Halloween 2019

 Pumpkin carving & trick or treating is so much fun. We like to do ALL of the traditional holiday events with our kiddos. This includes, pumpkin carving, trick or treating and festivals. In 2019 we had lots of fun things to attend. Having a large family is so much fun, there's always enough people that it feels like we are having a party! One of the festivals we went to was sooo crowded, it would never happen this year. Covid wouldn't allow it lol. ( No pictures because it was insane) We were shoulder to shoulder part of the time. I do not like big gatherings like that, so I was ready to leave as soon as we got there. The kids had a good time though, so we stayed a while and let them have fun. 

Practically Perfect Pumpkin Snicker-doodles

I bought some pumpkin Snicker-doodles at Wal-Mart the other day because we had company and my girls couldn't eat the pie we were having because it had traces of nuts in it. The cookies were good, but a little too pumpkiny for our liking. I searched online and couldn't find a recipe I was happy with. I found one but it had no cream of tarter in it, and that is a main ingredient of snicker-doodles, so i was skeptical it would be like I wanted. I decided to alter my regular snicker-doodle recipe and see how it goes. It went very well and my family loves them. Hopefully you will like them too.

1 C butter (softened)
1 1/2 C sugar
1 C pumpkin
2 t vanilla
2 eggs
2 3/4 C flour
1/2 t salt
1 t baking soda
2 t cream of tartar
1/2 t nutmeg
1t cinnamon

Seperate small bowl:
3T sugar
2 t cinnamon

Cream butter and sugar together in a Kitchen Aid mixer. Add in eggs and vanilla and continue mixing. Then add in pumpkin. Mix dry ingredients together in a separate bowl and mix together. Add those into the mixer with the wet ingredients. After mixing well put in the refrigerator for 2 hours to chill. Pre-heat oven to 400*. Get a scoop of cookie dough and roll into a ball and roll in cinnamon/sugar then place onto cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, take off pan and cool on wire rack. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Pie French Toast

My kids have been begging for french toast for breakfast the last few days. I told them they have to wake up and not be staaaaarving...for me to make it because they cannot have two breakfasts. So they decided to comply and were very patient while I made it this morning. I have found lots of recipes all with this title for french toast but none I loved, so I decided to mash a couple together and do some tweaking and came up with my own. I liked it, the kids LOVED it...next time I'm gonna add a wee bit more pumpkin so we can taste more of it.

You will need:

A loaf of texas toast
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/4-1/2 cup of pumpkin ( I only used the 1/4)
1/2 t pumpkin pie spice
1t cinnamon
1t vanilla

*Butter, powdered sugar & syrup*

Mix the eggs, milk, pumpkin, spices and vanilla together.

Warm up your skillet or griddle and spray it or put some oil on it.

Dip bread in mixture and kind of soak it and put it in the pan.. after a couple minutes turn it over and do the same on the other side, make sure the egg is cooked good on both sides. 

Butter each piece, add a sprinkling of powdered sugar and some syrup and enjoy!! My kiddos sure did!!! Look at those empty plates!!!