My New Favorite

I always thought the recipe I used for my sugar cookies was good, but I think I may have finally found the best recipe ever!  The dough is smooth, easy to work with and doesn't need to chill.  Best of all, the cookies taste fantastic on their own as well as iced.  I've used this one recipe two different ways to bake up some adorable Halloween treats.

Sugar Cookie Dough

1 cup (2 sticks) butter at room temperature

1 1/2 cups confectionery sugar

1 egg at room temperature

3 tsp flavoring (I used 1 1/2 tsp orange and 1 1/2tsp vanilla)

2 1/2 - 3 cups flour

Cream butter and sugar until smooth.  Mix in egg and flavoring.

Mix in flour until dough is formed.

Once I had the dough made, I was able to make these:

Candy Corn Cookies

adapted from Land o Lakes

Divide the above dough into 3 equal portions.  Color 1/3 yellow (I used Americolor gel paste lemon yellow), 1/3 orange (I used electric orange), and leave the last 1/3 uncolored.

Line a loaf pan with plastic wrap and let the excess hang over.

Press uncolored dough into bottom of pan.  Follow with orange and then yellow.  Wrap with plastic wrap and chill at least 2 hours.

When dough is thoroughly chilled, remove plastic wrap and trim around edges.  Cut crosswise into 1/4 inch strips.

Cut each strip into triangles and bake at 375 degrees for 7 - 10 minutes.
I think these may be my son Max's new favorite cookie!

I packaged some up in dollar store jars and added the cute tag from http://lilluna.com/no-tricks-just-treats-jar/

What a yummy treat!

I also made a batch of dough to decorate for Halloween.  These are for Ava to bring to school.

Copy Cat Halloween Crafts

I wish I could take credit for my Halloween decorations, but unfortunately, I'm what you might call a copy cat.  Everything you see here came from someone else's idea with my own spin on it.

I just loved the idea of a tulle wreath.  There are tutorials and pictures all over Pinterest.  For this wreath, I took a Dollar Tree wreath form and tied strips of tulle all the way around.  The tulle came in spools in these great Halloween colors at Joann Fabrics.  I finished it off by hot gluing some sparkly spiders.

My mantel got decorated with these spider topiaries.

As soon as I saw this, I knew I had to make one.  It's sitting right outside my front door!

http://madebymolliesmom.blogspot.com/2011/10/its-pumpkin-totem-pole.html

I downloaded some Halloween subway art and put them in dollar store frames

and followed this tutorial to make a few spooky ghosts.

http://www.everydayisacraftingday.com/2010/09/floating-ghost.html

Here they are displayed with my diy apothecary jars.

I may not be original, but I had fun making them all!