caramel apple pumpkins

I always forget about Halloween. Once my trick-or-treating days were over, I was never into dressing up and partying--or as the custom was in Madison, dressing up and then breaking windows downtown. 

My distaste for Halloween backfired, however, when last Friday I showed up to teach my Children's Creative Dance class and the room was full of 9 year old dressed up as witches and mummies and lady bugs. I had to improvise a few Halloween dance games and made sure to let everyone tell each other what they were really going to be for Halloween. If I were a good teacher, I would have brought candy.

I do, however, love this season. I wrote Aaron a text the other day that said "I'm falling in love with autumn." His response was, "No! Not Autumn!" The weather has been amazingly wonderful this past week, the leaves have finally changed colors, the air is crisp and cold, but the sun is still warm. It is a beautiful season. Plus, Aaron and I have decided it's time to bring out the Christmas music, so we are starting in on that cozy, warm, holiday feeling, too.

These feelings got me inspired to do something crafty--and all crafts are better if they involve food, right? So caramel apple pumpkins it was! Aaron got way into it. He said he felt his obsessive compulsive self emerging...that these really had to look like pumpkins. We got a few ideas from some websites and went to work. Somewhere in the dipping of the orange chocolate (which was flavored with traditional pumpkin pie spices), Aaron got discouraged. However, after everything has cooled and hardened, we both agreed that we did a pretty good job.

Don't worry...we didn't eat all 10. We wrapped them up and gifted them to neighbors and friends.