Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Pumpkin Craze!

I get so excited for this time of year. A key feature is how excited I get about pumpkins. I love pumpkin bread, cookies, and decorating with pumpkins and the color orange. (ironically, I do NOT love pumpkin pie. How this can possibly be, I don't know, but I it is true. I even tried to love it again last Thanksgiving and I still don't love it...)

So naturally, I get excited about carving pumpkins. So excited in fact, that I inevitably get the urge too early in the season. Last year, we carved pumpkins about the first week in October, and they were oozing down the driveway by the time the trick-or-treaters came rolling around (its true, there are stains on my old roommates drive way- oops!) So this year, I thought I was reigning in the urges. September came around and the pumpkins started showing up in the grocery stores, and I started to get excited, but I told myself that I still had a LONG while before I needed to start planning that activity. The first weekend of October came, and I still refrained. So by the third weekend, I thought we were in the clear! These beauties became our doorstep display..


The quality Jack-o-lantern would be Bobby's artwork. The Spider randomly turned red would be mine. I decided since it wasn't a large pumpkin, not to clean it out and just do the cool surface carving. Turns out, that when you buy a "pie" pumpkin, it doesn't have that cool orange/white contrast. So I had an ugly orange/orange mess. So we improvised and I added red food coloring, and well.. you've seen the result of that!

Unfortunately, the sad ending to this story, is that week three is still too soon... It was very sad. Bobby's pumpkin turned into a squishy mess, and to prevent an oozing replay of last year and stains on our doorstep, it has passed on to the trash can. Next year, I think I'm banned from pumpkin carving until the week of Halloween!

Happy Halloween!!

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Oh, the glorious bed!


We recently (as of yesterday) joined the world of the real live furniture owners. (The kind of furniture you actually have to purchase rather than those items graciously bestowed upon you by very kind and loving family members and friends)

We decided that almost 8 months was a sufficient testing ground for whether or not a full bed was going to work out for us to sleep on. The key here is SLEEP on... not just lay down for 6-8 hours. For Bobby, who would have slept through punching me in the eyeball had it not been for me crying out in pain, sleeping may not be the problem. He apparently sleeps through everything (except for me screaming...) Though even heavy sleeper Bobby was beginning to notice the back aches he was continually waking up to...

I wish I had a picture for you that would actually do justice to the image. But just try to imagine this scene if you can. Bobby is 6'4" and has a habit of sleeping with his arms above his head, which means that his body starts about a foot into the bed already. This leaves pretty much everything from his knees down, directly hanging off the bed. (and due to age and lack of sturdy nature, this means the bottom half of the bed had a gradual curve downward) Then there is me, clinging as closely as I can to the edge of the bed, trying to leave as much as I can for Bobby because; 1) he's bigger than me, and 2) I knew that I, being the much lighter sleeper, was the one likely to wake up in the middle of the mattress or blanket war.

So decision made, we set out to buy a bed. It was an adventure of going from store to store and lying on lots of beds. Pretty much all of them, we decided, felt better than ours. Then came the moment of truth.... WHICH one of the fabulous beds out there were we going to take home? I think we started forgetting which ones we liked and which ones we hated, because we had laid on so many! We called and consulted with "the experts" (i.e. those of you who would answer your phones that night!) Then we chose our new bed!!!

It is so big we can both sleep in it and hardly know the other person is there! Bobby lying sideways is still bigger than out last bed!
I of course had to fight through a couple days of buyer's anxiety.. Did we get the right bed?? Was it worth the extra money for a bed that's better, or are they all so much better than our bed that we won't realize what we're missing once we are sleeping on it, and we should get the cheaper ones. Eric, one of our wise expert opinions, scoffed and rolled his eyes at that comment, apparently his vote was not for the questionable, cheap, no-name mattress. I'm sure he had our best interest, and our back's interest, at heart! But Bobby trumped all anxiety with the statement, "Megan, we are going to have this bed for 20+ years. Pick the bed you want for 20 years, and not just for right now." Alas, Decision made, we got the better bed. And we are very happy about it!

Saturday, October 27, 2007

halloween cupcake craziness

Every once in a while I get this little itch to do something outside of my realm of comfort and talent. (Lately I have been wanting to do them more frequently, which usually just means that our little apartment is going to be a disaster until I get it all sorted out!)

This year, for some reason, I have been dying to make random crazy Halloween cupcakes. Why? I don't know, but the desire was strong enough that I actually set out for a reason to have to make the cupcakes (because heaven knows we don't need to eat 2 dozen cupcakes all by ourselves...) So a friend and I decided to put together a Halloween shin dig, just so that we would have an excuse to make fun Halloween food.

It doesn't help, mind you, that Martha Stewart puts out all sorts of magazines with fun ideas, and my brain seems to interpret them thinking that they can't possibly be too hard or time consuming.. (again forgetting my lack of experience, or creative genes!)

Then, last week, they sent around a sign up sheet at church asking people to bring a dessert to the ward Halloween activity. My response, "SWEET!" (Still being in the excited motivated, having not yet started the project, phase...)


So this is me, Tuesday night. I pulled the table into the middle of the living room to watch TV while I played, since I was home by myself. And Bobby came home to quite a mess!

