~~~~CREATING HARVEST TIME MEMORIES~~~~ One Pumpkin Cookie At a Time

~FESTIVE SPICE COOKIES~

I've shared with you many, many times over the past two plus years (OMGOSH...it will be three in January!) about my precious mother and all the creative things she did when I was a child.  A few years ago she was clearing out some things in her home and gave me all the old newspaper clippings from when she was a Brownie (Girl Scout) Leader with my Auntie P.

~OLD NEWSPAPER ARTICLE~

(Yep...that Becky Elliott would be Moi!)

My mother was also my elementary school Room Mother and on a Preacher Man's salary had to be really creative (and frugal) when planning classroom holiday parties.  There was one for Fall/Harvest, Christmas and Valentine's Day if I remember right and they were always done on less that a shoestring...

 ~APPLESAUCE COOKIE RECIPE~

In the mid 1960's the student to teacher ratio was thirty-one or thirty-two to one!  Can you imagine that today?  Anyway...that was allotta treats for allotta kids with not allotta money...

~LAYOUT DOWN TO A SCIENCE~

Halloween was different back then...just fun and kids with lots of sweet (and mostly handmade) costumes!  I remember it being a happy time in my life!  No mean, spooky, evil stuff like there is today... :(

 ~SLIT CELLO BAGS AT THE BASE~

For our Fall and Harvest party she made place-mats (construction paper) in the shape of pumpkins (jack-o-lanterns) and fashioned small treat baskets out of black paper with black cat faces.  Each one was hand painted and sported a carrying handle.

 ~SLIP COOKIE STICK DOWN INTO BAG~

They were filled with traditional sweets like candy corn, small wrapped Hershey Bars as well as tiny pumpkins.  We had vanilla ice-cream cups donated from one of the local Southern Cali dairies (my Grampa hand painted their AD signs for them!), but the highlight of our parties were the pumpkin shaped cookie-on-a-stick treats taken from a recipe in my Mom's Woman's Home Companion Cookbook.

 ~VINTAGE COOKBOOK~

Today it remains the only recipe I use if I need a fabulous spice cookie!  It's delicious, soft and chewy!  Back then they didn't have the plastic/cello bags like they have today and certainly very little craft ribbon...

I remember the cookies my Mom made were wrapped in pieces of plastic wrap and tied up with orange crinkle tie ribbon.

 ~WRAP PLASTIC TO BACK/ADD RIBBON~

Simple, inexpensive and very, very festive!

~COOKIES READY FOR GIFT GIVING~

The recipe is easy to follow and before baking a wooden craft stick was inserted almost to the top edge of the the dough.  A tad bit more cookie dough was added on top of the stick before being lightly flattened and baked.  In the 60's there were only wooden popsicle sticks so the larger craft sticks work much better for the cookie suckers today!

~SOOO YUMMMEEEE~

Now...if spice cookies aren't your thing then remember this...  One of the best and easiest cookie recipes out there is the basic chocolate chip recipe found on the back of most bagged chips.  Just omit the chips!  You can still add a combination of a couple different teaspoons of your favorite spice to this recipe if you want (allspice, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, etc.).  Add a jack-o face to your cookies with piped royal icing (tinted orange) and wahhh-lahhhh!

You're done!

 

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Note to my talented Momma:

Mom~You helped to make my childhood sooo much fun!  It's taken me YEARS to figure out how absolutely amazing you are and how much I have to be thankful for!  I'm sorry to be so late with all my THANK YOUS and words of praise!  You were before your time and most certainly would have rivaled Miss Martha (and her entourage) with your talents had you been afforded the chance!  Secretly...I am glad your children (and our classmates) had you all to ourselves!  You were and are an incredible Mother and I love and adore you (thank you for the beautiful card...)!

xo~Beck

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Hope you are enjoying these first wonderful days of Autumn!  It's sooo good to be back!

Love to you...