october recap

It was really hard scraping together a recap this month. I guess I'm not taking as many photos "just for fun" as I used to. I have to fix that.

Here are some instagram photos from October that you may not have seen:

tar bunny!

the white fox was part of a thrift store collection that was not for sale :(

once you paint one room, it makes you want to paint every room (aka be gone, beige!)

there was a huge fire on my street. I wish we had heard what caused it.

Finally, a little desktop calendar for you:

1920/1080

1920/1200 & 1680/1050

iPad

iPod/iPhone

blue, orange, and black themed halloween candies

This year, in an effort to reduce the amount of Halloween candies we consume, I decided to get all of our candy at Bulk Barn.

I thought it would be a good way to minimize our intake cuz I'd be able to get random weird candies instead of the really delicious, hard-to-resist chocolate bars we're usually prone to buying (and then eating before Halloween and then turning all our lights off and avoiding trick-or-treaters altogether).

I was very underwhelmed by their selection. I was hoping for more odd varieties of candies (at reasonable prices). Unfortunately, what they had was either pretty typical (I can get Oh Henry!s and Hershey mixed chocolates anywhere -- shocking, I know), pretty expensive, or neat but unwrapped (boo! I wished for little packages of chocolate rocks). At any rate, I thought I'd share what we got.

Admittedly, I got the idea for fortune cookies from The Art of Doing Stuff, but I'd like to think that if I'd have seen them of my own free will, I would have gotten some anyway. I did think these would be kind of exciting for kids. I remember I was always excited to get one. It was such a random thing to have Chinese food and even more random to get a cookie at the end (not all restaurants give them, you know). Personally, from the first ten cookies I had in my life, I saved the little fortune inside and pinned it up in my room somewhere. I just hope these weren't a mistake and kids don't think we're trying to get rid of our old take-out cookies. 

Obligatory Halloween gumballs. Personally, I hate these. I don't equate gum with candy. Gum's not for that reason. If I'm going to have calories, I'd rather have some chocolate not some dumb flavourless chew for no reason. (aka perfect candies to have in the house before Halloween.)

I also got these square chocolate caramels. I liked them for their dark brown colour, and I hoped they'd be delicious but they're only just okay. Another perfect score for the kiddies that minimizes adult temptation.

These are just chewy caramels, but I really liked the packaging and the name, St. Catharine kisses. I decided I should have the colour theme of orange, black, and blue after seeing these.

I rounded out the blue with some cookies and creme Hershey Kisses. These are delicious but there aren't that many of them (I purposely got half a scoop). And, strangely enough, I'm more likely to leave them since it'd be rather noticeable if I dipped into them all day (ah, tricking my brain, I am).

Oh yes and I'm adding these fake vampire teeth to the mix, too. I bought a package of them (for $1) thinking I might use them for the door monster, but I couldn't figure out how exactly to work them in. I hope I'll be able to get rid of all of them tonight!

What I would really like to hand out are homemade treats like cookies, popcorn balls or caramel apples, but I'm pretty sure that stuff (if it's handed out at all these days) would promptly go in the garbage.

Are you giving anything different for Halloween this year?

mushroom pie

This is not a recipe. Does that make sense? Like, if you want to make this, you're just gonna have to wing it. Put away your measuring cups and spoons and just go with your gut.

I really wanted to figure it out for you. I was honestly quite prepared to measure it out. But then I got doing it and I really didn't want to dirty a measuring cup for you guys. Does that make me a bad person? Insensitive? Thoughtless? Will you forgive me if I told you I at least dirtied the cheese grater for it (and I really really hate using the cheese grater just cuz I know I'll have to wash it later)?

Well, at any rate, you're just going to have to grow a pair, throw caution to the wind, and cross your fingers because I don't have measurements for you and I never will.

Because this, friends, is another Greek recipe. Yup. And I believe I've already told you at great lengths how nothing is ever measured and if it is, it's measured in a tea cup or a drinking glass. Perhaps I'm turning into a real Greek now...

Greek Mushroom Pie Method

1 package of puff pastry

mushrooms

any white cheese you desire (I've used mozzarella and saganaki cheese)

pepper

1 250 ml container (that's 1 cup to the non-metric) of whipping cream

Unthaw the puff pastry as directed on the package. Unfold and fit into a rectangular baking dish (I used a small one, but literally, you could use any dish you've got). You do not have to use all of the puff pastry. Just use what will fit in the dish you have and fold the edges to form a puff pastry container (if you will).

Wash mushrooms. Chop 'em, slice 'em, cube them, leave them whole for all I care, just make sure you've got enough to at least cover the bottom of the puff pastry cuz that's where they're going.

Grate up your cheese. I will give you a guesstimate of about a cup, but again, it's really going to depend on how large you're making this. Just top the mushrooms with enough cheese so they're (pretty much) covered.

