blessed to report we had more than 35 people come share part of their day with us.

For the second year I roasted a large maple-brined, bacon-butter rubbed, bacon-wrapped turkey.

I was able to snap a picture of my man slicing her, with the grain. Ooops.

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Gingerbread Man Shaped Nutella Snacks

I had leftover refrigerated pie crust from Thanksgiving. I have no plans for pie in the immediate future. And frankly, if I make a pie I need to get busy with my Martha Stewart quest and bake hers complete with *cough*homemade*cough* crusts. So what to do with this crust? I decided to try and make a treat for the kids after dinner. I grabbed the dough, the Nutella and my gingerbread man cookie cutter.

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Thanks for the Spooky Leftovers in the Pantry

Leftover candy creation time!

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Candy Corn Pudding Cups

I think this will be my last Halloween inspired goodie of twenty-ten. *sniff* I do love Halloween so much. However, every moment of Autumn is awesome, my favorite season of all. This morning I decided to whip up one last surprise for the kiddos before the onslaught of CANDY!

I stood on the pudding aisle earlier this week and thought of all the layered Jello candy corn inspired treats I've seen. Why not pudding? French Vanilla has a yellow hue.  And Butterscotch is in the orange family. I knew there was a tub of cool whip waiting at home already.

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Candy Corn Brownies

The candy corn must be gone by the end of October. I thought baking some of them in brownies would be a festive and yummy thing to do. The kids were obviously in full support of this plan. I did regular candy corn on top of mini brownie muffins and caramel candy corn on top of a pan of brownies. While I do have several brownie recipes from scratch, these were from a box. But not just any box, Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownie mix.  Love this brownie mix! If you've never tried it you need to change that. It's so tasty on its own but if you have Heath toffee bits, you should throw a handful in the brownie batter for a truly mouth altering experience. But I digress; this is about candy corn!

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Painting Pumpkins

As I mentioned before, I do not like to carve pumpkins. I only did a carved jack-o-lantern and expensive trip to a "pumpkin patch" one year with all our kiddos. I was disappointed the pumpkins weren't on a vine in this so-called patch but instead we were carried by tractor pulled hay ride across a field to yet another field where pumpkins were scattered about. The kids enjoyed the day, our wallets did not. And the resulting carved pumpkin became a stinky, rotting mess on the front step.

The one and only year in a large Pumpkin Patch, October 2007

The next year I switched gears and instead of spending too much on one day in a crowded field with strangers to buy one expensive large pumpkin, we visited our friends that run a pumpkin patch in front of their church and let each kid pick out their own pumpkin to PAINT.

The first painted pumpkins, October 2008

My goblins with their creations year two of painted pumpkins in 2009

This year the kids started asking very early in October when we would be going to visit our friends' pumpkin patch to buy the pumpkins. And I suppose by year three I can call this a tradition, right?

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Candy Corn Bark

I had the unoriginal idea to make candy corn bark. Seems from a quick search on the Internet this is done often when the love it or hate it October candy is aplenty. Nonetheless I gave it a go from my own pantry.

I had a couple bags of white Wilton candy melts, a bag of candy corn, some festive orange and black sprinkles and a bag of Halloween colored Oreos.

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Painted Glass Pumpkin Luminaries

I do not like to carve pumpkins. The one year I did it with the kids it was not a pretty result, the face or the following ant invasion and rot. Eww. Ever since that fateful Halloween, I've been taking the kids to a local pumpkin patch to pick out their own pumpkins to bring home and paint. I adore the way the decorated pumpkins adorn my front porch, but I miss the flickering glow of a jack-a-lantern. Now I miss it no more. Several weeks ago I came across this great project on Crafts by Amanda for Halloween Painted Jar Luminaries. Go look at them; they're awesome. 

That same week I found a bevy of floral glass vases for one dollar each at a local thrift store. When I saw their shape I thought they'd make great pumpkins.

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