Cool things

Last night I got a package from my friend Jen that really made my day. I'm so excited about this leaf plate for my leaf plate collection. I don't have any oak leaves and this one is so cool.

And speaking of cool, a while back I bought this cupcake holder and Larry made cupcakes last night so I got to try it out for the first time. It worked perfectly! You can even toss it around and turn it upside down and the cupcake doesn't get squished.
We bought it at the container store but you can also buy them at cupacake.com.

It's beginning to look a lot like Halloween

I pulled out my Halloween decorations last weekend. I haven't had time to finish decorating, but I did get a few things up. It's making me feel festive. I think it's time to buy some pumpkins.

summary

Ah, I’m behind on the blog so here’s the quick version of the last week:

• The ward service auction went really well (although I would have loved to see more people there)
• We collected loads of clothes and 520 lbs of food for the Mid-Ohio Food Bank
• I did auction off graphic design for a Christmas card and our friends the Roessners won, which I’m excited about because they’ll be fun to work with
• We also donated an evening of babysitting and the Hardys won and I’m looking forward to it because their kids are adorable
• We watched the buckeye game with friends and celebrated another win
• Larry got a cold
• I got a Larry’s cold
• We had dinner at the Whiteheads and the Carpenters and I felt spoiled and I didn’t attempt to actually cook anything all week
• I spent yesterday afternoon picking up things at a friend’s apartment to mail to her because she will not be coming back to Ohio (so sad!)
• I got to watch a new episode of the Gilmore Girls last night (yay new season!)
• I did not prepare for Larry’s birthday (which is Friday) and so far the only gifts that I have for him are two ties, which he already knows about.

I guess I still have a lot to do!

Christmas in September?

I started working on my card kits (which happen to be due fairly soon so I know what I'll be doing for the next week and a half). One of the kits that I have to do is a Christmas kit, but I'm having a hard time thinking about Christmas at this time of the year.

Anyway, I've been trying to come up with idea for a service I could donate to the ward auction that people would actually want to bid on. I realized that a lot of my skills are not that marketable. Since I've been working on the card kits I've been thinking about donating a custom design for a baby announcement or Christmas card. The winner would provide the photo(s) that they want to you and I woulr work with them to come up with the rest. Would you bid on that? Is there anything that you know that I can do that you would bid on? I feel like there must be something fun that I can do and I'm just missing it.

On that note, here are two of the Christmas card kit frames that I've come up with so far with some random pictures in them.

A ward activity

Larry and I are the Chairpeople for our ward activities committee and the committee has planned a really fun activity for this Friday (well, I’m hoping that it will be fun anyway). We are holding a ward service auction. The way it works is we asked each couple in the ward to donate at least one service/skill/homemade item that will be auctioned off to other members of the ward. In order to bid on these items the ward members will bring donations of non-perishable food and cast-off clothing that is still in good shape. They will get a point for each item they donate and they can use their points to bid on services being offered. We will be donating the clothing and food to two different charities.

Some people in the ward have signed up to do really cool things. Ben Johnson said he will tile a room for someone and all they have to provide is the tile. Our friends Jason and Liz, who own their own car detailing business, will detail the interior and exterior of someone’s car, and my friend Rachel (who has dual citizenship in the US and Switzerland) will host “a night in Switzerland” and make a raclette dinner. The list goes on and on: a steak dinner, juggling lessons, sewing an item of your choice with fabric that you choose, use of a pickup and driver, a pedicure, handyman services . . . Larry is really hoping to win Ben Peterson's service because he signed up to mow someone's lawn.

We’re still hoping to get a few more members involved so hopefully the list will grow. It’s been fun learning about some of our friends’ hidden talents.

Visitors

The Ortons are back from their summer in Washington! We were lucky enough to have them spend the night since they weren't moving into their apartment until today. They are moving into the apartment complex we lived in before we bought our house and since they had to change wards anyway, they've decided to try out our ward. Yay!

Check out this picture of Rebekah and you can tell that she's one of my best friends because she's reading one of my favorite books to her daughter. Can you guess what it is?

Random thoughts

I'm back after missing a day of work. I love fall, but it's usually a sign that I'm about to have some major allergies and maybe a sinus infection and this year was no different. Yuck! The good news that yesterday I got to lay in bed all day, which allowed me to finally sew the eyes on the monkey that I started awhile back and read River's Edge by Shannon Hale all in one sitting. I'll try to review it on the book club blog soon.

With falls also comes a desire to become more organized. Maybe it's from seeing all of those school supplies in stores. Anyway, I just came across this link and I think that I need to make a wall pocket of my own.

