owl cupcakes! (+ other Halloween-themed ideas)

Do you have any plans for Halloween?

I'm not a fan of the holiday. My favorite part are those thick Reese's peanut butter cups shaped like pumpkins! And the candy corn. Brach's has my back. 

Despite my general aversion to Halloween festivities, I did think writing a piece on Halloween-themed finger foods for the university newspaper would be a fun idea! These adorable cupcakes were featured.

caramelized banana bread + browned butter glaze.

Have you heard of bananas foster? Butter and sugar are roasted in a pan, then sliced bananas are added until they start to soften. At the very end, some rum is sploshed in, before the whole mixture is spooned over ice cream while still warm.

The same concept is applied to this (relatively healthy) banana bread. The bananas are roasted with butter and sugar until they caramelize a little, and then the mixture is mashed together until everything is homogenous.

That sweet sticky mixture is incorporated into the rest of the ingredients, and baked in a loaf pan till golden. Afterwards, a thick glaze is spooned over the entire loaf, so that it dribbles into every crevice.

fall harvest salad.

Rainy days are so annoying. Unless you're sitting inside doing nothing all day, well then they're beautiful. You get to be lazy, bum around, and snack all day. It's pouring outside today, but I tried to make an effort to change up my usual rainy day diet of snacks and cookies.

oreo truffles.

These are quite unphotogenic - just know they taste amazing.

It's good to take breaks sometimes. Enjoy life, ya know.

Wake up at 9 am instead of 6 am.

Take time to eat a relaxing breakfast of steamy oats + pumpkin + banana + cinnamon + chia seeds + walnuts.

Flip your phone over so you stop seeing that maddening green blinking light, indicating a notification, out of the corner of your eye.

Get off Facebook. (Unless there's a huge message thread with some old friends you lost touch with.)

chocolate pumpkin pie bars.

So I had the weirdest dream ever. If you could care less about my random mental thoughts when I sleep, go down to just before the recipe for a review. If you do care (AW THANKS), keep reading.

Quick preface: I have had lucid dreams before. I dream quite a bit. My dreams are usually vivid. But this one was particularly unusual.

I was home for the weekend and taking a nap. I quickly entered dream-mode. I was at my university, in the library. The usual dream sequence passed, but then something weird happened.