Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween. Enjoy the lights of my little led ghosts! I hope you have a spooky and safe night!

pumpkin carving and roasted pumpkin seeds

This year we opted to carve two small pumpkins instead of one large one. They both had so much seeds, both more than the super large pumpkin we carved last year. After we finished carving pumpkins we used the seeds to make some roasted pumpkin seeds.

Once you finish scooping out everything inside the pumpkin, wash the seeds off and place them on a dry paper towel to dry.

Next, we placed parchment paper down on a cookie sheet and put the pumpkin seeds and drizzled them with olive oil, garlic and a bit of salt.

We also experimented and made a spicy batch with a bit of hot sauce, chili powder, dry onion, and garlic.

Put them in the oven for 40 minutes at 300 degrees.

The whole house smelled of pumpkin and spice. Perfect for a fall day!

Have a Happy Halloween!!

weekend recap

This weekend started as a lovely weekend filled with tons of baking. When I get in the baking mood, I just can't stop. I will have an entire table filled of cookie racks. I made plenty of cookies to bring home to my family. I made oatmeal cookies in different batches, m&m, chocolate chip, raisin, and white chocolate and raisin. So everyone had their favorite cookie.

We also had fun pumpkin carving, made roasted pumpkin seeds (recipe to follow soon!), scary movies, and some traveling, we went to visit my family and went out to dinner, when we returned we found ourselves in the middle of the incoming Hurricane Sandy and lost power.

Thank goodness I had baked so many cookies before I left because I lived off of cookies for a few days, made jewelry by the window or candlelight, and played board games.

Hope everyone in the east coast is safe.

ghost and skull sugar cookies

I wanted to have some fun and bake some skull and ghost cookies for Halloween and they are perfect to celebrate Day of the Dead too. I made sugar cookies and then used this awesome skull cookie cutter and little ghost that I found here, made some homemade icing.

Sugar Cookies
4 dozen

Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs (I used egg whites)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:
1.     Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together, set aside. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg whites one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Gradually blend in the sifted ingredients until fully absorbed. Cover dough, and chill for 2 hours.

2.     Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. On a clean floured surface, roll out small portions of chilled dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out shapes using cookie cutters.

3.     Bake 6 to 8 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are barely brown. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

Icing

Ingredients:

1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons milk
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
    

Directions:

1.     In a small bowl, stir together confectioners' sugar and milk until smooth. Beat in corn syrup until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.

You will want to wait to put the icing on until the cookies are completely cool.

2.     Divide icing into separate bowls if you want and add food colorings to each. I kept mine white for the ghosts and skulls.

I recommend putting small amount of icing first, if you put too much it will run all over the place. So I did it little by little and it worked very well. And then I laid them flat for a few hours until the icing hardened.

For the faces, I mixed the left over white frosting with cocoa powder to make chocolate icing and then placed the icing in a ziplock bag, squeezed it to the bottom and snipped the corner of the ziplock bag to make my own icing dispenser, and then I decorated the faces as best I could. You can also use melted chocolate, little pieces of licorice or candy to decorate their faces.

 

This was my first time making these cookies and decorating them. I learned so much from this experience, so I think the next time I can decorate them much better!

I can't wait to make Christmas cookies!!

Enjoy!!

costume ideas

Halloween is in just a few days! And I don't have a costume, so I came up with these 5 ideas using things I have I have to make a home made costume. In no particular order, my first costume idea is a simple black cat. Yes, I do own cat ears, doesn't everyone have a pair of black kitty ears? What's simple and great about being a cat, is you really just need the ears, wear all black, and simply add a pink nose and whiskers.

I don't have a red cape, but I do have a over-sized red hoodie, a red skirt, and my favorite black boots, just add a basket, and off to grandmother's house I go! Now I just need a wolf...

I just had to add a Bolivian Cholita to my costume ideas to represent my heritage. If you don't know cholitas are the indigenuos women in Bolivia. They were two long black braids, a black bowler hat (which Target had), a fitted tee, a skirt (they layer them), flat black shoes, and a bright scarf as a shawl.

Pocahontas is another easy costume idea, simply putting your hair in a braid, wearing some turquoise jewelry, a brown dress or skirt and top, with boots is really all you need.

Last and certainly not least, is one of my favorite outfits, it is my Expendables outfit. This is what I would wear if I was in the Expendables movies.

Have fun!!!

fall weekend recap

This weekend was beautiful. The weather was just right, the type that encompasses everything fall.

It was filled of walking, morning pancakes, trying a new cafe, late night movies and popcorn, making new jewelry, like the crushed pyrite and quartz rings, decorating for Halloween, and more baking. 

I will be sharing the skull and ghost sugar cookies I made shortly.

day of the dead masks and skulls

As we approach Day of the Dead, I have been working (slowly) on painting heads and masks, this year I noticed I did not want to paint traditional white skulls, but I painted the skulls black, blues, pinks and other colors for the base. Check out my day of the dead art at my Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/PeachyCheek

halloween movie list

I shared my favorite Halloween movies last year, and thought I would update my list by adding a few more movies I plan on watching in the next few days! We have our Halloween movie night and choose are favorites, plenty of popcorn, chocolate, and scary movies.

Below I included Halloween themed movies and some scary ones to add to the list:

- Halloween the original first one.

- Practical Magic

- Trick 'r Treat
- Dark Shadows with Johnny Depp
- Loved Ones
- Planet Terror
- Dead and Buried
- Devil Rejects
- Reanimator

weekend recap

This weekend was filled with baking bread, pumpkin picking, nature walks, book reading, exploring new shops, and watching movies. Now that's what I call a beautiful weekend.

I hope you had a beautiful weekend too.

Enjoy and have a lovely week!