Grind some pepper. Ha ha. That's a Greek joke. It's a euphemism for sex. Grind the pepper if you've got time and then put some pepper on your mushroom pie.

Pour the cream over the whole thing (keeping within the boundaries of your puff pastry). Greek mom used the whole thing, I used the whole thing (minus 3 tablespoons cuz I needed it for the caramel apples), but I really feel like you can get away with less if you were so inclined. It's a little sloppy (see visual above), but that's how it's supposed to be and it's kinda nice cuz the puff pastry crusts can then be dipped in aforementioned juices so you're never going to be eating just plain ol' pastry. Whatever. You decide. If you need some cream for something else, too, just use whatever's left over.

Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes or until it smells amazing and has turned a nice golden colour.

And if you're wondering what to do with any leftover puff pastry dough, just make some awful looking/great tasting turnovers. Cut the dough into squares, spoon on the jam of your choice (I used fig), and fold over diagonally, pinching the edges shut. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes or until golden and flaky.

Dinner and dessert. Bam!

DIY: halloween door monster

All right. I know I wasn't sure if I was going to decorate for Halloween, but I guess the spirit of the season got the best of me and I buckled. I have officially decorated the front porch. This is the first time I've really decorated for Halloween ever in my life (and I'm not really looking forward to taking down all of that spider web either).

Unfortunately, I left my restless rocks at our old house. I'm sort of lamenting that now. They would have been so cute sitting on the front steps. Oh well. This is a new year for new things! So my initial plan involved making a wreath. Let me point you towards some amazing ideas I was using as inspiration.

First, I really loved this wreath from The Art of Doing Stuff. It's kind of, like, classy Halloween. So I put feather boas on my list. Then I spotted this wreath and loved the random monster eyeball thing. Adding eyeballs to a wreath? Easy! Finally, I thought, if all else failed, I could make this simple snake wreath. There's nothing involved with it at all. It looks like I fussed but I didn't. That's the kind of Halloween decor I like.

But then I went out looking for this stuff at cheap-o places (minus Value Village which for some reason did not occur to me at all. dumb) and I couldn't find anything. No boas. No cool looking skulls. No packages of snakes. And I was not going to Michael's without a coupon.

It was then that I was randomly searching for some sort of idea to strike when I found myself staring at wigs. Superstore had some of them out of the packaging and the way they were dangling from peg hooks made it look like each wig was a little monster.

Do you remember Cousin It from the Adam's Family? Well, that's exactly what popped into my mind.

So I thought I could possibly get the eyeballs glued on and it would look like a little hair monster hanging on my door. I'm not lying when I say I got really excited and drove way out of my way to get supplies. I could have waited for the weekend, but I just didn't want to! This was so much more fun than anything else I could have planned that day. And unfortunately, neither Superstore or the Dollar Store had bags of eyeballs and I really needed a bag of eyeballs. (I never thought I'd ever say that in a million years.)

If you want the basic monster like I've done, this whole project is going to cost you about $10 (as long as you already own a glue gun).

These steps are just to give you a general idea of what I did. It's not necessarily what you must do, but I thought it worked best. Also let's not forget that this is a monster and monsters can look however you want them to look. Maybe you want one eyeball. Maybe you want to take the Cousin It thing seriously and just stick some sunglasses on there. Choose a different wig. There are short ones, black ones, blue ones. Cut the hair if you feel it needs it. You know. Whatever. Have fun with it. That's the point of Halloween, right?

Get your wig out of the packaging and let it breathe for a day or so. I found that since mine had been folded up, it was crinkled in the middle and looked odd. Try it on a few times. Get your husband to try it on. Heck, have everyone in your household try it on and laugh and laugh. Then put it somewhere to get the kink out (if it has any). I used a post on the stairs and put it on that (like the post was wearing it. Laugh some more). Once it's starting to look like a wig and not a weird folded piece of hair, find something to stuff in the head portion just to fill it out a bit. I used some t-shirt scraps.

Then I used some coordinating thread and quickly stitched the bangs to the bottom portion of the elastic head part (I do not know the technical term). Basically, just have it so the bangs are folded down and hiding the stuffing and the mesh as best you can. The stitching doesn't have to be perfect and it definitely won't be. This was the most tricky part because you're moving thread and needle around hair bits, but trust me, the hair will eventually hide whatever horrendous stitches you put in there (just don't stitch the hair down!).

Fluff out the bangs to cover everything and you should have something like this.

Next, decide how you want his "face" to look. While your glue gun heats up, figure out where you want to put the eyes (if you're using them) and how many eyeballs you want to use. Then put a dollop of glue on the back of each eye, hold the hair out of the way, and stick them firmly down onto the mesh netting under the hair. Once they're in place, you can arrange the hair around them to make them look a little more natural. Or as natural as eyeballs on a wig can look.

