Parties:: Murders and Mustaches

To finish catching up on October, Amber and I held a most excellent murder mystery dinner party. I have always wanted to go to one, but have never had the opportunity, so I decided to make my own up. I created character bios and clues to reveal or conceal during each dinner course for each guest. Everyone came dressed up as different characters and we played parlor games until one of the guests (Miss Jane Body) was murdered. Mr. and Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum, Mr. Green, Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White, and Miss Scarlet then tried to solve the murder mystery over a scrumptious dinner of salad, soup, bread, chicken cordon bleu, and my amazing new recipe find, the almond pear cake. We had each guest bring something for dinner and we had a marvelous time!

The invite

The guests

Just this past weekend we also had a mustache/evil dictator party. Everyone came as different dictators and we had a blast eating cupcakes with mustaches (created by the wonderful Miss Amber and myself) and playing games like Curses, pin the mustache on Hitler, and The Game of Things.

Steve Jobs, Omar al-Bashir, and Joseph Stalin

Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-Il, and Evil Sheriff Billy Bob

Halloween

I thought it might be noteworthy to show my different Halloween costumes this year. I went to quite a few parties, so I had some different costumes.

Party 1: YSA Dance
Red Crayon and "Gnome" Chomsky the Garden Gnome
It was really awkward dressing up as a boy and trying to dance like a girl. I'm glad I don't have facial hair normally.
My madre made the fantastic red crayon costume Amber is wearing.

Party 2: SigEp 20s Dance
2os Nerd and Flapper
Amber was born in the wrong decade, I swear she was made for the twenties!

Party 3: The Howl
Red Crayon and Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell (If you don't get my costume: click here to see the video that made this crazy tea-party goer SNL skit material)
This was definitely my favorite costume, but I don't know if anyone got it other than myself and the poli-sci majors...

recipe:: 1 can, 3 pumpkin treats

I took some of these cookies to my ceramics class and everyone was pleasantly surprised at their perfect moistness and not too pumpkin-y taste.

Iced Pumpkin Cookies

INGREDIENTS

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1 cup canned pumpkin puree

1 egg

FROSTING

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups confectioners' sugar

3 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon melted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°F . Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and salt; set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream together the 1/2 cup of butter and white sugar. Add pumpkin, egg, and 1 teaspoon vanilla to butter mixture, and beat until creamy. Mix in dry ingredients. Drop on cookie sheet by tablespoonfuls; flatten slightly.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool cookies, then drizzle glaze with fork.

To Make Glaze: Combine confectioners' sugar, milk, 1 tablespoon melted butter, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Add milk as needed, to achieve drizzling consistency.

Muffins that combine the wonderful texture of apples with the warm taste of pumpkin. A simple streusel topping gives them a little something extra. You won’t even know you’re eating something good for you.

Apple Streusel Muffkins

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup wheat flour

1 cup quick oats

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup canned pumpkin puree1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup applesauce

2 cups peeled, cored and chopped apple

Streusel

1 cup quick oats

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease muffin cups or use paper liners.

In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, oats, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together eggs, pumpkin, oil, and applesauce. Add pumpkin mixture to flour mixture; stirring just to moisten. Fold in apples. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.

In a small bowl, mix together streusel ingredients. Sprinkle topping evenly over muffin batter.

Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean.

I loooove pumpkin pie, so I thought, why not try cheesecake!

Easy No-bake Pumpkin Cheesecake

CRUST

2 1/2 cups gingersnaps, crushed

1/3 cup melted butter

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

FILLING

8 oz. cream cheese, softened

2-2 1/2 cups whipped topping, thawed

1 cup canned pumpkin

1/2 cup powdered sugar

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

Mix crushed gingersnaps with melted butter and spices. Press crumb mixture into pie tin.

Beat cream cheese, pumpkin, sugar, and pumpkin pie spice with an electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Gently stir in the whipped topping.

Spoon cream cheese mixture into crust.

Refrigerate 3 hours or overnight.

music:: Andrew Belle and others

Andrew Belle is probably one of my new favorites that I wished I listened to more. His voice is absolutely enchanting. I dare you to listen to any of his songs and see if you don't love it.

