Halloween Trip to Morrison

Here are some of the best pics from my trip to Morrison, IL and surrounding areas that I took right before Halloween.

First up is Raven's Grin in Mt. Carroll. This is the craziest and coolest place ever. It's an actual haunted house that a guy bought and turned into a year round tourist attraction/haunted house/funhouse. It can't really be explained...just know that you HAVE to go there!!
This is the big windmill in Fulton, IL right on the Mississippi River.

This is Main St. in Galena, IL. It's a long winding street filled with tons of random shops and restaurants.

Overlooking Galena from the other side of the Galena River.

Me and Tyler and Aiden dressed up as the Scooby gang for the Morrison Halloween parade.

Me and Tyler getting ready to perform onstage for Rocky Horror Picture Show!!

Tyler as Rocky in his gold lame' shorts... I forgot to get a pic of me in my slip..Dammit Janet!

Rocky ready for the floor show.

Janet ready for the floor show!

And this was the aftermath of the theater....

And a pic of the covered bridge in Morrison on the way out of town.

Meatball Calzone Pockets and Halloween project

I made these so long ago I can't remember what they're called, but they kind of resemble calzones, so we'll go with that. First you make a bunch of meatballs and ya bake em...
Roll out some pizza dough, top with pizza sauce, 2 meatballs and provolone.

Wrap them all up into pockets and bake...

And you get these...They were okay, but didn't reheat very well...

And here is a project I found on the cover of a magazine while taking one of my clients to the dentist. So me and Marlene did it for group one day before Halloween. We collected glass jars from pickles, spaghetti sauce, olives, etc. Then you get some orange tissue paper, or we found crepe paper. Tear it into uneven strips the length of the jar. Then take some Mod Podge and mix with some water and decoupage the strips overlapping around the jar. This was fairly messy, so I had the clients hold the top and bottom of the jar turning it while I glued the strips on. I found some Jack O Lantern templates on the internet and we glued those when the strips were dry.

This is the one I wanted to take home. I put a tea light in it and I've got an indoor Jack O Lantern.

Pork and Potato Bake, Mexican Layer Dip and Halloween Cupcakes

First step to the Pork and Potato Bake...cook a ton of bacon....
Layer dish with mashed potatoes....

Top that with crumbled up bacon....

Then top that with a tub of pulled pork and some barbecue sauce...

Then add the cheddar....

And done. This was ok for the first couple of bites...then it got pretty gross. I ended up throwing most of it away that week and going out to lunch instead.

This next one is something I invented myself because all of the Mexican dips I've made have been missing one or two ingredients that I always want. So first you layer a can of refried beans.

Then add a layer of rice...

Top it with some salsa and Mexican blend cheese.

Then add ground beef with taco seasoning.

Top with a can of Ro-Tel...

Cover with cheese and bake. This was really good. I scooped it up with tortilla chips...the only problem was there was too much rice compared to everything else.

Then I made a box of cake mix and added some of the orange Halloween Oreos inside the mix...

Made my own buttercream and decorated with candy pumpkins and butcher knives with red gel....

Hopefully next year I'll actually be around for Halloween so everybody gets a chance to try some of these.

Reese's Peanut Butter Cookies, Mint Chocolate Ice Cream Cake and Crock Pot Meatloaf

I made some Reese's Peanut Butter Cookies to take to work...
Making the peanut butter cookie batter.

Then add a bunch of Reese's Pieces!

They were really good and were all eaten in the office in about 1 hour.

Made a Mint Chocolate Ice Cream Cake for Labor Day/my mom's birthday. Use Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies as the crust.

Then line the edges of a springform pan with the rest of the Thin Mints... one box is not enough fyi. Then layer a pint of thawed mint chocolate chip..my favorite ice cream!

Let that freeze for an hour then layer some chocolate ice cream and freeze for another hour. I don't have a picture of the final product because you are supposed to make your own peppermint whipped topping...which did not make enough to cover the whole cake. So I just topped it with a tub of whipped topping.

I decided to try a new way to make meatloaf...in a crockpot. Mixing up all the ingredients...

Make a loaf and stick it in a crockpot....

Top with a bunch of spaghetti sauce...

It cooked for like 4 hours...it was ok and kinda gross at the same time...would not do it again.

Steak Parmesan and Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Pie

For the first recipe I breaded and cooked cube steaks...which are the most stupid cut of meat I have ever had the displeasure of eating...never buying them again. So they pretty much fall apart as soon as you touch them...
Then load them with marinara sauce and mozzarella. This was a dumb recipe that did not taste good...cube steaks are stupid.

One day I was hungry and had no chocolate in the house so I made this recipe with stuff I already had.

Made basic cookie batter with chocolate and peanut butter chips.

Put it in a leftover pie crust...

And you have a cookie pie...it was alright...not the greatest thing in the world.