6th Annual Donuts in the Driveway

A few nights ago we hosted our 6th annual Donuts in the Driveway! I had debated whether or not to have it this year - with everything going on in our family - but the kids told me if I didn't do it - then they would!  The beautiful thing is how many people offered to help (and did help!) and that I took lots of pictures.  And by the way, I know I am spelling donuts wrong.  I just decided that I am not going to change it now!

I had a fabulous crew show up to help roll and cut the 30 lbs (!) of donut dough I had ordered from the local grocery store.  Great Grandmother Eldine who is 94 years old helped cut the dough (using her antique donut cutter) while Jan, Jamie, Addie and Isaac rolled the dough.  They worked so efficiently, they had the entire 30 lbs of dough cut in one hour!!  Awesome!

Addie tried to flatten her dough using the pizza tossing method.

I had two other tireless little helpers that helped put the dough on trays.

Isaac tried his hand at the pizza toss.  No worries - any dough that fell on the floor ended up in the garbage!

We expanded the glaze options this year.  My friend Kati made a maple cinnamon that was divine and my friend Scharman made a couple of cinnamon honey butters that were to die for!

We estimated that we had about 600 donuts!!!  They raised slowly in the house while we were busy getting everything else ready.

Somebody lost their tail!

Shawn (all the way from Pennsylvania), Kip and Micaela were the trusty donut cookers this year!

And I got to taste the very first donut hole of the evening!!

Wes trained the cookers in how to use the skewers effectively.

Our first batch of warm donuts.

Somebody got hold of the powdered sugar shaker!

Our new driveway expansion and landscaping gave the party a whole new feeling - and a lot more space!

And of course we added lots of twinkly lights.

We could not have pulled this off without help from my wonderful family and friends.

There were about 170 people that came and it was a huge success.

But one very special person was missed most of all - my mom was not able to make it this year.