If you want, you can add other things like spiders or some bits of webbing. You could add bows or braid some of the hair. You could even get some black hair dye and change the hair up, too. Black streaks or even bleached bits would look neat. Chop into the bangs to give him an asymmetrical look. You're only limited to your imagination and how far you want to take your monster. 

Finally, hang it! The mesh that holds the hair on is the perfect hanging thing. Just push it onto your door hook or tie some string through the mesh to use as a hanger. Obviously, I'm without the use of my peephole until Halloween's over, but I'm cool with that (actually, I found that if I put my finger on the peephole and just wiggled the hair around it, I could still kinda see through it without the monster looking split open around the peephole. So it's not totally unusable).

Also, I've finally accepted the fact that nothing I hang on my door is photogenic. I can take a bazillion pictures of it, but it's always going to look weird and out of focus, and the door will always look wonky. Therefore, this is the best out of a bazillion photos and I really don't want to take any more. I'll just swear it looks better than this.

Don't forget to decorate the rest of your house accordingly. 

Full disclosure: Initially, I was just going to do the door monster and I wasn't going to put spider web all over the porch, but my neighbour happened to put all of her Halloween decorations out the same day, and... I know it's not a competition, but I just thought that I could do so much better. Anyone can push a fake tombstone into their lawn, you know? So I may or may not have spent an hour gingerly pulling spider web all around the porch trying to make it look "real."

I may or may not have wished I had picked up some better looking spiders, too.

One last note. The bag of eyeballs gives you way more eyeballs than you'll probably need (depending on monster species). I just stuck my extras into a jar. That's where extra eyeballs go, right?

friday fixations

{sonya tayeh's geisha girl routine} I am unnaturally obsessed with this dance and song. I know, I know. So You Think You Can Dance ended ages ago, BUT I just finished watching the finale a couple weeks ago (2 hours is too long to watch back-to-back) and STILL this song will creep into my head. It's definitely one of my favourite routines of all time, along with this one (I think I've watched it, oh, about a 100 times).

{bacon and tzatziki} This came about completely by accident. An accidental, delicious pre-Thanksgiving snack. Mom was making bacon for breakfast and some extra for adding to roasted vegetables, and I was making tzatziki. (Because no Thanksgiving is complete without it, right?) I put the tzatziki back into the yogurt container (as I always do) and (as I always do) I had a little bit leftover. So we're eating crispy bacon... the tzatziki was right there... so we started dipping it, and OMG it was like eating a little bit of heaven. Now. This isn't something I'd go around eating every month. And (honestly) it's probably not going to happen again in a million years. BUT if I were to suddenly crave chips and dip, I think I would much rather have bacon and tzatziki instead. Just saying.

{apple tv} Another side-effect of Thanksgiving. Man, that holiday really brings out the worst in us, right? Well, we initially went to purchase a cable that would connect the iPad to the tv so we could all watch a nice movie on Netflix. That trip resulted in Apple TV because 1) Idle Husband overheard one of the blue shirts selling it to a customer and I guess it sounded pretty good; and 2) apparently, for not that much more than the price of a cable, we could have a lot more features and it's still super small and portable. It's been pretty great so far and it's made us realize that Netflix was only sucking because of the Playstation not the internet. (Also it's made mom want to get rid of her cable. Sorry, cable guys.)

{popcorn} After years of eating air-popped popcorn, something wrong started to happen. My popcorn wasn't popping. Half of it would be left inside the popper and the rest of the kernels would hide out in what little did pop posing serious tooth hazards. I figured something was wrong with the popper, so I got rid of it. I'd never popped corn on the stove top but I was willing to try, so I attempted Alton Brown's popcorn method. It seemed fairly easy and straightforward at first, but after popping one bowl, I thought there had to be a better way. It's surprisingly way too much work plus it burnt up my metal mixing bowl (those aren't designed to hang out on a high temperature burner and I have no idea how else to heat up the oil, Alton). A few days later, I was making pasta and it hit me. It was genius almost! The pasta pot was perfect for popcorn! This is the exact pot we have (Idle Husband came with it!). It's got high sides, it's nonstick, has a locking lid, and it even has steam holes (you know, the drainage holes)! And now I'm completely addicted to popcorn. I splash a bit of oil in the bottom (which heats up almost instantly), add in some salt, and Idle Husband does the popping (which takes less than 3 minutes). Then, magically, out comes light, fluffy, tasty, perfectly salted popcorn (it's so much tastier than air-popped, too. No more dry flavourless popcorn) and there's absolutely no need to add extra butter! Although, I do love shaking on some parmesan cheese (love love). I've been having it for dinner on Saturdays.

{paint it black} (almost) Everything is getting a coat of black paint in this house and I love it. (And I should be listening to this while doing it.)