Halloween Cookies and Surprises

       With only two days left before Halloween, I knew I had to get busy if I was going to get my  traditional Halloween cookies made.  I made a recipe and a half so I would have enough to take to some of the Branch members and neighbors.  After I got the dough made, I put it in the fridge because it rolls better if it is chilled.  The next day after our busies of visits and errands, I got started rolling and cutting my cookies.  Of course I didn't have my usual pumpkin cutter, but an empty tuna can worked fine for round circles.  And when some of the circles don't turn out very good, especially when you're picking them up to put on the pan, they kind of look like those misshapen pumpkins that you find in the garden.

     With much rolling, cutting and baking, I scraped the last of the dough from the bowl.  As I removed the last of the cookies from the pan, I counted my neat stacks of six each.  The total was eight dozen and eight cookies.  I placed them neatly in the plastic containers to await the frosting and decorating the next day.

     Making the frosting was easy--cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and flavoring--but trying to get the color orange was another chore.  I couldn't find plain orange, so I bought red and yellow.  I thought that would be easy enough, but not so.  A litle red, a little yellow, a little red, a little yellow, mix, mix.  Yuck!! what a sick looking orange, not the vibrant orange that I was hoping for.  :(  Oh, well when they get decorated, maybe they won't look too bad.  Wrong, they still looked sick.  So back to the droppers of color.  It still wasn't what I wanted, but I decided it would have to do.  Time was running out.

     I was feeling sad that I didn't have any corn candies to put on them for the lit up eyes, but, oh well, they were happy faces none the less.  Then SURPRISE!  Lynn came in the door with a package.  WOW! Jeanette had sent a package of Halloween surprises and it had arrived on Halloween!  I opened the package and what do you know?  CORN CANDIES!  What a difference they made on my drab, orange cookies.  It really perked the cookies up and made them happy that it was Halloween.  Thanks Jeanette for thinking of us!  And thanks for the card, (which made me get all teary) and for the fun Halloween decorations and other candies!!  It just made my day!!  I was feeling a little lonely anyway, thinking that the kids would be in their cute costumes, and coming to Grammy' and Grandpa's house and we weren't there.

     Though we weren't there for the traditional Halloween, we still had a fun evening as we tooks plates of jack-o-lantern cookies to neighbors and branch members who didn't know about Halloween.  The kids faces lit up when they saw the cookies and really smiled when we told them our kids dress up in costumes and go to houses and say trick-or-treat and people actually give them treats!   We finished off the evening with the Elders coming over for plates of cookies of their very own.  It may be South Africa, but we still had Halloween!!

Thanks Jeanette for all these fun Halloween surprises.  It really made our day!! 

 We felt as happy as that smiling jack-o-lantern!

Plates of cookies just waiting to be delivered.

The only thing I had for my Halloween costume was my gummy Frankenstein teeth!

Mr Jack-o-lantern helped me say, "HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Thanks Jeanette, for the corn candies. 

 It made these happpy little fellows come alive!

     I was also feeling sad that they wouldn't have the traditional Halloween Sloppy Joes after Trick or Treat.  Then I found out that Cristee and Crystal arranged for that so that it would still feel like Grammy's house.  Suz's family and friends came down as usual, WE  just were't there.

Thanks kids for still keeping with tradition so all the little goblins could feel like Grammy and Grandpa weren't so far away!