Food for Thought Friday

Trick-or-Treat Brownie Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 box fudge brownie mix

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons water

2 eggs

1 cup white vanilla baking chips

1-3/4 cups powdered sugar

6 tablespoons butter or margarine softened

3 tablespoons milk

6-8 drops red food color

6-8 drops yellow food color

24 miniature candy bars

1.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2.  Spray your muffin pans with cooking spray to prevent sticking.

3.  In a mixing bowl combine the brownie mix, oil, water, and eggs.

4.  Mix well - duh.

5.  Divide the batter among the muffin cups and bake them 13 to 18 minutes.  Test with a toothpick to be sure they are set.

6.  And now for what I like to call the crucial step - lick the whisk, spatula, and any other utensil that touched the mixing bowl (including the bowl itself!) completely clean.  None of the yummy brownie batter should be wasted!

7.  Allow your brownie cupcakes to cool for 30 minutes.

8.  Microwave the vanilla chips on medium heat (50%) for 30 to 45 seconds.  Be sure to stir every 15 seconds or so.

9.  While the vanilla chips are cooling combine the powdered sugar, butter, milk, and food colors in another bowl.  Beat with a mixer on medium speed until fluffy.  Fair warning - the first time I made this recipe I added the milk right away and ended up with the runniest icing ever.  As with most recipes it is best to add your dry ingredients first and then add the wet ones a little at a time as needed.  You may find that you don't even need the entire 3 tablespoons of milk.  Also as far as the food coloring goes - use however many drops it takes to get a color that you like.

10.  Stir in the melted vanilla chips.  As you can see from the below picture I don't actually own a mixer so everything has to be done by hand.  It's a bit messier and much more time consuming, but I eventually get the job done :)

11.  Spoon the frosting over your cooled brownies.  If you want you could always use an icing bag and tip and pipe the icing in pretty designs onto the brownies.

12.  Top each brownie cupcake with a miniature candy bar.  I used Snickers because they are David's favorite, but you could use whatever you like.

13.  Enjoy!  The rich fudgey brownie taste mixed with the sweet creaminess of the vanilla in the icing is wonderful and makes for a perfect Halloween treat :)

Spooky Halloween Silhouettes Part III

I wanted to share the rest of my Halloween silhouettes today.  I used the Frankenstein's Monster template from Mr. Rudell's book to make a silhouette for one of my kitchen windows.   As I said yesterday I had to shrink him quite a bit in order to make him fit.  We named him Frankie, but since he came out a bit short and skinny, maybe he should be Frankie Jr.?

Above is a view of Frankie from the side of the house.

And a close-up.  As you can tell Frankie really needed a double set of windows because he should be a bit wider and you should be able to see both of his outstretched arms for his classic mummy walk.

This is another shot of my camera trying but failing to take a picture at night.  I even changed the settings so that the lens stayed open longer in order to let in more light.  I really want a fancy new camera!!!  And if you can't tell from the pictures itself, this is a vulture from Mr. Rudell's book perched on the balcony door.

Mr. Rudell's book also included a witch template and while she was especially wicked looking (Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz wicked looking) she was also enormous.  Attempting to blow the template up to size and then shrink her to the window would have put her totally out of proportion.

So I started searching online for free printable clipart and I found this lovely lady.

I opened the clipart file in paint and erased all of the middle section so that all I had to print out was the outline.  I then used the Posteriza program that I mentioned on Monday to blow her up to size.

David said that we should name her after the Looney Tunes witch so now we have Witch Hazel.  Above is a picture of Hazel from inside.  I added one of the clawed hands from Mr. Rudell's book into her cauldron.  Below is Hazel from the outside.

Well I hope that everyone enjoyed the silhouettes.  I highly recommend Jeffrey Rudell's book.  I already have so many plans for next Halloween!

I've also got a Food for Thought post that I meant to share last Friday (but I forgot!) so I am going to post it later today.  We made some festive Halloween cupcake brownies that were super yummy!

After that I probably won't be posting again until next week so I want to wish everyone a safe and happy Halloween!

Spooky Halloween Silhouettes Part II

Today's post is a continuation of Monday's one about Halloween window silhouettes.  Basically I had so much fun with Mr. Rudell's blog post that I went out and bought his book.  The book is oversized and  contains 28 different silhouettes that are ready to use.  Each page inside of the book is like black construction paper and already perforated so you just punch it out, hang it on your window, and voila - a spooky Halloween silhouette!