I've also been meaning to tell you that my friend Krissy started a new blog and you can check it out here.

Happy Surprises

When I got home from work last night there was a beatup package sitting in the middle of my driveway in front of my garage. I knew immediately that it was a birthday present from my friend Alicia. I love early and late birthday presents because they spread out the joy a little longer. I opened it up to find this cool letter S. Alicia also has a typography obession so I think she needs to go back to the store where she got this and get herself a letter A because it's so cool. Now I have to find the perfect place for my S.

Later that evening Donny and Jessica stopped by with a new family member. Meet Dudley!

He is the cutest, softest, calmest four-month-old puppy you have ever met. Donny and Jessica love their cats so I've always thought of them as cat people, and I was totally surprised when they showed up with Dudley. Hopefully we'll have a chance to pet-sit for them sometime.

As if all of that wasn't enough to provide us with a happy evening, Larry and I stopped at Target and they had some of their Halloween stuff out. You all know Larry is a junkfood junkie, and I only encourage him. He loves vanilla flavored Tootsie rolls so he buys bags of them every Halloween and he hoards them all year. He even has a little left from last Halloween. Of course we had to replenish is stock and then we had to try green apple flavored candy corn because we were just too curious and the same goes for the new tiny cans of Jones Soda. Come on, who doesn't need to try spiced cider and candy corn falvored soda? (yes, I know it's a little weird that we bought soda flavored like candy corn and candy corn flavored like green apples).

Back to Life . . .

I hope that you all had a good weekend. Rachel's baby shower went well. I took a few pictures at the shower, but somehow I didn't end up with any pictures of Rachel. Instead here's a picture of the diaper cake that I made for a centerpiece.

Rachel, Heather, and Katherine stuck around after the shower and Larry ended up making lunch for us. It was nice to have some of my best friends from the ward together just to chat.

Larry spent the afternoon sleeping, which he desperately needed because he is working long hours, and I think he's beginning to feel a little burnt out. Luckily next month he's doing a rotation at the student clinic at OSU so his hours should a little better.

Of course our Saturday evening was spent watching the OSU vs. Texas game. You can't live in Coumbus this long without getting caught up in a little of the hype. We got together with some of the friends that we made our first year here. I love watching games with them because they are some of the biggest Buckeye Fans that we know. And they also happen to all be excellent cooks so we had a great dinner of egg rolls and chicken wings and Larry and I brought along Jeni's Ice cream for dessert. Since the Buckeyes won, it was a happy evening for all!

It's beginning to feel a lot like fall!

I love fall and we've had a little bit of fall weather here. I love the crisp air, apple picking, sweaters, fall leaves, and the Pumpkin Festival. One of my favorite signs of fall around here is when the shops in Worthington start decorating for Halloween. You know I love decorating for any holidays and Larry loves Halloween so we tend to go all out for Halloween. I took two pictures of the cool displays I saw in Worthington, and I think they are pretty good examples of my style of Halloween decorating vs. Larry's.

Larry's: Mine:

In fact, I just realized in the "Larry Style" picture that last year I totally bought that tray in the front that says "Dr. Frankenstein" on it has has fake eyeballs in it because I knew Larry would love it. I'm always tempted to start decorating for Halloween really early, but that hasn't hit me yet this year because I'm hosting a baby shower this weekend. We are still working on plans for a Halloween party, but we are in charge of the activities committee at church and we have to figure out what date we'll have that Halloween party before we plan our own.

Labor Day

So I know you think I didn’t blog because we were off doing exciting things this weekend, but the truth is we were fairly boring. Larry worked on Saturday from about 7 am until noon on Sunday. Then our friends the Freemans came over for dinner on Sunday and they ended up bringing us dinner (really yummy curry chicken) and dessert (homemade raspberry ice cream) even though Rachel is eight months pregnant (yes, I’m such a great friend).



Larry worked again Monday morning and then we spent the evening at the Ward New Member BBQ because Larry and I are in charge of the activities committee. We thought only one other member of the activities committee was going to be able to be there, but we were surprised by loads of help, and I think everything went pretty well. Larry and I didn’t want to play the normal get-to-know-you games that they always play at these things so we asked the committee to come up with some fun ideas and they did. First, we divided everyone into teams and gave them five minutes to build the biggest tower that they could with plastic cups. I was amazed by the winners, but I was too busy to grab my camera. We also gave each team a t-shirt in a ziplock bag, frozen in five cups of water and the first team to get the t-shirt on one of the members of their team won. Our only rule was that they couldn’t use the grill so people got pretty creative; some ran to the nearest building to use the hot water and some tried to heat it using their cars. The team that won melted it in a nearby creek.