Fall is in the air!

It's starting to feel like Fall. Actually, it did all week until it got hot again this weekend!
This week though, you could feel it in the air. Little bursts of cool air and the days slowly getting shorter.
It's such a familiar and happy feeling. The feeling that living in a small town brings. It is the feeling of family and the anticipation of the upcoming holiday season. It brings me peace.

The kids are feeling it too. They keep asking how close it is to Halloween. It still seems too far away to them, that thirty some-odd days that in "grown-up time" will fly by far too fast for me to prepare costumes, treats and decorations.
To pacify them I decided to dig out some of the indoor Halloween and Fall decorations. We'll do the outside when it gets closer.

(door wreath)

(new homework bins)

(sign in my kitchen)

("Trick or Treat" banner for the window)


(My house is now infested with bats!)

(I found this cutie at Ross a month ago.)


(Poe, our pet Raven)

(I'm gonna make name tags for them!)


(Deni's creepy piano set up. Those are creepy pictures above!)

(Grandma Joan made this for me.)



(The only kind of spider I like...Fake!)

(Witchy Poo, she's my favorite.)

Deni will be six in just a few weeks. We are planning her party and hope to have it the second weekend in October. She's going with a cooking/baking theme. I'll post an idea board soon. I think it's going to be really fun!

True got new glasses this week.

She is coming into her own style this year. This was the age Sage started wearing all black. Skulls and lightening bolts and all things punkrock. Not True. She prefers bright colors and designs. Flowers and peace symbols and lots of crazy mis-matched stuff.

It's amazing how you raise them the same but they are each so very different. It is so much fun watching them find themselves.

This time of year is busy, so I'm very grateful that it is officially comfort food season. Soups, casseroles and slow cooker meals are much easier to do ahead of time. They save my life. We'll, they save my budget and lot of my time.
You can see what we've been cookin' up over here.
I tried two new recipes yesterday. One for "Penne alla Betsy" and the other for "Acorn Squash Soup". The pasta went over really well.
Here is Sage and Deni enjoying the pasta I made for lunch.


True loved it so much she gobbled it up, as usual, before I could even get her picture.
I made the acorn squash soup for dinner.





It didn't go over so well. Dennis and I really liked it. It tasted like it belonged well to the season. It was a very Fall feeling dish. However, it was a bit sweet and spicy. More for the grown up palate. Sage chose not to eat hers and opted out on the dessert project I had planned. True & Deni ate just enough to make sure they didn't miss out on it.


These cake pops are so easy and so much fun to do. I'm pretty sure it will be on the menu for Deni's "baking/cooking" birthday party.


The girls had a blast making them. But they make a bunch! I still have two pans in my freezer!
Speaking of freezers, mine if finally full! I've made ahead some meals over the past few weekends to put away for the busy days. If you want to see what I've been making ahead go here.
We also cleaned out the fridge and dehydrated three packages of concord grapes and one package of green grapes. We froze the other bag of green grapes we had on hand and found some pears that wouldn't survive the week and threw them in the dehydrator as well.
The tomatillos we had left over from the Bountiful Baskets Mexican Pack made a delicious green salsa. (Thank you ZombieDad!)

This was probably one of the most relaxed weekends we've had in a while. It felt nice to have everyone home and enjoying each other.
Between that and the season change our home felt very cozy this weekend.
I hope all of you are enjoying the Fall season and can feel the coziness like we are!