I checked at my local Books-A-Million and they didn't have the book in stock, but it was available to order online.  Boo.  So I called Barnes & Noble who fortunately had plenty in stock, but were a 30 minute drive away.  As you may have already guessed, I made the drive.

The first inside cover shows all of the different silhouettes.  The cat as you can see comes in two pieces so it had to be taped together and the vulture is so large that it folds out onto an extra page.

The back inside cover included more silhouettes that could be used as templates and blown up to scale.  I was very pleased to see that these weren't the same ones used in the blog post, which made buying the book even more worthwhile.  The only problem that I had with these is that when blown up to scale they are absolutely enormous.  They would probably work perfectly for someone who has a house with large picture windows though.  To give you some perspective, although my windows are very tall (floor to ceiling) they are only about three standard sheets of printer paper wide.

I did use these templates to make Frankenstein's Monster, but I had to squish him so much that you'd almost think the poor guy was starving himself.  I will have pictures to share of him later this week.

You can't see it very well in this picture, but the last page of the book is a red see-through plastic page to be used with the silhouettes that have open spaces.

The first silhouette that I did from the book was the cat.  Besides the zombie he is probably the one that I have gotten the most compliments about.  I named him Salem and here he is perched on the window sill above my computer.

 My camera doesn't take very good pictures at night so most of the pictures of the smaller silhouettes had to be taken from the inside in order for you guys to see them.  This is after I added a couple of spooky bats to the window.  You can't see it from this angle, but standing outside of the house you can see a witch's hat sitting on the lower window sill.

And now you can see where the red plastic page comes in.  Creepy cat when you see him up close, huh?

These next two windows also had to photographed from the inside in order for them to show up well enough to post on the blog.  They do look awesome from the outside though - I promise!

Above we have an owl with lovely red eyes and a crescent shaped moon in the corner.

Below you'll see the bottom of the window with a tombstone and two hands reaching skyward.

(I promise that you can't see the crazy stars on my window sheers from outside of the house either!  The sheers do have to be up though or you don't get the spooky effect from the outside.)

And here we have two crows - one looks like he just landed on the top window sill while the other is perched on a group of pumpkins.

Two of the pumpkins in the book were already carved as jack-o-lanterns and two were left plain in case you wanted to cut them out yourself.  I used the one that was already decorated and put more of the red plastic page behind it in order to "light" it up.

So what do you think?

Spooky Halloween Silhouettes

I adore autumn and for me Halloween is the best part of the season.  I know there is only one week left in October, but I have been decorating all month long and I have some really fun Halloween posts that I'd like to share this week.

I found this great blog post through craftzine.com where Jeffery Rudell decorated a client's house for Halloween with a budget of only $100.  On this very limited budget he cleverly decorated the entire house with spooky paper silhouettes in all of the windows.  In the post he included 3 free pdf files of silhouette templates for the readers to try at home.

http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/10/haunted_house_with_silhouettes.html

My favorite of course was the zombie silhouette.

Mr. Rudell's silhouette was basically like a piece of clipart with instructions on how to enlarge it at a copy center such as UPS, etc.  I loved the idea, but I wanted something simple and inexpensive that I could do at home by myself.  I downloaded the pdf file and used a free program online to convert it to a bitmap image.  Adobe won't allow you to make changes to a picture, but if it is converted to bmp then you can open it and make changes inside the Paint program that comes with every computer.

I wanted to turn the zombie picture into an outline in order to avoid using so much black ink when printing it out and the Paint program allowed me to do that.  My printer doesn't have a tile print feature so next I downloaded a free online program called Posteriza, which did the work for me.

Above it what my zombie looked like once he was turned into an outline and tile printed.

A friend of mine was kind enough to give me a roll of black art paper, which saved on expenses as well.  Above is my zombie outline cut out of white printer paper and taped together.  I used it to draw the outline onto the black art paper.

The above step of trying to flatten out your zombie silhouette is only necessary if you use a roll of black paper that has been rolled up very tightly for a long time - lol!

And now I'd like to introduce...George!  I named him after George A. Romero, the "Godfather of all Zombies."  This picture was taken from my kitchen window looking at George standing in the living room.

