Creating Fall: Pumkin Sugar Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting

Here In Los Angeles, we don’t really get the full effect of each season.  I especially find that the holiday season roles around and it still feels like summer.  Now, I truly do love the sun, but when I go into the stores and find pumpkins for sale while not one leaf seems to be turning, something feels off.

Yesterday I was at Trader Joe’s and there were pumpkins of all kinds.  Pumpkins for carving, little gourds of varying shapes and colors for decorating and my favorite…pumpkins for baking/cooking.  The latter being only $1.99 I of course could not resist taking one home with me.  There are so many pumpkiny things I want to try, but I started with a recipe that I have been playing around with for a couple years, Pumpkin Sugar Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting!

This recipe can be made with canned pumpkin.  I have made it that way, however trust me, it is so much better made from a fresh pumpkin.

 

How to Roast your Pumpkin

Purchase a baking pumpkin.  Wash off the outside, and cut it in half.  Cut away the stem and scoop out the seeds and stringy insides.  Save the seeds, you will want them later!

Place the two pumpkin halves face down on a foil lined baking sheet.  cover them with more foil and roast them in the oven at 350 degrees until they are soft to the touch.  Be careful when you test them, they will be hot!  Another way to test is if you can easily run a knife through the pumpkin.

Once they are done, take them out and let them cool a bit.  Once they are easier to touch, peel off the skin.  The inside should be about the consistency of a baked potato.  Discard the peel and place the insides in a bowl and mash them with a potato masher or in a Cuisinart.  Put them aside.

Pumpkin Sugar Cookie

This is a pretty basic sugar cookie recipe with a few changes made to it.  If you gluten or other restrictions, I am sure you can play around with the ingredients.  Maybe I’ll try that next year.  Here is what I used in these cookies:

-2 3/4 cups flour
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1/2 teaspoon baking powder
-3/4 cup butter
-3/4 cup sugar (or other sweetener)
-1/2 cup mashed pumpkin
-2 eggs
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1/2 teaspoon pumpkin spice*
-1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon*

*If you choose to use canned pumpkin you don’t need to add extra spices – unless you want to)

Mix all ingredients together.  I personally love cookie cutters, so I used the pumpkin shaped one my mother gave me.  Rather fitting I know 🙂

Bake them in the oven at 350 degrees for 8min exactly.  I am a firm believer that sugar cookies should never be left in longer than that!  Take them out and let them cool on a cooling rack.

Cream Cheese Frosting (I use the Betty Crocker recipe)

-3oz cream cheese, softened
-1/3 cup butter, softened
-1 teaspoon vanilla
-2 cups powdered sugar

Beat cream cheese, butter and vanilla in medium bowl with electric mixer on low speed until smooth.  Gradually beat in powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time, on low speed until smooth and spreadable.  It is best to let it set up in the refrigerator and to wait for the cookies to cool.  For fun, you can always add orange food coloring and paint on jack-o-lantern faces.

Pumpkin Seeds

I hope you saved the seeds!  Clean them off in a strainer.  lightly coat a baking sheet with olive oil and spread the seeds out on it.  roast them in the oven at 350 degrees until they are done.  Place them in a bowl and season them as desired.  I let my roommate to that task and she chose to use: sea salt, garlic salt, oregano, and thyme.  They came out delicious!

So here in LA we kind of have to create fall.  Not a bad start.  I still have pumpkin left in my fridge…so what should I make next?

 

Freedom In Structure

Time management is something that I have never been particularly great it. Not that I was taught or allowed to be a lazy child, but I have always felt like one of those people who has a million things to do and yet never gets anything done (or at least much less than I would like) This last month, I started working with a new company called Trumaker – Trumaker.com. This company sells men’s shirts built-to-fit. Under Trumaker, I am working as an independent contractor, which means it is up to me to make my own schedule and get the job done. For the first time in my life, I have started creating a weekly calendar. Each day is broken down by the half hour. At the top of the week, I begin by filling in all my known engagements for the week (my favorite is blocking off all of Sunday as the day of the Lord) and then I go on to add appointments and other work related events.

I know creating a daily/weekly schedule is no new concept in this world and indeed, I had heard about it before today, but I was never taught to do it. And like many habits that are good for us, we don’t realize how good they are until we are forced to try. Right now, I feel like I am the busiest I have every been, but because I started scheduling EVERYTHING, I somehow have more free time. It seems odd to say, but there is freedom in structure.

