It's NOT Christmas Yet!

I found this, "Flair" on Facebook.

With the exception of getting a headstart on shopping for gifts (I shop all year for Christmas gifts), is anyone else as sick of seeing Christmas displays, commercials and ads as I am? It's tooooo early!

Oh, and let's not forget the radio stations that started playing holiday music on the FIRST OF NOVEMBER! It's not even Thanksgiving yet! It's still fall! Poor Thanksgiving is soon to be phased out because of all the Christmas commercialism.
:( Way to ruin the true meaning of Christmas.

Pumpkin Muffin Recipe

It's recipe time!
This recipe couldn't be any easier. They call them muffins, but I tend to think they are more like a cupcake. They are great for fall or any 'ol time!



Pumpkin Cake Mix Muffins

1 box of cake mix, spice flavor
15 oz. can of pumpkin (100% pure, not pie mix)
1/2 cup water

Bake at 350 for 20 min.

If you would like to count Weight Watcher points: Bake 24 muffins at 2 pts. each.




This is a photo of another version using chocolate cake mix instead of spice. It's really more for those who would rather not taste the pumpkin (ie...Leanne!)These will in no way taste like pumpkin. Just substitute the spice cake mix for a chocolate one. Weight Watcher points are the same.



You can also make the same recipe using only 1 can of diet sprite or any other flavor pop in place of the pumpkin. The 1/2 c. water will NOT be needed. You can then play around with different cake mix flavors and pop flavors. Leanne likes Rootbeer with chocolate cake mix, but I bet orange pop with white cake mix would be a treat too. Mmm.

Caramel Appley Day

It's fall and fall wouldn't be complete without making caramel apples would it?

Ok, I don't make them every year with my kids....but I did this year!






After a trip to the grocery store, we got started on our caramel apple making. Nope, no homemade caramel here. I'm not Martha Stewart. I have 5 kids for heaven sakes. Ok, one of these times I will do it homemade. But since I remember doing this activity with my own mother and sisters, I decided to keep the same tradition and use the round caramel pieces packaged on wax paper. As a bonus, we also bought some in a tub that just needs to be microwaved.


Not much work here....just place the circle of caramel over the apple and push the stick in. Next, microwave them for about 40 seconds.








I love how you can see Brycen's reflection in the granite!


Next we decided to add some pizazz to our apples. We didn't have any nuts or the "normal" things placed onto caramel apples, so we just decided to use red and blue sprinkles that were left over from sugar cookie decorating. That wasn't good enough for the 3 kiddos, so we crushed some Whoppers (malted milk balls). The kids had messy fun with this!





All done and ready to eat!





Trouble is.....after all was said and done, only ONE of my kiddos actually wanted to eat them!



Macie.



Both Brycen & Molly said they didn't like caramel. Go figure.

By the way, Jillian did complain that she missed the fun. But per her request, I'm stating the fact that she couldn't join since she was being, in her exact words, "righteous" by going to the Stake Youth Activity instead. :)