Pumpkin Carving - Happy Halloween!

We had a wonderful pumpkin carving party last night! Michael, Jake, Ashley, Nicole, Krikor, Sammi and Mike joined us for an evening of pumpkin carving and old horror movie watching. The photos are with my new camera...we're still learning about it and I'm looking forward to using it in daylight...


Digging in.


Mike gets gross.


Sammi sorts the seeds (she couldn't find a pumpkin before coming...)


A lot of thought went into the designs.


We're making progress here :D





They all turned out terrific!


With the five pumpkins we carved we ended up with about two pounds of pumpkin seeds - Yay! Since Krikor wasn't carving a pumpkin, he did the honor of roasting up some yummy pumpkin seeds. We still have about 6 cups of seeds left to roast, so I think I will try out some other pumpkin seed seasonings...

Winter Scarves

Every winter I feel the need to make scarves. Sometimes for myself, but mostly for family and friends. These are the latest scarves I've made. The Charcoal color one is for Mariam, and its made out of Angora. The Rust and Denim colored scarves are just ones I made for fun. But I'll be working on scarves at least until Christmas.

Super Easy Beer Bread

Last night Grace wanted to make some bread and for some reason it didn't rise.  It got me thinking about beer batter bread, so I looked around online and mostly saw recipes that required self-rising flour which we don't have on hand.  I created this recipe from a bunch of recipes found online.  The results were delicious and the first loaf was gone before we could finish a couple episodes of 30 Rock.  Tasted perfect with the french onion soup I improvised.

The great thing about this bread is that it can be whipped up in no time, and the variations are endless!  The first loaf I made I added 1.5 cups shredded aged cheddar, 1/2 teaspoon Penzey's Chesapeake Bay Seafood Seasoning (Old Bay), & used Penzey's Shallot Salt in place of regular.  The bread baked perfectly, but it was a bit too much cheese, so I'd cut back to only one cup.  I'd like to try it with other cheeses, maybe a smoked gouda or gruyere.  It worked great with Blue Moon's White Wheat Ale, though I'm sure most varieties are fine, save for stouts which have a lot of nitrogen and might not rise as well.

Another option would be to use brown sugar in place of white and maybe bump it up to 1/4 cup for a sweeter bread.  You can also substitute up to two of the cups of flour with whole wheat.

Pumpkin Cut-Out Cookies

We've been looking for pumpkin recipes to try that aren't the standard pie/bread/muffin variety.  Grace found this great alternative to sugar cookies on allrecipes.com.  We tweaked it to our tastes and used her new Ikea animal cookie cutters!  You'll want your dough a bit thicker than you'd roll out standard sugar cookies.

Personally I think the cookies are good enough on their own, but grace suggested a cream cheese/allspice frosting which would probably taste great.  In retrospect we could have sprinkled some raw sugar on before baking, but we'll have to try that next time...

Gracie and I decided to catalog our creative endeavors as a means of staying out of trouble.  We usually have a variety projects going at any given time, hence the title of our blog.  We both love to experiment in the kitchen & Grace always has Christmas on the brain, so you can look forward to some holiday recipes!

We're both new to Seattle, so if you have any good tips for us, or project/recipe suggestions, let us know!