Halloween Brownies

I can't believe Halloween is almost here!  While shopping for groceries last week, I saw a bag of Halloween-colored chocolate chips, so I picked up a bag to make a new recipe--Halloween Brownies.  My official taste-testers approve, so find the recipe below.  Your little goblins will love them, too!

Halloween Brownies

 

Ingredients:  1 box of family-sized dark-chocolate brownie mix, one bag of orange and chocolate chips, one container of fluffy white frosting, and orange food coloring.

 

 

Mix together brownie (for a 9 x 13 inch pan) ingredients, and spread batter in a greased 9 x 13 pan.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

 

Before baking the brownies, sprinkle with one cup of the orange and chocolate chips.  Reserve the second cup and set aside.

 

Bake the brownies for 25-30 minutes, as directed, and then allow to cool completely.

 

Mix orange food coloring into the white frosting, beat well, and spread on cooled brownies.  Sprinkle the remaining orange and chocolate chips on frosting, and let set.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



A Pie for Roger

Our neighbor Roger is a master woodworker, and he agreed earlier this summer to finish building a roof over our community mailbox stand outside my front yard gate.  It's been just a simple 4x4 with two 2x4's as the base for the mailboxes for the 13 years we have lived here.

He and his son built a beautiful roof and cross-beams out of cedar, with Desert Tan composition shingles on the roof.  It's a beautiful sight, and helps keep our mail dry in this rainy season.

We baked Roger and his family a Caramel Apple pie topped with apple pie-flavored almonds from Bob's Corn Country Store as a thank you.

The Last of the Dahlias

Well, the dahlias are finally winding down.  They have been so wonderful this year, providing color and gorgeous blooms all the way to the end of October.

Next year, I am foregoing all vegetables and only growing dahlias!

A New Travel Trailer!

After many years of wanting a small, older travel trailer, we finally found one (or it found us!) It's a 1999 Fiberglass Scamp trailer.

Here is the link below to our new travel blog, "The Musician, The Poet, and The Scamp"!  Stay tuned as you follow us on our adventures.

http://rvnscamper.wordpress.com/

A Perfect Fall Breakfast

The warm weather has receded a bit, and you can finally feel traces of Autumn in the air.  The leaves are falling everywhere, and the world has an orange and yellow tint to it.  It's beautiful.

Our breakfast the other morning was a batch of buttermilk pancakes with fresh organic blueberries and Bob's Corn Pumpkin Spice Syrup.  Yummy!

 

 

SCMTA (Snohomish Chapter of the Music Teachers Association) Meeting

We started out the week with our monthly SCMTA meeting at the Everett Music Hall.  This is a wonderful group of over 100 piano teachers involved in every aspect of teaching piano to beginning and adult students.  We have a chapter meeting followed by a Master Teacher presentation.  It's a great time to learn something new, and to network with fellow teachers and share best practices.

Our Master Teacher was Dr. Julia Shnebly-Black, author and teacher of "Dalcrose Eurhythmics", a method of linking our physical bodies to the whole musical process.  We often think of learning to play the piano as a purely intellectual process, but it is actually rooted in our physical responses and ability to use our large and small muscles to make the whole sequence of events come to perfect fruition in a seamless performance.

We danced, and clapped our hands to rhythms and music, sang and stopped, and walked and stepped. It was invigorating!

Dr. Shnebly-Black was head of the Piano Department for over 30 years at Georgia State University before coming to Seattle to get her Ph.D. at the University of Washington.

Everett Music Hall

 

Auditorium at Music Hall

 

Dr. Julia Shnebly-Black

 

 

Polly and Me

We had many lovely fall days this week, and Polly and I made it to the park mid-week.  We usually have the park to ourselves, and it's fun to walk the perimeter of Maltby Park and take in the beauty of the place.

Polly needs lots of exercise, and she is always tired and subdued after this type of workout.  She slept most of the afternoon once we got home again.