Happy Fall

Here in the stupid desert, it seems that Autumn has finally arrived. The weather has been in the mid-eighties/low nineties, it's been breezy, and the trees are starting to dump their leaves. They don't change colors here, they just sort of turn brown one day and fall off. We've been leaving the AC off during the day and just opening the windows. It's not so oppressively hot that the shades need to be closed all day either. We can finally enjoy sunlight inside!!!

Yesterday, I celebrated by cooking all day. I stewed the tomatoes that came in our co-op basket to freeze for soup later in the week. I made the most delicious chicken pot pie for dinner. And in between, there was more apple bread.

This time, I decided to try something different. Instead of making the usual loaves, I made them in muffin tins with liners. I found the most AWESOME cupcake liners at Michael's last weekend and bought three packages. They're black, with a dark gray skull and damask pattern. Fabulous! I got two of the large size and one of the mini ones.

Of course, after the muffins had been in the oven for a few minutes, I realized that I had forgotten to put the cinnamon sugar mixture on top. Crud. After they were cooled, I made up a quarter recipe of very thin royal icing, flavored it with this butter vanilla I bought at the cake supply store, and drizzled it over the tops with a spoon.

Pretty, and probably less sugar than I was using with the cinnamon sugar. It tastes good too, but I think I like the cinnamon sugar better.

I put aside a few for us to eat on my cake stand. I just have this cheapy glass one right now. It's my cake stand, my cupcake holder, my cookie jar... it's pretty useful. I'd love to have one like this though:

I'm a big fan of the milk glass, but don't really have any. It's so dainty and pretty though.

After I gave the icing a few hours to set up a bit, I placed the muffins into clear cellophane treat bags. I thought it would be fun to add little tags, so I whipped up a few in Microsoft Word. Then all I had to do was print them out on white cardstock, punch them out with my 2" Fiskars circle punch, and stick them to a piece of colored cardstock that I punched out with a 3" Paper Shaper scalloped circle punch. I added a piece of ribbon, and VOILA!

(It's "voila," folks, not wa lah, waaa la, or anything like that. French, you know. Stupid spelling pet peeve)

(It's also "psych," not sike. In case you didn't know.)

Aren't they cute and oh so Martha-ish? *love*

I was going to send them to work with my husband today, but he decided to telecommute. He's off tomorrow too. Crud.

(if you would like the file for the tags, just drop me an email!)