And so today, I have enjoyed my scheduled day off and tonight I am having my back painted by my friend Kelly Thorpe.  http://www.kellythorpe.com

Organization

When I moved into my new place back in March, I was determined to set up my room quickly.  The reason for this urgency was three fold,

1.  In the past, I have generally been so bad at getting things up by the time I get my room to the way I want it to be, I am moving out of it.
2.  We had invited friends over for a party and I didn’t want my room to be the only space not put together.3.  I have an extremely motivating roommate.

I did get everything up, but it was rather haphazard and was basically a repeat of my last bedroom, except it was 10 times more cluttered and dark.  So while my sister was in town, she joyfully joined me in the task of de-cluttering, lightening and organizing my room.

One of my main concerns in my room is my desk area.  I am generally not the most organized individual and as two out of my three jobs require me to work out of my house, it is vital that I create myself a more efficient working space.Here is a picture of my messy unorganized work space.  This week I am researching and designing organizational possibilities.  Especially for that wall.  I have already received some excellent suggestions from friends, but feel free to comment and lend your ideas.  I’m open to it all!

My main goal is to not only to a create a functional and efficient work space to administrate my career, but to be a better steward of the space and gifts that God has given me.  In Mass last Sunday, Father said a very powerful thing.  “Nothing is yours.  Everything is a gift from God.”  I look at my life and the gifts that I am given, my family, friends, home, experience;  the list is truly endless.  Everything I have is absolutely a gift from God.  I want to be a better steward of those gifts, to be worthy of them.  As I work on reorganizing etc.  I want to be creative with the things that I have.  There will be no throwing everything out and getting all brand new.  As much as possible, I will work with and rework the gifts that I have been given.  It is much more fun and creative that way any way.

I’m thinking this reorganization may take a couple weeks.  I will share my progress.  Please please share ideas!

Another week has passed and the goal/vision board is continuing to work.  I even gave myself the childish indulgence of giving myself gold star stickers to put on tasks/goals that I have completed.  I guess simple things give me the feeling of reward.

Today in Mass, Father was talking about vanity and how the word doesn’t necessarily apply to having riches or the things we want.  It has to do with our purpose and our priority concerning those things.   Temporal things and desires are not bad in and of themselves, but when they are our top priority and our main focus, we loose site of what is truly important.

As I begin new endeavors, jobs and goals, this is important for me to keep as a foremost thought.  When I ask myself why I am putting something on my board, I don’t every want my answer to be “because I want it.”  Not that I probably won’t want it, but if that is my only answer, it most likely isn’t worth having.  In my personal experience the glib “because I want it” is usually equated with false happiness.  It might make me happy for a while, but it won’t last.

Instead, I want to find purpose  and substance behind the things I want.   My faith and my family should always come first.  I know that my career will not suffer because of it, in fact, it will thrive.  But all these things are more easily said than done.  The attractive baubles of temptation will always be hanging in plane view to try to distract me from my purpose.  That is why I intend to be selective with my board, selective with my choices and by selective, I mean prayerfully considered and offered up.

A Week Out

 

So here I am, one week after taking everything off my goal/vision board and it is still slightly bare.  I told myself that it was not necessary to come up with a bunch of goals and slap them up there.  Goals only get to go on the board if I am serious about them, if I am willing to put in the time and energy that it will take to reach them, if I believe in them.  So I pulled out a pad and allowed myself to be wild with my dreams – no limits.  What do I really want?

It is often so easy to dream wildly without abandon.  Certainly my imagination knows very few boundaries.  However, writing them down makes them more concrete.  It is a sort of declaration.  If I live out a fantasy/day dream in my head, I have satiated that dream; I have almost given it a life that makes me feel like I have fulfilled it.  Writing it down changes everything.  I look at it and I know that it is unfulfilled, that it isn’t real…at least not yet.

Once I had written out a good list, I was surprised with how honest I was being with myself, especially in regards to my work/acting goals.  Trust me, those dreams really aren’t silly once you write them out, once you have stopped letting them float around in your head and you can stare at them straight on.  They even become do-able, manageable…dare I say realistic?!?

From there, I began breaking down the goals.   I didn’t overwhelm myself with trying to figure out an entire play, rather I came up with minor goals, things that I could easily accomplish in a day.  I found images that inspire me toward these goals and pinned them up on the board.  With these images, the small goals are getting pinned.  This may not work for every body, but I have discovered that if I can look at the board and see the big picture, but also see the smaller manageable goals, I believe that I can do it.  I have already started completing many of these minor goals and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from doing even a few small things, begins to build a momentum.

