All-Day Bread and Halloween Preview

So, here are the two measly loaves of bread that literally took me all day to bake:

Oatmeal bread

I'm not sure what happened, but when I first mixed up the dough this morning something went off with the yeast.  It just never rose.  I waited over two hours but nothing happened.  I think maybe I added the yeast when the rest of the mixture was still too warm.  That's the only thing I can figure.

I didn't want to lose the effort that I had put into mixing up this dough though, so to Google I went.  Searching "bread dough won't rise" scored me multiple hits right away, and I decided to go ahead and add another batch of yeast, as several websites suggested.  That seemed to do the trick, but by now it was already lunchtime.  Since this particular bread has to rise three times, it wasn't finished and out of the oven until after 6pm.  I sliced into it just a bit ago for a wee taste, and it's really quite good.  Glad the batch wasn't ruined!

The girls and I were home alone most of today while Charles worked concessions at a JMU football game to raise money for the EMES PTF.  In between tending my bread I made a warm eggplant salad for lunch and roasted pumpkins and pumpkin seeds and then made a big batch of pumpkin butter for the freezer.  I also did a few loads of laundry but pretty much spent the whole day in the kitchen.  I had wanted to work on some craft projects but didn't really have time to get into those.

We didn't eat a grand dinner, but I did make mashed potatoes because Sophie had been asking for them for several days and I had promised her I would make them over the weekend.  She ate three helpings.  Hannah choked down one very small serving.  I had baked sweet potatoes from our garden.  This is the sum total of our sweet potato harvest this year, enough for one meal!

Teeny, tiny sweet potatoes

The past couple of weeks we've been planning ahead for Halloween.  Hannah wants to be Betsy Ross.  I've enjoyed making the girls' costumes the last few years, but my sewing skills are definitely not advanced enough to make a colonial-era dress, hat, apron, etc.  So the other night we found a reasonably-priced costume on Amazon and ordered that.  It should be here on Tuesday.

Sophie wants to be SuperGirl.  Grandma is going to make her a gold cape out of material we bought earlier this week.  We had also planned to make a shirt for her to wear with a big "S" on the front, but when we were shopping at Wal-Mart yesterday afternoon we found this:

Perfection

We quickly scooped it up and even managed to find some red tights in Sophie's size.  Once Grandma makes her cape her costume will be ready to go!