Hoot for Owl Cupcakes

As mentioned a few posts back, I was making a batch of surprise cupcakes for Son No. 3's girlfriend's birthday.  I had to keep it hush hush, though, so as not to spoil the surprise.  

We were invited to her house this past Sunday evening for a small family gathering to celebrate her 21st.  Her whole family is so nice, and always makes us feel so welcome.  To include us in a small, intimate gathering really made us feel like part of the family.  Quite frankly, I think we'll all be family someday.  Those two are pretty committed to one another.

Anyway, she loved the cupcakes! Owls are so popular right now, and she's into them.  They weren't difficult to make at all.  A little time-consuming, but once I got all the components ready, I worked on them in an assembly-line fashion. 

Duncan Hines' website has pretty good instructions on how to put them together.  You can find them here.  The best tip, I felt, was microwaving the Oreos a few seconds to soften them so they would separate easier.  When I separated them, however, I wasn't entirely successful in keeping all, or even most, of the cream on one side.  I used a small off-set spatula to carefully scrape the cream off one side of the cookie and put it on the other side that had the majority of the cream filling.  Then, using that spatula (having the small off-set spatula ~ you know, the kind for smoothing frosting on cakes, cupcakes ~ really made this job easy) I smoothed the cream as best as possible.  

Another thing I did that wasn't mentioned in the DH's instructions was when it came time to push the Junior Mints into the cream to create the center of the eye, I put the Oreos back in the micro for a few seconds again so the cream was soft and would allow the candies to be pushed down into the cream to stay put better.

I also found the above baking cup helped in building these owls.  It's Wilton's ruffled baking cup. I made two batches of cupcakes, chocolate and vanilla.  One batch I backed in regular, decorative cups, and the other in the ruffled.   Because of the little edge all around, it held the eyes and ears up a little better.  I really wished I'd used this type of baking cup for all of them.

To go along with the "owl" theme, I also created a little owl softie using a free tutorial I searched for online.  You can find that tutorial here.  As I mentioned, she's into owls, and had pinned the cutest owls at Pinterest.  So I took that idea and went with it.  She turned out so cute.  I had a blast making her.  

 Actually, I found quite a few different and cute free patterns online for all kinds of owls.  

One of the best things about getting together to celebrate Shannon's birthday with her family, besides the fun and great company, is that her Aunt's family owns an orchard in Bridgeton, New Jersey,

  Sunny Slope, 

and they kindly send us home with an assortment peck of their delicious, crunchy, crisp apples and a gallon of the best apple cider you've ever tasted.

To me,  that's a gorgeous site.  All those wonderful apples piled high in my Hubby's Grandmother's huge blue-banded yellow ware bowl we inherited.  Besides just enjoying munching on those delicious apples,  I'll be busy making apple crisp, apple pie, apple butter . . . 

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All Hallow's Eve

It's almost time.

For all the goblins, ghosts and ghouls to come a calling.

A tower of terror . . . for my waistline, that is.

The candy's ready at the door, and the weather is going to cooperate nicely.

Hope we have a few more trick-or-treaters than the last couple years.
Numbers are decreasing with each passing year.

Outside, I have a few jack-o-latern type vessels to light up with candles.
I did not purchase one pumpkin this year.
I know . . . GASP!!!  
Nor did I purchase any hay bales or corn stalks.  Not sure what was going on with me.  I just couldn't get in the groove to decorate the outside this year.  I did purchase some mums, but that's pretty much it.

This guy's actually electric.  He has a little light bulb inside.

Cute little rusted metal ghost.  A candle sits in a little tray behind him.

Candles go inside these metal guys too.
They're nestled in the planters by my front door,
where they can greet the trick-or-treaters.

Hope you all have a spooktacular Halloween!!!

Oh, and I want to give a quick little birthday shout out to Son No. 2's girlfriend, Shannon.  As some of you read in my last post, she turns 21 today.  We were invited to her house last night for a very nice little family gathering.  Will share more on that in tomorrow's post.  Also, I'll reveal the super-cute cuppy cakes I made for her along with a cute little something extra special I made for her.

Happy Birthday, Shannon!

XOXO

Have a fun night everyone!

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A Soggy Saturday

The weather here today couldn't be yuckier ~  is that even a word?  It's cold, rainy, windy.  A nasty nor'easter.  And . . .  here's the yuckiest part . . . we're supposed to get wet snow later this evening.  SNOW??!!!  We don't snow around here in October.  It's not going to be much. A couple inches that's probably not going to stick to the roads, and will be gone by tomorrow mid-day.  But still, snow!?

I've decided to "hunker" down here in the house and get some projects done.  That's the best thing about a cold, rainy Saturday, right?

I'm going to sew the binding onto another one of these:

I bought this silly, cutesy Halloween fabric a few years ago and never did anything with it.  I decided the other night I'd make a couple little quilted tablerunners using it.  

Silly Halloween on one side, pretty autumnal print on the other.

I may sit down and do some more stitching on this:

I started this cross stitch project . . . gosh . . . it's been so long ago, I don't even remember.  

I bet it's been 14 or 15 years ago.