And here is a much more spooky angle taken from the street.  I've gotten compliments from just about everyone who has driven by and seen him.  And I will admit that he's creeped me out a few times when I've been walking down the hallway and caught sight of him out of the corner of my eye!

I have more silhouettes to share so I may be doing double posts some days this week.  Until then I hope everyone has a happy Monday!

I spy with my mini eye...

When I first got into 1:12 scale I remember reading lots of posts on Greenleaf about people spotting things with their "mini eye."  I came to find out that this was when you see everyday objects that are perfect as 1:12 scale miniatures.  One example is the tiny little metal trays that eyeshadow comes in.  Once you've used up all of the eyeshadow you can pop the trays out and they are the perfect size to use as miniature baking pans.

So anyway, I spotted these today...

And what did I spy?  Well miniature cookie cutters of course!  

These were .97 cents apiece at Wal-Mart so I bought one of each.  Now I have far too many craft projects going on right now to even consider pulling out my polymer clay - seriously, there are some parts of the turtle/craft room that aren't safe to walk in right now - but, I figure I can always put these away for next year.

I can imagine all kinds of tiny little Halloween shaped cookies with different shades of icing in some cute little setting or another.  If you haven't done much with polymer clay here is a great tutorial to get your imagination started - 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ID4cN6RC1w

This is one of the best tutorials that I have found.  She gives very simple and easy to follow instructions to show what you can do with thin pieces of polymer clay, a hair dryer, and hole punches.  Pretty cool results with not much expense :)

I've got more crafts to post about within the next few days - some fun Halloween window silhouettes and also an update about the painted aluminum can tab bracelets.  Until then everyone have a happy Thursday!

Food for Thought Friday

Gravy Baked Pork Chops

Ingredients:

4 or 5 thick (about 1 to 1-1/4 inch) pork chops

salt and pepper

butter

3/4 cup of milk

1 can condensed cream of celery soup

1.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2.  Salt and pepper the pork chops to taste.

3.  Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat.

4.  Saute the pork chops for 5 minutes.

5.  Meanwhile drain one can of sliced carrots.

6.  In a mixing bowl combine the carrots and a can of Cream of Celery soup.

7.  Add 3/4 of a cup of milk to the mixing bowl.

8.  Stir to combine the 3 ingredients.

This stuff is so good that I could just stop at this step and eat the entire bowl :)

9.  Flip the pork chops and saute for 5 minutes on the other side.

10.  Place the pork chops into an oven safe dish.

I turned one of the chops sideways to show you that they will still be pink in the middle at this point and that is  okay.

11.  Pour the soup mixture over the pork chops.

12.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

13.  This next step is crucial.  While waiting for the pork chops to bake you must lick the mixing bowl clean - this stuff is too good to waste!

14.  Enjoy!  We added a side of mashed potatoes and some Hawaiian Sweet Rolls to our dinner.

 Happy Friday everyone - have a great weekend!

Fall is my favorite time of the year!

What is your favorite season?  I love fall.  I love getting to wear my hoodies again and I love driving around the mountains to see the autumn leaves.  I like the weather change too - for those few months where we don't have to run the air conditioner or the use the heaters.  I especially love the lower electric bills!

And of course, I love decorating for fall.  Even better is the month of October.  If I had it my way (and if I had the money) I'd celebrate Halloween all month long.  Pumpkins, scarecrows, scary witches and black cats, corn mazes and haunted houses, too much fun stuff to name!  

So I thought I'd share a few pics today...

Our super comfy sleigh bed with flannel sheets and my cozy down comforter.  The comforter is a bit wrinkly though, probably should have fluffed it up in the dryer first?

Photographs of David and I, our friends, and family on the mantle.  I've had the silver train lanterns for a while so I decided to fill them up with lamp oil and set them out.

Just one of my many Stoneware Baskets - made by Mary Curtin.  I filled this one with tiny putka pods because they look so much like tiny pumpkins.  You've probably seen these before, they dye them different colors and use them in potpourri.

And a funky little skeleton thrown in for some Halloween fun...

Pumpkin candle holder.

These are my dining room table decorations.  I decide to put my mason jar chandelier out as a basket with flicker candles.  The pumpkins came from Hobby Lobby a couple of seasons ago.  And of course more skeletons and putka pods.

And one last pic with the mason jars all lit up - spooky, lol!

That's all for today, happy Wednesday!