What's cooking, gourd lookin'?

 It's the Friday before Halloween and the first day so far this week that we haven't had some kind of errand to run. With some extra time on our hands, Middle and I decided to bake some Halloween themed sugar cookies. 

Middle's never actually helped in the kitchen before, but he's usually pretty interested in what's going on up on the counter. We've not prepared for this, so instead of a step stool, we had to use a chair. We'll definitely be upgrading before the Christmas baking season.

We started measuring out our ingredients and Middle was thrilled to get to add them into the mixing bowls. 

After the hand mixing was done, I had to break out the electric mixer. It's fairly noisy and Middle is definitely not a fan. He ran the doorway and waited until the coast was clear. Once the horrible mixing monster was back in it's cabinet, Middle rejoined me to help wrap up the dough and put it in the refrigerator to chill. 

An hour later we returned to the kitchen, retrieved our dough and got to work. I laid out some parchment paper, sprinkled some flour, and showed Middle how to use a rolling pin. It took him a few tries to get the hang of rolling and not just smashing the dough. 

After rolling out small pieces of dough, it was time to use the cutter to make...*surprise* pumpkin cookies! He got the concept of the cookie cutter quick, but was so excited to put it in the dough that sometimes it was only halfway on and sometimes he'd drop it on a second time. I left the cookies as is, fingerprints and extra cutter marks, just to give them all a "touch of Middle."

We worked until we filled up a large cookie sheet and then popped them in the oven.

It was getting to be lunchtime for both Middle and Little so we took a break to eat. After lunch, Little snuggled in for a nap but Middle decided he was going to play. He happily bounced off to his playroom for some trains. We had a small amount of dough left, so I decided to try my hand at some different Halloween shapes.

After baking, the cookies went onto the cooling rack and I took some time to decorate the house with some more Halloween goodies since Big would be joining us later in the evening. 

After dinner, I portioned out some frosting into smaller containers and used gel food coloring to give us a variety to work with. Middle, having taken no nap today, was overly tired and fell asleep in the living room.  Big, Papa R and I sat around the table taking turns picking out cookies and decorating them. We saved 4 of the pumpkins and some googly eyes for Middle.

Our finished cookies were rather unique...

Little wasn't quite sure what to make of it all, but hung in there with us.

Saturday after our event at Bridgewater (Treat Street post) and his nap, Middle finally got to decorate his cookies. He decided to continue his signature style and mix all the colors together. 

I gave him a set of googly eyes for each cookie to place when he was ready. He loved "painting pumpkins" again. 

I tried unsuccessfully to get him to eat some of the leftover icing. Probably a good thing, I'd hate for him to think he can eat actual paint when we're using it. Plus it just meant more for Momma!