Think I may need to add some more floss stitches to his beard.  Looks a little thin.

I'm gonna bake a batch of Halloweeny cupcakes using all this:

I'm sure I've mentioned in past posts how I like using cake mixes, and adding extra ingredients to them for my cakes and cupcakes.  It's so much easier, and the cakes turn out great every time.  I have a great book that gives tons of ideas and recipes for using mixes.  

The Cake Doctor Returns by Ann Byrn

Using those Oreo cookies and Junior Mints candies, I'll be making a special bunch of cupcakes for a very special young lady who is celebrating her 21st birthday Sunday, although her birthday is actually Halloween.  How cool is that to have a Halloween b'day?!  I don't want to share too much about them, because she reads my blog and I don't want to spoil the surprise.  

So, you're just going to have to wait til tomorrow, Shannon! ;o)

 Another project I plan to tackle, will need these items:

Again, I can't divulge my plain for these because they're to be made into a little special something for that Birthday Girl, Shannon.  I'll be sure to share what all that up there becomes, and the cutesy cupcakes in a later post.

My favorite Halloween movies will be watched, most likely with a huge bowl of popcorn.  

I'm not a gory movie person at all.  I like the cutesy, kiddie Halloween movies.

Another movie I used to just love, but it's never on TV anymore, and I've yet to find it on DVD is the The Halloween Tree.  It's a cartoon made from the Ray Bradbury book. I really like The Nightmare Before Christmas too, but we don't have that on DVD. We had a VHS copy, but no more VCR's in the house.

A few other movies I might try to get in this weekend:

The Others ~ ghosts.  Van Helsing ~ vampires.  They're appropriate for Halloween.  And I can get a dose of the gorgeous Hugh Jackman.  And, yeesss, I'm getting the itch to watch some Christmas flicks.  

I will be perusing through this fabulous magazine. 

 I have to blame another blogger, Michael from Inspired by Charm, for tempting me to fall of the wagon.  By "falling off the wagon" I'm referring to my constant addiction battle with magazines.  Especially the SIP's ~ Special Interest Publications.   I will say, though, I think it's probably one of BH&G's best Christmas Ideas edition in years.  Every page is filled with the greatest show-and-tell pics, eye candy, project ideas.  A couple popular and well-known home dec/design bloggers are featured as well.  It was well worth me caving into temptation to grab it up.

By the way, have you all visited Michael's blog?  Oh, it's fabulous!  He's fabulous!
If you haven't visited him at
Inspired by Charm,
 you should pop over there when you're done here.

I think another "have-to" for today will be a big pot of steaming hot soup.  I'm thinking maybe a creamy, cheesy potato soup with some warm homemade cornbread.  

Hope you all have a fun, and spooktacular, weekend!

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Pumpkin Swirl Brownies

This recipe was one of Martha Stewart's Cookie of the Day emails.  I'm always on the lookout for something a little different, and seasonal recipes are always fun to try.  Brownies are always a hit here at our house, and pumpkin, well, it's that time of year! 

How can you go wrong with anything pumpkin?!

So, I gathered up the ingredients, and went to work.

As you can see, all the normal ingredients for preparing a yummy pan of brownies, with the addition of the pumpkin.  But look . . . up there . . . there's also a few slightly different additions then are normally found in a brownie recipe.  Cinnamon, nutmeg, and cayenne pepper.  I have seen spicy flavors pared with chocolate in other recipes, but I've never experienced it.  

I was anxious to try!

First things first.  

Melt the chocolate {I mixed semi-sweet with unsweetened} and the 

butter together in a double boiler on the stove.

 Now, can you think of anything more lovely? 

 Mmmmm . . . glossy, rich, buttery melted chocolate . . .

Combining the eggs, sugar, vanilla.

It works into quite a thick, sticky batter.

At this point, you divide that batter up there into two bowls.  Add the melted chocolate to one, and the pumpkin along with remaining ingredients in another.

Then you spread half the chocolate batter in a pan, followed by half the pumpkin batter, repeating to create four layers of batter. 

Well, I was lazy and only did two layers.  Chocolate on the bottom, pumpkin on top.  I tried to swirl it, but with only the two layers I didn't really get swirl of combined batters.  Also, the recipe called for the brownies to be baked in a 9 inch square pan, but many of the comments I read about the recipe said the batter was too rich and thick for that size and the brownies weren't baking thoroughly.  Several commenters suggested a larger pan.  I used a 9x12 and it worked perfectly.

As you can see, I didn't quite get the swirliness like in Martha's brownies below.  Oh, and I didn't add the nuts.  The brownies were a success!  That very faint hint of spiciness paired well with the pumpkin flavor in these brownies.  I think if I would have taken the time to layer the batter as suggested, there would be a better mixture of flavors when bitting into the brownie.  With just the layer of pumpkin on top, it's more divided flavor/texture when you bite into the brownie, if that makes any sense.  I would definitely make these again. 

If you'd like the recipe, click here to go to Martha's site to print it out.

I can't go without mentioning my super-cute witchy cake stand.  Isn't it adorable!  It was a hostess gift one year from my good friend and bestest next-door neighbor in the world, Mary.

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