Sunday, November 20, 2011

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

I got a hankering for one of my favorite cookies today...Chocolate Crinkle Cookies.  Believe it or not, my memories of the cookie start with school cafeteria food.  In high school we could get shakes and I loved eating a Chocolate Crinkle Cookie with a chocolate shake.  Yes, it is true; the more chocolate, the better.
I tried the Betty Crocker recipe found on the Betty Crocker website.  They turned out better than the recipe I usually use, which was a pleasant surprise.  I also tried a new little trick.  Rather than rolling the dough into balls and rolling each ball in a bowl of powdered sugar, put about 5 balls of dough in a ziplock bag of powdered sugar and carefully shake it up. 



There will be excess powdered sugar so shake each one a bit as you pull it out of the bag.  Also, a small scoop works slick to portion out the dough and make it into a ball shape.  No more hands covered in sticky dough!


Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Halloween Costumes

I can fondly remember making Halloween costumes when I was a kid.  Other than a mask here or there, we didn't go buy a costume from the store.  Rather, we used our creativity and things laying around the house to create our costumes.  Here's a couple photos I found from the "good ol' days" with my brothers and me.



I hope to continue the tradition with our children to make their costumes.  I look forward to when they are a bit older and can take a more active role in creating their costumes.


K was a doctor today.  It's the same costume that Santa "contracted" me to sew last year as a dress-up costume.  I used two patterns, a costume pattern by McCall's for doctor scrubs and a pajama pattern by Butterick.  The scrubs were made as the pattern instructed.  The doctor coat was made from the pajama pattern; I used the pattern for the button-up jammie top.  I also used the special stitches on my machine to add her name to her pocket. 

B was Superman and I owe most of his costume to Dana at http://www.dana-made-it.com/ and all of her awesome tutorials.  I used the 90-minute shirt tutorial to make the top.  I also added a yellow felt belt (Ha ha!  That rhymes.).  The Superman logo was painted on the shirt using a freezer paper stencil (a.k.a. Poor Man's Screen Printing).  Click here for a tutorial about using a freezer paper stencil.  The pants were just traced from a pair of pants B wears, but here's a tutorial for making your own pants pattern.  There are also tons of patterns for a basic pair of pants, including both of the patterns listed above.  B's cape was a piece of red cotton with a casing on one side to gather it by his neck.  I ended up tacking it on to the shirt rather than having a string tied around his neck to keep it a bit safer.

Now that I spent my spare time during the weekend making B's costume and spent last night trick-or-treating, I better get working on the never ending job of correcting papers!