Bellewood Farms

After a week of smoke we decided to get out of town and visit our favorite apple orchard, Bellewood Farms. 

It’s a little less than 2 hours north of Seattle, but we originally discovered it because they make gin. Out of apples! 

Nothing says a good time like riding a little train to pick apples that are almost as big as your head, having a apple cider gin slushy and getting some mini apple donuts for the car ride home. 

It’s totally worth the drive, we felt safe and were able to keep our distance from others however there were visitors not wearing masks and it didn’t seem to be enforced.

On Sunday we took our apples and turned them into apple cake! Recipe is from the picture book, Apple Cake: A Gratitude. (Thank you for the book Nicole!)

Rain is in the weekend forecast which calls for pajamas, movie night, soup and lots and lots of crafts.

Harry Potter and the Half-Burnt Pears

After not being able to go all summer, Isaac and I decided to pack up the car and head to the drive-in for our fall activity of the weekend. We saw the first Harry Potter movie, complete with Hippeas and chocolate-covered banana chips. You know, typical movie snacks.

We woke up on Sunday and drove down to our new favorite trail to find some leaves for our craft. It turned out to be much more difficult than we expected as the leaves have barely started to fall here. Plus, I accidentally touched a slug. But it wasn’t a complete disaster, we eventually found what we were looking for and saw some really nice dogs.

For dinner, we made this recipe for Vegan Pumpkin Ricotta Stuffed Shells (god bless cashew-free alfredo sauce) and balsamic brussels sprouts. For dessert, we made a variation of these Baked Pears. Due to the fact that I may or may not have a tree nut allergy that is getting increasingly worse, I made a crumb topping for mine using flour, vegan butter, oats, cinnamon, and coconut sugar instead of the walnuts. It was all fun and games until we started thinking we could get fancy and put them on broil to get crispy and ended up burning most of the walnuts. Still delicious.

For our craft, we tried making some clay, leaf print bowls which are currently drying. We’ll see how they turn out in the next few days.

All the Trees

A long walk for cinnamon waffles, collecting acorns, leaves and tiny pinecones was how we kicked off our first Fall Craft Sunday of the season.

Our craft was a process art painting on canvas, to create our own birch trees. I did a combo of these tutorials I found on Pinterest. For the paint, I did 2 tablespoons of baking soda, 2 tablespoons of liquid watercolor paint and 3/4 cup of water.

It ended with Goldie drinking vinegar, dumping watercolors on herself and screaming while Flannery continued to make little paint explosions on the canvas. Like a said process painting.

We watched Mulan (not a fall movie) and Caleb made delicious chili and cornbread.

My big idea for the week was to make fall ice cream cookie sandwiches. The cookie recipe were for these snickerdoodles by Sweet Laurel. We used brown sugar instead of date sugar on the outside. While we were making them Flannery had the idea to turn them into pumpkin shapes, this dough is super sticky but with a little extra almond flour we were able to roll it out between two pieces of parchment paper. The ice cream was from our favorite local shop, Frankie & Jo’s. They have this incredible seasonal flavor called, All the Trees and I knew they would be perfect together. I highly recommend both, separate or together.

(I am not a food blogger however this is the only vanilla extract you will ever need!)