boo'd!

Have you been boo'd? It's a fun Halloween neighborhood activity where you leave treats anonymously at your neighbors door and ask that they "pay it forward" to another neighbor by leaving treats on their door. It's a unique way to spread Halloween fun (and get something yummy out of the deal). Plus, you get to ding dong ditch your neighbors, and that's always a blast. 

This is the first year that Ella and I have done the boo'ing. Three and a half years old is a really fun age. They totally "get it" and everything is still carefree and fun. There's no eye rolling, sighing, or complaining (though I'm sure its not far off). 

This year we grabbed some cute Halloween baskets and filled them with various treats for our friends. Glow sticks, ghost lollipops, homemade peanut butter cookies, and mini glass milk bottles filled with candy. It was fun baking the cookies with Ella and making the ghost lollipops. (Tissues wrapped around tootsie pops, tied with ribbon and eyes drawn on with sharpie).  

I filled and topped the mini milk bottles with Halloween fabric and twine. Then we printed Halloween labels from here onto sticker paper and wrapped them around the bottles. The "boo" instructions and sign were a free download that you can find here. Everything turned out super cute. It's a tradition I think we'll continue, as long as there's no eye rolling. 

the best cookie cutter ever

There's nothing better than finding the holy grail of cookie cutters, an anchor! At least it's the holy grail in our household. The hubs and I have a thing for anchors, so finding this one at the thrift store for .50 cents made me a very happy lady! I also scored the sweetest tea cup/saucer and an oversized christmas tree cutter. The tree is HUGE and will make the most amazing giant christmas cookies ever. 

I can't wait to make some sugar cookies with them!

{cookie recipe review}

A friend recently gave me about 80 single serving pouches of dried cranberries (apparently her cousin is an Ocean Spray Rep and brought them quite the load). Did you know that Ocean Spray (is there even any other brand that sells cranberries out there?) makes dried cranberries in different flavors? Well I was pleasantly surprised to find that the box was filled with blueberry and pomegranate flavored cranberries. Yum! I don't cook with cranberries very often, so I started browsing for recipes. I came across this recipe for white chocolate chip cranberry oatmeal cookies, sheesh, that's a mouth full.

The recipe boasts nearly a full 5 stars, so it has to be good right? Well I got to baking and followed the recipe exactly (which I rarely do). The end result was a wonderful cookie. Slightly crispy on the out side, but soft and chewy on the inside. Yum. They were a tad on the sweet side, but white chocolate has a tendency to make this taste uber sweet. Next time i'll cut back on the amount of white sugar in the recipe to counter the sweetness from the white chocolate chips. I used the pomegranate flavored dried cranberries in the recipe and they turned out wonderful. Don't they look yummy? Well, I only have about 75 packages left, so i'm back to searching...If anyone has a great recipe containing dried cranberries, leave a link to it in the comments or email me, I'd love to try it.

pardon the horrible picture. my kitchen is windowless. :(

{Sweet Tooth}

I made several batches of these yummy cookies for gifts this Valentine's Day. The dough is buttery and the jam is a great alternative to the normal frosting and sprinkles. Well, I guess you could use sprinkles, that might be nice. Anyways, use this recipe and you're sure to be satisfying all sweet tooth's this V-Day.