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My Grandma Borup sent me some really cool glass Halloween ornaments and my Halloween tree isn't looking shabby anymore. I'm not sure if she reads this, but I wanted to show her how cute they look on the tree. Now, you know I hate Wal-mart, but I needed to get my brake light fixed during my lunch and it's the only place that I know of near my office so after I dropped my car off and was browsing when I saw these.
Don't they look like Christmas decorations that you would find in Martha Stewart Magazine instead of Wal-mart? They were right in the middle of putting all of their Christmas items out, and I have to say that I was really impressed and surprised by some of them (granted you can still find their usual cheesy-smiling-bears-hugging-Santa type decorations too, but I think it's still worth checking out). I found something really cool that I'm going to alter a little bit, but it's a gift for Candice so I can't show you pictures until I give it to her. I'll keep you posted!

Tis the season to be spooky!

How can it be Thursday already? It seems like when I do well posting on one blog, the other one always suffers. Sorry about that.

The most exciting thing going on in my life is that I'm on the nominating committee for middle grade fiction for the 2006 Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards (the Cybils), which you can read about here.

My sister Candice's family is coming into town tomorrow night for one of our favorite events of the year, The Circleville Pumpkin Show. Each year we go with a group of friends on a quest to find the craziest pumpkin flavored food possible. The verdicts so far? Pumpkin pizza- distgusting; pumpkin chili, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin fudge, pumpkin doughnuts, and deepfried pumpkin blossoms - all delicious! This year I heard they have pumpkin cornbread which we'll have to check out to go along with our pumpkin chili (which is a must have every year). They always have the biggest pumpkin pie in the world, but this year since it's the 100th Pumpkin Show, they are making it bigger than ever. The winners have already been decided for this year's biggest pumpkin competition and you can check it out here.

I'm not a huge fan of haunted houses, but this year they have one that sounds really fun that takes place downtown in the replica of the Santa Maria. It's pirate themed!

For those of you with smaller kids, there's a Ghost Train in town designed to not be too scary and it sounds pretty fun too.

Church week

Last week was quite a “church week” Tuesday was enrichment (which I ended up skipping and Larry ended up going to so he could help with baby-sitting), Wednesday I spent the evening visiting teaching, Thursday I hosted the ward book club, then Friday we went to a dinner for married couples at the institute and listened to the temple president speak. I thought we would have a free Saturday, but we ended up being asked to speak in sacrament meeting so we spent part of Saturday and Sunday morning writing our talks. Since Larry got the phone call I didn’t find out what my topic for my talk was until about 4:30 on Friday afternoon and it was “sharing personal experiences people have had with the book of Mormon that have strengthened their testimonies of prophets”. Uhh, what? Kind of specific, and I couldn’t find any personal experiences to share so I called my dad a little panicked thinking that since he is a bishop he would know exactly what I should talk about and he would have some great stories for me. No such luck, but he told me that I could talk about whatever I wanted and the bishoprich wouldn’t do anything about it and no one in the congregation would know. I was tempted to take his advice, but I stuck with the topic and with a little help from Larry I think it turned out fine. I’m just glad it’s over. It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t have a lot of notice because I get so nervous when I think about having to speak in public but I didn’t have a lot of time to stress about it.

Of course we did find time to watch the OSU football game with friends on Saturday. It was our turn to cook so Larry and I made chili from a recipe Cat developed. It’s my favorite chili ever. I’m not much of a cook and this recipe has to cook for at least two hours, but it’s totally worth it (on special occasions anyway). Larry bought enough ingredients to double the recipe, but we didn’t need to so he ended up making it twice, once on Saturday for the game and again on Sunday so we could invite some friends over for a late dinner. These two lovely little ladies ended up being part of the party. Aren’t they adorable?

Thursday report

Yesterday was a pretty good day. During my lunch, I finished the invitations for a get together that we’re having with a few friends.

I stopped by to drop one off to my friend Jason who manages a car wash and he gave me a free wash (which I hate to admit how much my car desperately needed). Then right before I left work, I had an aha moment when I was thinking about a writing project that I’ve been wanting to start, but I couldn’t quite fit together. Then I headed home to host the grown-up book club I also attend. The book that I chose was I Capture the Castle (thanks to a recommendation from my sister Candice) and I was happy to hear that everyone loved it. Yesterday was really cold with a few snow flurries so I decided to make a dessert that would be good served warm and I settled on Jeaneane’s Pumpkin Cake. The recipe is posted on the Children’s Literature Book Club site, but I’ll post it at the end of this post for those of you who are interested. I recommend serving it warm with a little Cool Whip or vanilla ice cream.

Book club was great, but I had plenty of dessert leftover so Larry and I decided we had just enough time to make a few deliveries. I got to see that Lisa is over her strep-throat, I got to find out the sex of the baby my friend Katherine is having (and I’m not telling, you’ll have to talk to her to find out), and I got to see Rebekah’s new baby Moira (Yes, Rebekah who was just apple picking with me on Saturday had her baby on Monday and they are both doing well).

