Here are pictures of Halloween Festivities 2009!
Early in October, I got excited about baking with pumpkin. I particularly enjoyed my first try at making a pumpkin roll. It was the most complex recipe I've ever attempted. There were so many details and steps. And lucky for me, Nick took pictures every step of the way. Here's how to make a perfect pumpkin roll:
First, mix all the ingredients for the dough, and for the cream cheese frosting:
While the cake is baking, sprinkle a dish towel with powdered sugar. This takes lots of concentration.
Immediately after taking it out of the oven, roll the cake in the powdered dish towel, and roll it up. While it cools, you could probably watch an old Office episode or two. :)
When the cake is sufficiently cooled, cover it in cream cheese frosting. YUM!
Don't forget to be excited about the pecans that are baked into the other side of the cake!
Then roll the whole thing up tight!
And stick it in the fridge to cool some more. Go watch some more Office.
Then it's time to eat it!! YUM. It was delicious!
A few days before Halloween, Nick and I went to the most amazing pumpkin patch in Kalamazoo. I've been looking forward to visiting Gene the Pumpkin Man since the summer!
This is Nick and me, looking among the millions for the perfect pumpkins.
And lucky us, we were there right as The Pumpkin Man himself was giving a tour of the patch to a group of young scouts. Of course, we tagged along. After the tour, we got a photo with Gene, and got him to tell us some more stories about himself and his farm. Old people are a whole lifetime worth of stories. I love it.
Nick and I filled our little orange wagon with our two favorite pumpkins, an acorn squash, a butternut squash, two mini gourds, two mini pumpkins, some home made honey, and a complimentary pumpkin recipe book. It was a plentiful harvest.
I'm excited to learn to like squash this year.
For Halloween, Friend Mike got us tickets to go to a fancy murder mystery night at the amazing Henderson Castle. I drive past this place all the time, and I've always wanted to be able to go inside and check it out, so it was a dream come true!
And it is as beautiful inside as I had hoped! Check out this stained glass window! The glass changes color throughout the day. We got a tour of the entire castle. Including the guest rooms, ball room, uncommon room, and the spa and hot tub on the roof!
The murder mystery dinner was really fun! But it required that we talk to all the other 50+ party guests to collect details on the murder plot. Sometimes I'm a little shy, so this made me get out of my comfort zone. My character was Monet Hasselhoff, and I was the founder of the budding artists home, and a distinguished painter. But I wasn't at all involved in the murder. That night, Mike and I stayed in the French room, decorated with all things French... including french paintings, an elaborate marble fireplace, a claw foot bathtub, a chain flush water closet, and heated marble floors. It was deluxe!
As mentioned a billion times, Mike and I are just friends. I feel like I need to attach a disclaimer here that nothing went on in the French Room that night that wasn't completely G rated. However, we did adopt FANTASTIC nick names from the murder mystery. Who wants to be Monet Hasselhoff or especially "Janie Lyn" (YIKES!) , when you could be Ms. Patty Cake and Mr. Jack Hammer? BANG BANG!
On Saturday night, I went to work. Which never really feels like much work at all. We went to pizza hut, and also browsed the local halloween store. And then after they went to bed, I watched an American's Next Top Model marathon on TV. :)
I didn't carve a jack-o-lantern, dress up as a Wild Thing, eat large amounts of candy, or hang out with my girls at the customary Halloween Party. But end of October festivities 2009, in my opinion, were a great success.
Holy smokes, it's November!!
Let the Holiday Season Begin!
PS- Elder Morris comes home in 150 days. :)
