Baking for Pumpkin Junction

This past Friday Emma and I had a great time baking and decorating cupcakes for the Pumpkin Junction festival at our church -- St. John's Episcopal -- here in Barrington. We got the idea from a kids cookbook which Emma checked out of her school library. They were initially going to be sun cupcakes and the pretzels were the rays of the sun, but the pretzels were making the cupcakes fall apart at the top so we abandoned that and just made them into funny face cupcakes. I decorated some, but Emma did most of them -- she is so creative -- she came up with things I wouldn't have thought of at all. The recipe book had several ideas and gave me the idea of using mini M & M's and regular M & M's, but the candy canes were our idea. You can see the cookbook picture in the first photo. The other photos are pretty self explanatory. The festival at church was lots of fun and if I do say so myself -- our cupcakes were some of the most interesting looking things on the bake sale table. There were kids games and craft vendors at the festival and then the church members were selling food, baked goods and lots of pumpkins. Emma and I did a shift at pumpkin selling this past Wednesday and had a great time -- we had lots of customers and Emma enjoyed adding up the amounts on the receipts and helping little kids pick out pumpkins.

 
 
 
 

Here's a shot I took with my phone while we were selling pumpkins. The whole lawn leading up to our church is covered with pumpkins -- it looks very festive and gets me in mood for Fall and Halloween whenever I drive by. The church is on the main road through Barrington so lots of people can see the display.