Weekend | Thanksgiving

This past weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving, my second most favourite time of the year! Every year during the duration of the weekend the town I live in holds a small Thanksgiving fair. It has become a tradition between myself and my best friends to head on over for an afternoon of unhealthy food options and feeding some friendly goats. This year, the weather was really on our side - it was a perfectly sunny day and quite warm, especially for October. There were quite a lot of food options, including a barbecue stand and your usual deep-fried fair food, but I decided to be healthy and get a really delicious falafel pita (and get a bit jealous when my friends ate funnel cakes and french fries)! After eating we headed over to the petting zoo and as you can see the goats really took a liking to me. At one point I had three goats trying to climb on me to get a part of the ice cream cone I was holding! There were also some baby pigs there that were so cute! I didn't manage to get any decent photos of them unfortunately, waaaaah. When it was time to leave I quickly grabbed myself a big stick of cotton candy - my favourite part of the fair!

Before heading off to work on Sunday I spent the morning doing lots of baking for our Thanksgiving dinner the following day. With a bit of help from one of my sisters I managed to bake five pies! Four pumpkin (I know, I know...) and one beautiful (if I do say so myself) apple pie! They were all incredibly delicious and I wish I had some leftovers to eat right now... at eleven thirty at night. For the pie crust I used this recipe and tripled it. For the pumpkin pie I tripled this recipe and this recipe for the apple pie using Gala apples. I didn't take any photos during our actual Thanksgiving celebrations, I was much too busy stuffing my face with mashed potatoes and slices of pie topped with whipped cream. Oops!

To my Canadian readers and those who celebrated, I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with lots of delicious food! Thanks for reading! xo

Baking | Gingersnap Cookies

In my house gingersnap cookies are most commonly baked (and eaten) during Christmas time. While these cookies were being baked in the oven my entire house filled up with a smell reminiscent of Christmas. I know, I know. I'm about two months too early. However, the spicy flavour of these cookies make them perfectly suitable for the Autumn months as well. These cookies are soft and chewy and just so delicious!

The recipe I used comes from the October issues of Canada's Style at Home magazine. According the the magazine this recipe makes two dozen cookies, but I was able to make thirty-eight nice sized cookies. I have also altered the recipe slightly by using a bit less butter (by accident!) but they turned out perfectly fine!

Gingersnap Cookies -

Yield: 24-38 Cookies

Ingredients:

4 Cups All-Purpose Flour

2 1/2 Tsp Baking Soda

2 Tsp Ground Ginger

1 Tsp Cinnamon

1/2 Tsp Ground Cloves

1/2 Tsp Salt

3/4 Cup Room Temperature Unsalted Butter (I used 1/2 Cup instead)

2 Cups Granulated Sugar, Plus More for Coating

3 Large Eggs

1/2 Cup Fancy Molasses

1 Tsp Pure Vanilla Extract

Instructions: 

1 - Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and line your cookie sheets with parchment paper or lightly grease them.

2 - In a large bowl, sift together your flour, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and salt; set aside. 

3 - In the bowl of your stand mixer using the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy on medium-high speed. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

4 - Add in the eggs one at a time, briefly beating between each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

5 - Add in the molasses and vanilla. Mix on high speed until the molasses and vanilla are well combined and the batter is light brown in colour. Scrape down the sides of the bowl again.

6 - With the mixer on low speed, add in the dry ingredients and mix until fully combined. 

7 - Fill a small bowl with about a 1/2 cup of sugar. Use an ice cream scoop to drop out equally sized portions of cookie dough into the sugar one at a time. Roll the ball of dough around in the sugar until coated. Repeat with remaining dough, placing the cookies onto the baking sheet 1 1/2" apart. 

8 - Gently press down on the balls of dough with the palm of your hand to slightly flatten the cookie.

9 - Bake for 15-17 minutes or until the cookies are firm around the edges but still slightly soft in the centre. Remove from the oven and transfer cookies onto a rack to cool. 

I hope you all had a great weekend! x

October

I cannot believe it's already the first of October. This has flown by so quickly it's almost scary. With that said, I cannot be more happy that it is now October and today marks the start of my most favourite time of the year. In Canada we are lucky enough to see four seasons throughout the year and Autumn is my most loved. Not only is there a significant drop in the temperature outside (I absolutely love to sleep with my window open) but the leaves outside are the most spectacular colours, it is like one final burst of colour before everything dies for Winter.

I thought I would put together this post just to talk about what I most love about this season and everything that I am looking forward to doing this month. I would really love to know what your favourite October (or Autumn to be more broad) activities are, or if you have any big plans or traditions. Let me know down below in the comments.

During the Summer months I feel as though I don't dress to my full potential. I'm always just way too hot that all I can do is throw on the lightest, most breezy outfit and call it a day. The cooler weather is a very welcomed change. I love to wear big and cozy sweaters, boots and plenty of warm layers. Now that I can actual put together outfits (aside from the very tired shorts and t-shirt combo) I'm hoping to start doing some outfit of the day posts. Stay tuned for those!

I am really looking forward to all the baking I am planning on doing this month. In Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving in October (October 14th this year) and I've been scouring Pinterest and Tumblr for some delicious recipes for the occasion. Last Thanksgiving I made candy corn sugar cookies, fresh apple coffee cake and caramel stuffed apple cider cookies. You can also take a look at my Autumn recipe Pinterest board for more ideas by clicking here.

During Thanksgiving weekend my friends and I always visit our towns Thanksgiving fair, it's our yearly tradition. All we really do there is eat lots of bad foods, such as french fries, cotton candy and BeaverTails (it's basically just fried dough covered in cinnamon sugar or something equally delicious - it's a Canadian thing). I'm hoping this year we will also visit an apple orchard to pick our own apples to use for apple pies or delicious apple butter. It's just so much nicer to use fruit you picked by hand to bake with rather than getting your produce from the grocery store.

I have never really understood those people who severely dislike Halloween. It's a holiday where you dress as crazy as you like and eat however many Mars bars you can handle. As you can see from the picture (sorry for the bad, webcam quality) above last Halloween I was a skeleton. I didn't do anything too wild last year, I just did my makeup for the costume contest at work (my sister dressed as Artie Abrams from Glee and won the contest!). I'm not too sure what I'll be dressing up as this year or what I'll be doing but I'm still very, very excited! Throughout this month I'm going to post a few different Halloween costume ideas, so be on the lookout for that!

What I am most excited for is the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is such a bizarre film but I love it a lot. It has become a tradition between my friends and I to head downtown and watch RHPS the weekend before Halloween. The theatre we visit plays the film the last Friday of each month but during October they put on three shows with a shadow cast. If you have read (or seen) the Perks of Being a Wallflower it is basically just like what Charlie and his friends go do. A group of people act out the movie on stage as the film plays in the background and the audience is shouting and singing and throwing props around the entire time. Everyone dresses up as characters from the film, some people go as far as to show up in nothing but tiny gold undies just like Rocky! There are always games beforehand and it is just such a unique and amazing experience. A lot of cities do this, so if it sounds like something that would interest you I would really advise you to look into it! Below I've included a crappy quality cellphone picture from last years Halloween show to give you a better idea of what I'm blabbering on about!

Please do let me know what you're favourite things about the season are. Or what you're planning to dress up as for Halloween! I need some ideas!

Thank you for reading and happy October! x