 

 

Creating Character and The Goal Poster

When I first decided to start my blog, I really didn’t have a clear concept or plan for it.  It was a number of suggestions from multiple friends that convinced me that I even had something to say.  In the end, I chose the name Creating Character in LA because it had a two fold meaning for me.
1)Creating characters through acting and costuming

2)The cultivation of personal character – maintaining integrity and moral standpoints in a city that doesn’t always share my beliefs

In relaying different points of my journey, I think I have followed these guidelines, however, I have always felt my entries to be a bit haphazard.  Perhaps good by themselves, but with a lack of long term focus.  Collectively, the two guidelines should have to do with my acting as a career.  While my posts have often been connected to acting, they have only really skirted or touched on it.  They lack focus.

Goals have never been particularly easy for me.  Not that I don’t have dreams…those are easy, but dreams and goals are not the same thing.  Goals require you to take your dream and decide that you are going to work for that and make it happen.  You have to make a focused decision.  When I was younger I was afraid of goals.  In fact, I hated the idea of making a goal poster.  The only reason I can account for this is that it made me feel vulnerable.  By declaring I had a goal, it opened me up for failure.  What if I couldn’t achieve the goal?  What if someone laughed at it?  The truth is neither of those questions are worth wasting time over.  It just took me a long time to realize that.

A couple years ago, a friend forced me to go out and buy a bulletin board.  I say forced because that is exactly how it happened.  I did not want to create a goal poster.  However, I promised I would do it and I did.  One fear over come.  Unfortunately, what has been pinned on that board in the last couple years has been haphazard (a little like my posts) not focused.  So today I am facing a new challenge.  I am taking everything off my board and starting fresh.  I am being specific and intentional.  With my blog, I am planning to do the same thing, be specific and intentional.  The only way I know how is to go back to zero and be me.  Who was I created to be?  Who do I feel called to be? and How will I get there?

The bulletin board down to zero.

A Costumer’s Dream

In all my years here and in all my costuming experience…this week is the first time that I have ever been to Western Costume Co. This place is a costumes DREAM! Everything you could think of is here!!

I am currently costuming a web series called “Dating in the Middle Ages” We are in preproduction now and will be shooting in a couple of weeks. I will continue to update my experience as I go.

New Skills

I realized today, a couple posts ago, I shared that I was in the middle of a job hunt.  I never followed up on that story.

Shortly after that post, I began to apply for jobs and go on interviews.  Friends recommended me to jobs; often putting in a good word for me.  I even took my resume out for a car ride, dropping it off at places that I thought would be a good fit.  In the midst of the my prayers, I did my best to meet God half way.  Indeed, every interview I went on went “perfectly.”  I was confident and I could tell that the person interviewing me liked me and my resume, but I never received a call from any of them.  Luckily, I am an actor.  I already know how to leave my audition behind me and not wait by the phone.  Indeed, the best I could do was hold onto the peace that I had found and confidently know that God had something better planned for me.  The trust paid off.

I continued to ask friends for help and within two days of each other, I found myself with two flexible, well-paying, part-time jobs (aka an actors dream) working mostly with dogs and children.  What’s there to not love about that?  I do find that I have to work hard to juggle my schedule, but juggling is a joy when you know you have the freedom to make time for and put focus on the things you love.

On the bottom of every actor’s resume, there is a section for “Skills.”  This is where we list all the non-acting abilities we have: sports, painting, instruments, etc.; pretty much anything can go in this section as long as you can do it and do it well.  Looks like I will be adding baby sitting and  dog walking to my resume.

Although you can’t tell, I am actually editing City Strut’s new brochure.

For Lent, I gave up a house…

Well…this is partly true…

In the Christian tradition, Lent is a time of sacrifice and a time of giving.  Every year, while I was growing up, when Ash Wednesday rolled around, my siblings and I would all start to discuss and decide what we were going to give up.  Usually they were things like chocolate and after school snacks.  While I understood the meaning of lent, these “sacrifices” were usually done out of obligation and then quickly resumed once Easter arrived.  Once I was older and living on my own, I actually found myself being completely lazy about my Lenten obligation…until this year arrived.