He didn't mind the mess so much- because then he got to eat pumpkin cupcakes, various colors of all cream cheese frosting and random candies. (He even tried to help me decorate a few. It was awesome. He used licorice to look like a knife sticking out of the cupcake!)

We had to strategically store the cupcakes so all the fancy frosting and candies would not bump into each other. However, when I went to collect the cupcakes Wednesday, they were in a little bit of a sad shape. The taffy, once stiff and spiked all fancy like, was looking a little more droopy, and the frosting also had softened up and gotten a little slippery looking...

But alas, we took them to the ward Halloween party anyway... But I was a little sad. I think people were a scared of them. By the time we left, I think about 5 of them had been eaten.. but I slyly took the plates out from under them and left them there in case someone else got brave and wanted to eat them (and lets be honest, I didn't want to walk out with them and have everyone know who had made the scary looking cupcakes!

So now, I got to make the silly cupcakes that I was excited about. It was half a success and half a bust... and now I'm stuck having to make them again Halloween night for the party I threw just so that I could the silly things! Sigh....

Sunday, October 21, 2007

A day in the life of a grape...

One of the wonderful things about working for state government is that I get just about EVERY holiday off! So for Columbus day, while Bobby slaved away at school, I headed up to Brigham City to make Grape Jelly and Grape Juice. Little did I know that was I was going to be doing the most of was making a giant purple mess!

The first bonus, is that I got to spend a few hours outside in the glorious sunshine. I love'd my life. Bobby can attest to my longing for the great outdoors. Sometimes I will just stare out our bedroom window with this sort of longing look on my face. True Story. That is when Bobby knows it is time for a field trip. So though it took hours, I looked for every little bunch of grapes I could find on the property lining my grandma/sister/ mom's house (this was my grandparent's home, the one my mom grew up in and that I would visit every summer, then my sister and her family bought if after my grandparent's passed away, and my mom rented it from my sister when their family moved to seattle... got all that?? I know, I know, it was a tangent)



Once the buckets full of grapes actually made it into the house, there was a lot of sitting around waiting for the grapes to do their thing, and cook all the juices out, and then 1000 things to do within a 2 minute period of time to get them properly in the jars, or made into jelly and jars sealed. This means also, that there was a colossal mess to made within those 2 minutes of waiting. I can't believe that I didn't get a picture of it... My favorite is when I grabbed onto the hose from the steamer juicer, without the instant realization that it was scorching hot. When the realization hit me, I let go of the hose and it when flailing about (like only hoses filled with liquid and snakes could imitate) Do not forget that the liquid in this hose was in fact grape juice, and yes, it sprayed ALL over the kitchen. Well, at least I got to spend some quality time with the bleach, and JoElle can rest assured that the floor under the stove has been sufficiently sanitized. At days end, the mess magically turned into some pretty delicious grape treats.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

bikes and skirts

I'm not so sure why, but I have this secret love for riding my bike in a skirt. I don't know if this is a suppressed connection to being a sister missionary, but I just love it. It makes me feel feminine and slightly cool all at the same time... Just waiting for the questioning backward glances.. Yes, that was a girl riding a mountain bike in a skirt that just rode by... Juvenile I'm sure, but isn't life all about the simple pleasures?


These pictures are from our trip to Oregon. There are beautiful excuses to ride your bike all over the place.


And, of course, I had to sneak in these pictures of Bobby showing off... uh.. I mean having fun!

Monday, October 15, 2007

Friday Night Date Night

Bobby asked me out on a date. He is beginning to realize that if he asks me, I'm then going to hold him responsible for planning the event. This is one of his fabulous ideas, and a perfect compromise for me needing a little spice and adventure by weeks end, and his need to just be able to chill and watch a movie..

BUILD A FORT!!

Since our living room is not very large, that really equals covering the entire living room and all of its furniture with all the blankets and sheets we own.


It was a great marathon date. First there is the building adventure...

The Monopoly inside the fort-

watching a movie on the computer-


and then slumber party!



Tuesday, October 2, 2007

A visit from the hair dye fairy


For most of my life, I was somewhat afraid of coloring my hair. I had this motto in my life that went something like this, "if my hair looks bad and it is naturally like this, it isn't my fault. But if it looks bad and I made it look like that, well then it IS my fault" So thus I led my life without hair color, and probably pretending that I had some high and mighty moral opposition to the whole thing.

However recently, I've had a change of heart. I don't know how long the phase will last, but I decided, HEY! I might as well experiment and do a few fun things to spice it up. So here is the closest thing that I get to spice. It feels pretty big to me.


I also have to tell you that I know little to nothing about haircolor, and can't really afford to go have someone do it who knows
what they are doing. So at first whim, I purchased a $3 soft black colored dye from the Wal-Mart. When a co-worker and my sister freaked out a bit about that option, I went for a small upgrade in price and down-grade in color. But instead of returning the original purchase.. Bobby decided he has always wanted to dye his hair black. So here you have it.. The new and improved (maybe..) Bobby and Megan! (That spiked do is what happens when you let your husband dye your hair!)