Greg Laswell is another artist that I recently found. One of his more upbeat made for radio songs is Take Everything, although he can slow it down in songs like Goodbye.

Stornoway reminds me of a lot of Kirstin's favorite artists. It is something like The Decemberists meet Mumford and Sons. This song, I Saw You Blink is pretty fun.
Now you'll know what I'll be listening to this week!

Weird name, but great music is coming from Landon Pigg. Being a girl, his Falling in Love at a Coffee Shop melts my heart, but his music can be a lot more versatile, with songs like Can't Let Go. Pigg is definitely a heartthrob when it comes to lyrics.

Here is a song worth a listen, Love is Not a Fight by Warren Barfield. Barfield was going to get a divorce with his wife of three years but then they decided to work it out and he wrote this excellent song, which is now in my guitar playing repitoire.

For those of you who are brave and don't mind potty words I love the Creep Radiohead cover sung by a Belgian children's choir by Scala & Kolacny Brothers. I heard this song on the new Facebook movie preview.

Paddle Surfing Lessons Learned

11 foot foam board

The fast Epoxy board

Tonight I went paddle surfing under the moon with a whole lake practically to myself! I was extremely excited about the chance to surf in Utah since we have no ocean! Stand up paddle boarding is a little bit like surfing except for you have a different board, and obviously, a paddle. My friend Amber and I went with the awesome company www.utahpaddlesurfing.com . They really took care of us and we had a great time trying out different boards and surfing around the Great Salt Lake by Saltair on this full moon paddle.

It really is quite and exhilarating and empowering experience. Being out on the water and being able to overlook the entire area was really neat. It is really hard to explain how paddle surfing empowers you, but it does. I guess that you will just have to try it to get what I mean. :]

Towards the end of our boarding session I was thinking pretty deeply. I had started out on a "medium skilled" beginner foam board that was 11'. It went pretty fast and pretty straight but half way through I switched to the "advanced skilled" beginner 10' C4 epoxy board which is made for the ocean- so to go fast and to move.

I loved the feel of the the epoxy board on the water but I was getting frustrated that it wouldn't go straight! I kept on trying to change paddling from one side to the other and was just getting annoyed that I was going slower then before (on a faster board) and not straight!

It took me until about the end of the session to remember that our teacher told us that we weren't going to be going straight on the 10' foot board but that if we paddled on both sides, deviating both ways that we'd get to our destination. That is a lot like life I think. We may get frustrated because we get pulled one way and then another and never seem to be heading straight to our destination, but if we concentrate on what we want to be the end result we make it! This takes a lot of focus and determination though (in life and surfing). Example: One girl in our group wasn't concentrating on her end goal but was looking around to see where she was on the "course" and she ended up falling in the smelly Great Salt Lake. In life we need to have "constant vigilance" as Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter would say and always focus on our main goal instead of worrying if we seemed "off course" at the moment.

So yeah, go surfing, change your life. I'm definitely planning on going again.

craft:: marble magnets

Merry Christmas! So I may have gotten my Christmas presents done before Halloween, but in my defense I actually started this project before I left for France. I put the magnets together in sets of seven and packaged them up all ready for gifts!

These are really fun and easy to make. I made some with my wonderful sister-in-law when she came out for a vacation. You just need some magnets, clear marbles (like the kind that go in fish bowls or vases), magazines, and glue!
Cut pictures that you like out of the magazines and place them with the side you want to see visible. Put a drop or two of glue on the flat side of the clear marble/bead and place it on the picture. Let this dry and then cut the excess picture off from the sides of the marble. Take your magnet and glue it to the back and voila!

craft:: autumn cards

So I thought of something really clever for Kirstin's birthday...cards! These are homemade and pretty earthy, so she should like them. I got the idea whilst we were on a hiking escapade with Erik and my dad.
It was really simple to make the cards. I just went to the local crafts store and found some paper that I liked, cut out cards, and then glued on the leaves! I first had to dry the leaves and I actually used a good old fashioned type writer on some of the cards before the leaves got glued on them, but otherwise it is easy-squeezy! You are normally supposed to put contact paper on dried leaves, but I prefer it without- I don't know how it will hold up in the mail though!