I find that in sacrificing and giving, most people give from what they feel safe and comfortable with, from what they have in excess.  While this isn’t bad, it isn’t the deepest sense of sacrifice.  A deeper sense of sacrifice is giving up things that I need.  This year, just shortly before Ash Wednesday, my roommates and I received notice that we had to move out of our beautiful home.  In short order, I had packed up everything I own, put it in storage and rolled my suitcase to the home of some very generous friends.  I had “given up” my house.

While I did not choose this sacrifice for myself, I have adopted it as one of my Lenten offerings and through it, I have been brought to a place of unfathomable peace, focus, and awareness of God’s grace.  First of all, even though I am with out a house, I am not with out a warm place to sleep.  Through the generosity of my friends, I have been welcomed into a safe and joyful home.  I go to bed in peace every night and always wake up with a smile on my face.  A feeling that does not seem congruent with being homeless.  Secondly, because of the sudden move, the majority of my belongings are now sitting underground in a storage unit.  The only things that I have in my immediate possession are the basic necessities for my day to day living: less than half my clothes, a few books, my sewing machine, and the contents of my desk so that I can continue to work and administrate my acting career.  Every major distraction has been taken away.  As a result, I have had more auditions in the past week than I have had in the past 6 months.  All my time is being devoted to the things and people that are important in my life.  Thirdly, by being taken out of my last home, I can objectively see all the ways that I took it for granted and became irresponsible with it as a gift from God.  Through His grace, I have a chance to start over and become a better steward of the gifts He bestows on me.

No one should ever come out of Lent the same person they were when they entered.  The point of sacrificing and giving up is to make a life change.  A change that will bring you greater joy and closer to God.  It can be scary to sacrifice, but I now believe that only when we give from what we think we need, are we blessed with an over abundance of what we actually need.  If you don’t think you need to sacrifice anything for yourself, try sacrificing for someone else.  There are a lot of people in this world who want to give things up and don’t know how.  And if that seems to difficult, just start with chocolate, next year you can give up your house.

Photo by: Audrey Matos

The Communion of Saints

The amount of time, energy and money that goes into pursuing a career in acting can become rather discouraging.  I’m not saying this to complain;  I certainly wouldn’t be putting this much effort into something that I didn’t love or feel called to do with my life.  There is a tricky balance between allowing yourself to treat your acting as a full time job (which it is) and in the mean time, working full time to support that goal.

Earlier this last summer, I left my job at AMDA.  It was a MUCH NEEDED change for so many reasons.  I left that job, with out any plan, except to work free lance with  my trusty sewing machine.  Easier said than done…

Not only did I find drumming up work to be a challenge, but being my own boss proved to be harder than I expected.  Motivation to work on projects and keeping myself focused were the biggest challenges of all.  I spent more time trying to figure out how to make my free-lance-attempt lucrative than I did just getting the job done.

Flash forward to the end of fall and the beginning of Advent.  About 6 months later, I found myself surrounded by a series of wake up calls.  My lack of attention and focus caught up with me and if it weren’t for the supportive people around me, my circumstances would have been very different.

In the Catholic Church, we believe in the Communion of Saints.  It is the communion in holy things among holy people. (Catechism of the Catholic Church.)  Have you ever asked anyone to pray for you?  That is the communion of saints at work.  We are all called to be saints; those of us on this Earth now and all those who have passed before us (who we believe to be in heaven.)  The saints in heaven and the saints in training on earth create the largest network of prayer imaginable.  Catholics do not pray to the saints, we ask them to intercede (to pray for us).  Who better to ask than souls that are in heaven with God?  Out of my need for employment I began a novena (9 day prayer) to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal:

Employment
Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal

Novena
Say this prayer once a day for nine consecutive days:
O Lady of the Miraculous Medal, who once experienced the hardships and difficulties of acquiring the temporal necessities of life, look with compassion upon me no faced with the same difficulties, and assist me, to find suitable employment.  I am anxious, dear Mother, to be gainfully engaged in work that will relieve my temporal needs without in any way endangering the spiritual well-being of my soul.  Direct me to employment that will enable me fittingly to provide for myself and dependents.  I am confident that you will heed my prayers, O Immaculate Mother, and grant my request.  In return I shall publish your goodness that others may know the favor you enjoy with Almighty God unto His greater honor and glory…(mention silently your special intentions).  Amen.

**NEVER be afraid to ask for help and always ask people to pray for you.  Beautiful fruits will follow.**