Here is the recipe for Jeaneane's pumkin cake (which is a little bit more like a cobbler than a cake)...
For the "crust"
1 yellow cake mix (minus 1 cup--for later)
1 egg
1 stick (1/2 cup) melted margarine/butter
Mix and place in 9x13

Then mix together--
2 cups pumpkin (I usually just use one small can which is 15oz.--close enough!!)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 teas. pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teas salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup evap milk
1 teas. vanilla
Pour this over the "crust"

Then "cut" and crumble over top--
1 cup cake mix
1 teas. cinnamon
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cold margarine/butter

Bake 45-50 minutes in 350 degree oven.

Feeling Festive

My mom asked for some photos of my Halloween decorations so here are a few to start with. First is our front door with the pumpkins we picked up at the Lynd Fruit Farm this weekend.And this is our entryway.

You can't really see Larry's cemetary so here's a closeup, but it was a little dark when I took this picture so it didn't turn out very well.

Apples & Pumpkins

The weather was gorgeous on Saturday so Larry and I picked up our friends Chris and Rebekah and their daughter Ellie and headed out to the Lynd Fruit Farm to pick some delicious Suncrisp and Melrose apples.It's a good things we brought friends because I don't think Larry really enjoys farms, and he didn't pick a single apple. He said it was because he was the designated photographer, but he wouldn't even taste an apple while we were there because he said they were covered with nasty pesticides. What are we going to do with this city boy? Ellie can testify that the apples are delicious.
We stopped at the farmers market and picked up some fun pumpkins and some fudge for Larry. Larry said that the fudge alone was worth the trip.

Craft Projects

I'm in love with these purses! Your favorite book and a cute purse all in one, isn't that such a clever idea? I don't think that I can afford one, but I think that I could make my own. I even found a web site that sells handles like the ones that they use.

The other fun project that I've seen lately is this cool All About Me Album from Creating Keepsakes. I'm totally NOT a scrapbooker, but it looks like it's laid out for you with easy directions so it would be simple to put together and it's a great price for that amount of stuff. Plus $3 from the purchase of every album goes to support breast cancer initiatives so you really can't go wrong.

You can see some fun examples of some of the finished albums on Lisa Bearson's site and Ali Edward's blog.

Yikes!

What's that all over my lawn, you ask? Hail! Giant, scary balls of Hail. We had a crazy storm last night around 6:30. The hail only lasted about five minutes, but it was incredibly loud and the tornado sirens started and I thought we were going to lose a few of our windows. Larry went out when we thought the hail was over to show you a little of our surprise, but right after I took this picture a big piece of hail hit him right on the head and he had to head back inside.

I waited until about 15 minutes after the storm cleared up and the hail melted a lot, but it was still huge.
And yes, there was damage. There are holes in the siding on the west side of our house. I knew it could dent, but I didn't know hail could punch right through it! I think we're going to have to have someone check out our roof too. Oh the joys of homeownership! It's a good thing we have insurance.

Experience Columbus Days

If you happen to be one of my few readers that actually live in Ohio, I thought that you would want to know about Experience Columbus Days. Experience Columbus Days takes place one weekend a year and it's this weekend (October 6 - 9). Check out the site and print out their card to get half off a lot of fun Columbus sites like the Columbus Santa Maria or COSI or The Wilds.

Happy Birthday Larry

Blogger seems to be having a bad day so we’ll see if I can ever get this to post.

Larry turned 31 on Friday. We both had to spend the day at work (it was Larry’s last day on his GI rotation, yay! I’m really looking forward to his rotation this month in the student health clinic. Who knows, we might actually have time to do something fun!) I’m afraid that I didn’t make his birthday as exciting as I could have because I’ve been feeling so sick, but hopefully that will end now that I’ve been on antibiotics for a few days. We were able to go out to dinner with our friends Donny and Jessica. Larry wanted good seafood and in Columbus, Ohio that leaves us with about one option so we headed to Cameron Mitchell’s Fishmarket. The food was good and Larry even got a free birthday dessert.

And in answer to your question, “Does he ever make a normal face in pictures?” here’s another picture.

I think Larry loves having his birthday around Halloween, his favorite holiday which also happens to include huge amounts of sugar. Keri and Matt sent him a Halloween card in place of a birthday card and I don’t think he could have been happier with it.

We spent most of our weekend watching General Conference and enjoying the wonderful fall weather. Larry watched the Priesthood session and then headed over to Jeremiah’s to watch the OSU game, which was Tivoed. I thought he would be too busy to continue a tradition that he started after we got married, but he still remembered. After every Priesthood session he comes home with flowers. This orchid is beautiful, but I’m not too confident in my ability to keep it alive.