Decorations and S'mores Cookies!!

After cleaning the whole apartment this weekend, I wanted to decorate! This is our front door with our scarecrow named Bob holding down the fort.

Albeit not very well since there is a crow right next to him ;) I need to get a pumpkin this week to put on the hale bale as well. I was going to get a plastic one at Michael's but they wanted like 11 bucks for a plastic one. I know, I know, you can use it over and over...but the real ones look better and I don't think it would be worth it. I also have a cute little autumn basket filled with cinnamon scented pinecones!

Mmmm. I love that smell. Every time I walk by the bar, I get all happy inside. The last thing is my mantle sign.

I fell in love with this little sign right away. Adorable! That's all the decorations I have...it's hard to decorate with a little kitten terror running around by himself all day. I would prefer that my decorations not get destroyed, so I have to be careful. But I was excited to at least get some :) After decorating, I started baking!! Let's see if you can guess what I made from the following ingredients:

S'mores Cookies
recipe from make and bake

3/4 cup butter, softened (1 1/2 sticks)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups flour
1 cup graham crackers
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup mini marshmallows
2 Hershey bars, chopped up (baking size)

Preheat oven to 350. Process graham crackers in a food processor until they become crumbs. They do not need to be super fine crumbs but there shouldn't chunks either.

In a stand mixer or large bowl, cream the butter and sugars until fluffy.

Mix in the egg and vanilla until no longer visible. In a small bowl, combine flour, salt and baking soda. Add the flour mixture and graham crackers to the wet mixture. (The seperate bowl isn't entirely necessary...it's just a habit I've picked up from Alton Brown while watching Good Eats lol)

Fold in the chocolate chips.

Drop by rounded tablespoons onto prepared cookie sheets. Bake for 6-8 minutes or until mostly done and remove from the oven. Push 3-4 marshmallows and a few pieces of Hershey bar into each cookie.

Return to oven and bake for an additional 3-4 minutes or until fully cooked. Cool cookies on a wire rack.

YUM!!! These cookies were phenomenal. I had trouble keeping my hands off of them and had to take the extras into work. The original recipe said it made 3 dozen...but I halved the recipe and only got 1 dozen. Maybe I just make my cookies too large! lol

Right after finishing the cookies, it was time for dinner. Luckily, it was such an easy night! I boiled some rice and steamed these veggies in the microwave.
 

Then, I sauteed shrimp until they were mostly done.

I then made the sauce.
 

Whisk together:

• 1/4 cup dry sherry
• 2 Tb. lite soy sauce
• 2 Tb. Hoisin sauce
• 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 2 tsp. cornstarch
• freshly ground black pepper

And pour into the pan with the shrimp to let thicken. Continue to stir so that it doesn't burn. This part doesn't take very long. You can tell how often I don't use cornstarch since the box is from Wal-Mart and we haven't shopped at Wal-Mart for over a year! Does cornstarch expire?...I hope not! lol Anyways, once the sauce thickens, toss in the veggies and serve over rice. Easy peasy!!

The rest of the night was spent resting on the couch. Cleaning and baking all day made me tired! We watched the episodes of Numb3rs we had missed...and then I watched Cougartown. Super funny! I really liked it! Well, I guess I better get back to work! :)