Pumpkins and Pumpkin Pie {A Recipe!}

Every year, like many of you, we carve a pumpkin to set out the week before Halloween. This year we ended up with three pumpkins, and we only carved one of them. The girls wanted to paint their pumpkins, and I don't blame them. I don't like touching the insides either.

The night finally came to decorate the pumpkins. We usually do this on the Sunday before Halloween, since we have more time on Sunday afternoons. We also don't want our pumpkins to rot before Halloween. We set the mood by listening to "Monster Mash Radio," a station we created on Pandora by typing in The Monster Mash. Pandora somehow finds other songs that are similar. You know, silly not-so-scary Halloween songs from the 50s (or whenever). We also drink hot chocolate, because lets face it, we live in Indiana, and it's usually cold at the end of October.

Big E drew the face she wanted on the pumpkin, and J carved it out. The girls painted their pumpkins with acrylic craft paint. It's probably not the best choice for painting pumpkins, but it's washable and that's important. You can see, in the pictures below, how the pumpkins turned out.

Do you like my ghost? I got the idea from Pinterest, of course. It's a tomato cage turned upside down. I wrapped Christmas lights around it and covered it with a sheet. Then, I glued some felt eyes onto it. I stuck a big flower pot under the cage so that it wouldn't tip over in the wind. 

So, Halloween came and went. We threw out the carved pumpkin because, well, it was gross. I do not, under any circumstances, recommend making a pie from a carved pumpkin. I'm sure there is lots of bacteria  that you don't even want to mess with. Just use the painted pumpkins or buy a new pumpkin if you want to make pies. 

There are many different kinds of pumpkins. They actually sell pie pumpkins at the store, and they are really good for pies. They are small and sweeter than other pumpkins. While our painted pumpkins were small, I don't think they were pie pumpkins. We got them at the pumpkin patch, so they weren't really labeled.You can use any pumpkin for pie, they will just have slightly different flavors. Now, that we have that settled, here is the recipe for the best pumpkin pie I've ever made.

This was adapted from Alton Brown's recipe. I used a frozen crust, but this gingersnap crust sound amazing!

I forgot to pre-bake the frozen crust! Everything turned out fine, luckily!

Pumpkin Puree

Pumpkin

• Preheat oven to 400*
• Cut the pumpkin in half, and scoop out all the seeds and strings.
• Lay the skin side up in a foil lined pan.
• Bake the pumpkin about 30 minutes, or until it's tender.
• Remove from oven, and cool for about an hour.
• Use a spoon, scoop out the flesh, and put it in a food processor. Process until smooth.

Pie Filling

2 cups of pumpkin puree (made above)

3 Tbl butter + enough milk to make 1 cup

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup brown sugar

3 eggs

• Bring pumpkin puree to simmer in a saucepan. Cook until thickened, about 2 minutes. 
• Add milk mixture, pie spice, cinnamon, and salt. Bring to simmer. Remove from heat and cool about 10  minutes.
• Whisk brown sugar and eggs. Add in pumpkin mixture. Pour into pie crust.
• Bake 45 minutes, or until edges are just set.
• Cool before slicing.

Halloween 2014: Fairies, Cops, and Robbers

Each year for Halloween, my mom likes to plan a theme for all the costumes of the grandkids. This year, the theme was cops and robbers. When I first ran the idea across Big E, she was not thrilled. She was pretty insistent  that if there were no sparkles, wings, princess, or girly things she wanted no part of it. We compromised and let her pick another costume to wear to various other Halloween events, and then use the robber costume for family trick-or-treating. The compromise worked, and she picked to be a fairy. Tinkerbelle to be exact. So, this year I made two costumes for each of my two girls in addition to the costumes that I made for customers (Check out some customer orders here!).

First up, we have the fairies. Big E wanted to be just like Tinkerbelle. We picked pink for Little E, since she doesn't really care too much right now. We told her she was Rosetta, but she said she was, "Pink Tink." Basically, I used the bodice of a princess dress pattern that I have to make the top. I hand-shaped the petals and attached tulle on the bottom. I used this free pattern from Create Kids Couture to make leg warmers for Big E. These were the costumes we wore to ballet, ZooBoo, and trick-or-treating on Halloween night.

Do you like my chalkboard sign? I saw it on Pinterest, and I thought it was a cute to leave out with the candy while we were trick-or-treating.

Now, on to the cops and robbers theme. My mom saw an idea on Pinterest, and that is how it all began. It was a big secret until the day of the reveal. There were lots of guesses on my facebook page, but no one got it right. We took lots of pictures that highlighted the theme well. Doesn't everyone drive around town looking for metal gates that look like prison bars? Well, there is a metal gate...and it was at a cemetery. A friend, who is a policeman, let us take pictures with his car too. Then, we visited a lot of our friends and family. Big E kept making "mean, robber" faces the whole night. So funny!

The girls both got super girly, super poofy dresses. I bought a pattern that will make a perfect party dress, and I plan to use it again in the future because it fit so well. The bottom portion of the dress had to be adjusted to fit our theme. I made tutu's to wear under the dresses so they would really stand out. I used this tutorial to figure out how to make them as big as possible....Let's just say a size 6 tutu has about 18 yards of tulle! I didn't add a ribbon to mine since I just used it as an underskirt, but I'm thinking of adding the tutu's to my shop if you are interested. My younger nephew wore a striped shirt paired with those cheap gloves and hats from the store. All the robbers had face paint masks painted on to complete their look. My older nephew had a policeman costume.  All the kids used shoe bags with a $ painted on with fabric markers.