Happy Holidays!

I made a lot of presents this year that I'll share soon. We're enjoying time with family now and cuddling our sweet little nephew. More soon. Merry Christmas!

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday, y'all! We've got our friend Michele visiting from Italy, so we've been doing our part in showing him the best Tex-mex and Mexican food in Austin this week. (I don't think I've ever eaten so many chips & salsa in a week before!)

 Cheers to being Friday, and my final grades almost all put in!! WOOT

Thanksgiving Treats

We ended up having a huge change of plans for Thanksgiving after discovering that Big Bend's campgrounds would be full before we could even leave town. Two of our good friends just moved to Austin the week before, so we decided to have a proper Thanksgiving here with them. I baked all day Wednesday - brandied pumpkin pie, blondies, and a chocolate mocha cake (with my attempt at sculpting a turkey out of caramel for on top!).

 I thought I was over pumpkin pie, but OMG it was so good. I used the New York Time's recipe for brandied pumpkin pie that recommended using pureed butternut squash. I still had a couple jars of butternut squash from grandma's gardens, so I was sold. It's amazing. I also had never made my own pie crust before (pathetic, I know, but this is the first pie I've ever made...I'm usually not a pie person.)

The pie came out of the oven looking beautiful and later I covered it with a piece of plastic wrap. The plastic wrap eventually sunk onto part of the pie and when I pulled it up, the perimeter of the sunken plastic left a weird ring on my pie. Boo!

We had a perfect few days off and now there's only a tiny bit of the semester left before I can keep baking and meet my sweet little nephew, Jacob!

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday! We have an exciting week coming up - Eric & I get to go to Big Bend National Park! We've been wanting to go for years since we've been living in Austin and finally get to go.

The biggest news though is that my brother & sister-in-law are having their baby next week!!! We are so excited for them and can't wait to meet our nephew. Send lots of positive vibes their way for a short and smooth delivery and a healthy baby C! <3 <3 <3

Louise Belcher Hat

A couple weekends ago I decided I wanted to dress up as something simple for Halloween. I'm very against store bought costumes, so I was left to think of a costume I'd want to make. We've recently become big Bob's Burgers fans and seeing my friend Ashley's daughter dressed up Louise became a joke that I should dress up as her, too.

I loosely followed this tutorial to make the hat, but did a few parts differently. It was a really fun hat to sew. I spent a good amount of time making it, but it was totally worth it. The end result is super cute and really comfortable. 

Here's a couple shots of me making the hat. I used 2 clothes hangers to form the ears.

:D

Happy Halloween!

I made some halloween treats earlier this week. Toasting marshmallows under the broiler is fun. :) I used my standard brownie recipe found here (it's one bowl, which is awesome. I add instant espresso to the recipe). After the brownies cool a bit, you use the broiler to quickly set the faces (about a minute).

My father-in-law will be in town this weekend and I think tonight we're going to take him downtown to see the craziness of 6th street on halloween. I'm wearing a pretty simple costume, but I did spend hours last weekend sewing part of it. I'll put it up on the blog in the next few days.

Sorry for a long time without posting. I swear one day I'll have more time to post regularly. This month has been really busy at work and we went to NYC for a long weekend and are just now starting to catch up.