Birthday Weekend: Friday

On my birthday weekend we headed to a nearby pumpkin patch/farm with Dan's family.  We had a fun evening together even though we thought it cost too much :).  I told Dan we really needed to start our own Halloween attraction to compete with them because there really aren't many down here.  I'm sure we never will, but somebody should!

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures with cousins, these pretty much just document Claire's experience at the pumpkin patch:

Watching the animals

Riding the tractor

Petting zoo area

On the hayride

Family photo!  I really like this picture of us especially with the beautiful red rock in the background.

perfect

Tonight was a perfect fall night. It started out with a dinner of chili and cornbread. Followed by FHE. Our activity was visiting the pumpkin patch (only 1 block from our house). It was the first time I had ever been to a pumpkin patch (that i can remember).

Searching for the perfect pumpkin...

Dan's criteria: the biggest one he could find.

My criteria: perfectly round and not too heavy.

Found it!

Ta da!

We had a fabulous time!

We then came home and enjoyed some delicious pumpkin bars/cake, which i found here on Food Network. Super easy and good! They were the perfect ending to a fall evening.

october

i feel like i have not blogged in a long time! i blame work. whenever i get home i just want to sleep :). however... it's fall, my favorite time of year, which means i must blog about it! one of my favorite fall traditions is visiting gardner village! if you have never been, you definitely should go this month. the village is full of fun little shops and during the month of october it is the best! last weekend we went with some of Dan's family. we had a fabulous time!

here we are with one of the many witches found at gardner village

ethan & tiana by the sweet shoppe. their adorable baby was sleeping the whole time.

we also went with dan's mom and his brother and his brother's wife and their 3 kids. unfortunately i didn't get pictures of them. after wards we went to one of my favorite stores, ikea! we only planned on buying one or two things, but of course walked away with a cart full.

other than that we are both just working. i am looking forward to the fun fall things we have planned for our kindergarten including visiting the pumpkin patch and having a halloween parade.

oh and did i mention it's my birthday month??? that's right, i don't just celebrate one day, i celebrate the whole month! i even started the month off right by getting a free birthday meal at archibalds, the restaurant at gardner village. i have about 10 other free birthday meals piling up in my email. i plan on using as many of the coupons as possible. :)

October

I always love the month of October. Halloween is definitely one of my favorite holidays and there are so many fun things to do! Here are some pics of a few of the things we did....

Went to Gardner Village with Dan's fam. I love that place! They decorate really cute for Halloween.

Carved pumpkins.

Here are our friends, Laura & Brandon.

Dan concentrating.

Our Pumpkin.

Their pumpkin.

Got lost in the corn maze!

A word of advice, don't go to a corn maze on the last day of the season, because all of the corn is trampled and you will have a hard time deciphering if a path was intended to be there or not. At least we had that problem. We also went in broad daylight, which made it very easy to find our way through- at least the weather was nice!

A few other things we did: celebrated my birthday, ate lots of halloween candy, passed out some of that candy to trick or treaters, watched halloween movies, and at my school we had a halloween parade and the kids were crazy! We are now looking forward to Thanksgiving and then Christmas! I just love the holidays!

October- get here already!

Only 2 more days until my favorite month! Not only is Halloween in October, but so is my birthday. It has always been my favorite. I love that there is so much to do during the month of October as well. We are already planning on going to Gardner Village this weekend- if you've never been, you should go. I hear it is so much fun during Halloween!

I just put up my Halloween decorations tonight (Dan told me to wait til October, but I just couldn't!) and it got me all excited! Then as I was looking through some pictures I found these:

This is ME! I have no idea how old i am... maybe 4?

And this is Dan! He's so cute! As far as I know, we were not at the same pumpkin patch :)

Anyway, I just HAD to put up these photos to help celebrate the coming of October!!!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

My friend made these last week and they were sooo good! I asked her how to make them and have been craving them ever since, so I tried it out today. I think it's the easiest recipe ever and very fitting for the season, so I figured I'd share :)


All you need is...
1 spice cake mix
A can of pumpkin... Either a 16 oz. can or you can use half of one of the big 30 oz. cans
1 bag of semi sweet chocolate chips

That's it!

Just mix the 3 ingredients together, put the mixture into a muffin tin that is either greased or use liners and you're all set to bake it. If you look on the back of the cake box, it'll tell you how long to cook a muffin tin for. For example, I used Duncan Hines and it said bake for 18-21 min. on 350. So you'll just have to read the back of your box.

If you're wondering... my recipe made 18 muffins.

They are amazingly simple and so yummy! Enjoy!!!

Also... if you want to know another secret, you can also use this recipe to make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Instead of putting them in a muffin tin, just put them on a baking sheet. I believe you bake them at 350 but for less time. I think around 12 min... but you may have to keep an eye on them to make sure.

Halloween Decorations

Ok so, Tuesday night Dan had a volleyball game and I didn't really want to go (due to an earlier incident of being smacked in the face), so I decided that I would go get my Halloween decorations while he was at his game! Such a good idea! I figured I would see what I could find at some nearby stores. This is how my shopping went:

First I went to Shopko, but there wasn't much there and most of it was expensive or not cute.

I then decided to go to the dollar store because it was right around the corner. Everything at the dollar store was ugly or smelled weird (which i should have expected of the dollar store anyway).

I then went to ANOTHER dollar store (not sure why, it just happened to be on the way) and still there was just junk.

So my last stop was Smith's the grocery store, because I had noticed a halloween isle there while grocery shopping. Anyway, at Smith's a sketchy man was in the Halloween isle and he was yelling at someone on his cell phone, so I pretty much avoided the isle.

Needless to say, my shopping trip was completely pointless and i was kind of upset. What a waste of time! I then picked up Dan from his game and I think he was surprised to find out that i had spent $0!

But don't worry, this story does have a happy ending... last night, Dan and I decided to go to a REAL craft store to see if we would have better luck. Since Robert's Craft is fairly close to our house and I had a coupon there, we decided it was the best place. So we went and they had tons of isles of Halloween decorations! And they were CUTE!!! I was soooooo excited! I kept on grabbing things from every isle (it was Halloween decoration shopping heaven!)... and the best part is that all of the decorations were %50 off! So we got lots of cute decorations and put them up in our house! Yay Halloween! So for those of you wondering where to get Halloween Decorations, I highly suggest Robert's Craft!

And thank you to my fabulous husband for funding the trip :)

October!

so basically i love my birthday (October 20th)! i pretty much celebrate it the whole month. just ask Dan, i have been talking about it for months and finally October is here (tomorrow)! anyway, i love pretty much everything about october- my birthday, halloween, conference, fall leaves, carving pumpkins,-- it's all so fun! i can hardly wait to do tons of halloween things this month! i've been wanting to decorate for halloween for the past month, but Dan told me to wait until at least October 1st. so i already told him, tonight we are buying decorations so we can put them up tomorrow! i love it! thus the birthday countdown has begun... :)