FallFest is over, Bring on the Harvest

The Fall Festival ended Saturday and while we were sad to see it go, we didn't waste any time moping around the house. Sunday was a beautiful day, so we went apple and pumpkin picking. We got lost going to one orchard, outdated gps maps, where we found that their season ended 2 weeks earlier. So, we drove to another about half an hour away. Linzy got to get herself a nice big pumpkin and we went out and picked about 3 ten pound bags of red and golden delicious apples. Linzy had a ball running about in the orchard though we had to chase her and keep her from going after the squishy ones on the ground.
It took us and hour to fill our 3 bags and it only cost us 16 dollars. We then stopped at the 'shop' on the way out of the orchard and grabbed a gallon of cider. (yay) After Linzy got up from her nap, we proceeded to peel and core some of the apples and cut them up for homade applesauce. Since we didn't have a food processor, we used a potatoe masher and an electric beater. The applesauce came out a bit thicker i think, though not with as small of particulates in it as the store brand. I did find out though that it tastes much better when its hot than cold applesauce does. We got almost 6 pints from 8lbs of apples.
With the rest of the apples we will be making applebutter and apple pie... maybe some more applesauce. Shannon, Ariel's mom, made apple butter with some store bought apples using mom's recipe and discovered that mom must make a double batch because we only got a couple pints from 3 lbs of apples.
Next weekend is camping at Lake Rudolph, the weekend after that is Baby O's birthday party (Linzy has been praticing singing), and then Halloween weekend, 1st weekend of Nov we have a birthday party in Nashiville TN to go to, and then the holidays approach...I'm going to need a vacation...