Fall!

Fall is one of my favorite seasons by FAR! I just love it! The colors, the leaves, the cold breeze. The decorations. And I thought, I could make my own wreath. So after a shopping trip to Michaels, I picked up a wreath made out of faux branches and red and orange berries. 

I wove the berries into the branches and used hot glue here and there to make sure it stayed. 

It worked great! I love the fall colors on our yellow couch. 

And it looks even better against our red front door!

 I also decided our house could use numbers (since we don't have any). So I printed up some bold numbers on an orange and gray chevron background and put the paper in picture frames from Ikea. I hot glued ribbon to the frames to hang them up together. The roomies didn't like the festive colors so I also tried out red (matched the door, went with fall, Christmas, Valentine's day, 4th of July, basically all the holidays) and a mismatch of frames.

We ended up going with red in all black frames. The ribbon didn't last outside for long, so we ended up propping the frames up on the front steps, which worked fine until it rained. And then...well it was strange. The color behind the numbers dripped and then disappeared but the black numbers are still black numbers. I don't know. Either way I am STILL looking for a good solution to our house number problem.

I also decided to make some fun fall treats: Pumpkin truffles! They have nothing to do with pumpkin other than they are orange. But so cute and so tasty. I made regular Oreo Truffles (like the footballs from the last Superbowl Party) but I  used the vanilla Oreos and added orange food coloring to them and dipped them in Orange dipping chocolate. I found green licorice and cut those in half to use them for stems. I wish you could see the orange inside. I had wanted to use limited edition candy corn Oreos, but couldn't find any.

 I'm clearly still working on dipping the chocolate, but they turned out fine. I also made pumpkin muffins and wanted to make a cream cheese icing (and dye it orange) for the tops so they would also look like pumpkins. But I didn't have time. You'll soon learn that I love theme partys. It's sort of an obsession. And oreo truffles and nutella stuffed sugar cookies. I pretty much make them for every type of party and change the color or shape. Thankfully they are always a crowd favorite, so this 2 trick pony doesn't feel bad about it.

Fall also meant trips to Harper's Ferry to Hike with my newly married bestie and her hubby and kz and an annual trip to Summer's Corn Maze with some of my favorite college girls.

Newly married bliss. 

 

I'd say it was another successful fall. Lots of baking and crafting and mazing and hiking. Plus some DELICIOUS crock pot recipes. Not to mention...Frankenstorm...my next post...

Candy Corn Cookie Fun

Since today is Halloween and I'm not big on dressing up, I figured I should still do something festive. So I decided to make Candy Corn Sugar Cookies. Now, don't let the name fool you, there are no candy corns involved in this process, other than the fact that the cookies look like little candy corns. I love to bake, and my office loves to eat the cookies I bake, so I figured it would be a perfect match.

This was probably the most fun I have had baking cookies in a while. And I decided to document the process with photos!

So I started with a simple sugar cookie mix. I didn't have time to make it from scratch, so I just used a box. Also, I have yet to find a sugar cookie recipe that I actually like, so the mix always seems to be the best bet for me. Once I had the dough, I divided it into 3 parts and left one section the normal color, dyed one section yellow and the last section orange. I lined a small bread pan with plastic wrap and layered the dough inside. First white, then orange, then yellow. I smoothed out the top and placed it in the fridge to chill for a couple of hours.


When I took out the dough, you could clearly see the 3 layers.



Then I sliced a 1/4 inch section and you could really see the layers.


Next I cut little triangles out of the dough.


I think if I had used a larger bread pan I might have been able to get more triangles out of each slice, but this worked just fine.



Once all the triangles were all cut, I set them all out on the pan. I put granulated sugar on some and some orange sprinkles I had on others. For one batch I dipped the ends into sugar and some I left plain. Not sure which ones turned out best, but they all looked so cute.


I baked them in the oven for about 10 minutes. (I like to leave them a little on the doughy side so when then cool they are nice and soft).


I let them cool on the pan for a couple minutes.


And moved them to a wire rack to cool.


They actually look like little candy corns. I was quite pleased!


Finally I layered them in a Tupperware to bring to work for my coworkers to enjoy!


Such an easy treat. But so fun!