Happy Halloween!

Here are some pictures from our pumpkin carving adventure of almost a week ago. Yes, our pumpkin already started to rot. Yes, it's now sitting outside instead of on our table! Haha. We got one pumpkin at Wal-Mart to carve together. Next year I definitely want to get two. And maybe go to a pumpkin patch! :-)

Ben, before we started carving

Pre-face

Wal-Mart had a pretty good selection of pumpkins! We were pleased. I found a template online to use, and I stuck with a simple one. Neither of us could really remember carving pumpkins on our own, so we didn't want to start out too complicated!

Pumpkin with template

Working with the stencil

(Yes we both wore our Panther's jerseys. No, it did not help the Panthers to a victory. Yes, I would've had one of us change if we had gone out in public. :-)

Ben with the jack o'lantern!

Me with him

Glowing in the dark!

We had fun with the whole process! We also roasted the pumpkin seeds--yum. And now we have a Halloween tradition that we didn't have before we were married. :-)

We don't have big plans for celebrating today, but we did buy some candy "just in case we get any trick-or-treaters" (AKA for us to eat all week and finish eating after tonight!).

Candies!

Hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween!

Show Us Your Life--Costumes!

I was totally going to do our pumpkin carving post today, but I think I'll save it for Halloween. Don't worry, this post is Halloween-themed, too. Kelly is hosting another carnival, so click here to see more fun costumes!I'm just posting one costume, but it's my favorite one! It's from the library last year, and all of us in the children's department dressed as Rainbow Magic Fairies. It's a hugely popular series of books, and one girl in particular was OBSESSED, so we all dressed up for her. And it freaked her out a bit, I think. Haha. Although she later did draw a picture of all of us dressed up, so I think once the shock of the life-size fairies wore off, she was impressed. :-)

Anyway, I chose a pink fairy (obviously), and spent FOREVER looking for a pink tutu/skirt. I thought that would be the easy part, but it wasn't. And I spent a bit more than I wanted on the tutu I ended up with, but it WILL be used again! I wish I was working this year so that I could dress up in this exact same costume. I think the outfit would DEFINITELY make an impression, especially if I wasn't working as a children's librarian. Hehe.

Luckily, the only other things I had to buy were the jewelry and the wings. Shockingly, I had plenty of other pink clothes to wear. :-)

Anyway, here is my inspiration!

Sienna

And here I am all dressed up!

It was such a fun costume, and I have such fun memories of putting it together and actually wearing it. Happy almost-Halloween!!

Fun mail!

I told you my mother-in-law was awesome!! In addition to the sweet gift that we had waiting for us when we got back from our trip home (that included the cute pumpkin towels!), she sent us a box full of Halloween treats that we got yesterday!!

Box o'treats

It included Peeps (I love them!), candy corn, peanut butter Ghiradelli squares, gummy worms, Pez, MORAVIAN COOKIES (yum, yum, yum!), popcorn, cider mix, and ORANGE hot chocolate mix. You better believe I will be taking a picture when we break out the hot chocolate because I haven't seen anything like it before! :-)

My mother-in-law is SO thoughtful and good at putting gifts together, and she usually sends one for each major holiday (and mine almost always include the appropriate Peeps! :-). See the orange and black tissue paper in the picture? Every holiday gift is themed like that--with cute wrappings and cards. My Valentine's gift last year included some red glass hearts as part of the packaging that I've been making part of my decor since.

Thanks, Deborah, for loving on us near and far!

Goings-on!

Random stuff that probably (be thankful!) won't get a post of its own. :-)

Ben bought me flowers, and I got to use one of our pretty vases for the first time!

I got to pull out the Jack-o-Lantern place mats (one of my mother-in-law's annual Halloween gifts to me--this year, it was cute pumpkin towels! :-)

I spray-painted a lamp base. :-)

Before

After!

I took pictures of our bedroom in case anyone at home wanted to see! None of them turned out very well. And they all highlighted how bare our bedroom is. It's spacious, though!!

I (perhaps) burned a hole in a recipe because I had turned on the wrong burner and did not realize it.

And, finally, a little blast from the past. I saw these pictures on my computer, and I just have to share! In preparation for the wedding back in February, I ordered TONS of shoes from Zappos to try on....I had liked their service before, and I knew they had free shipping for returns. It was still VERY STRANGE (and slightly exhilarating! :-) to order $700 worth of shoes. (Another random fun fact--I did not know how to spell exhilarating til now.)

The giant box they came in (the UPS guy could not believe it was full of shoes!)

Most of the choices

The stack of shoe boxes

So, I took a few of my favorites to try on with my dress, chose the wedge (the fourth one over in the picture above), and then CHANGED MY MIND. Haha. I ended up with a different wedge by the same brand.

My wedding shoe

I liked it because of the pretty rhinestones and because the wedge was a little shorter. I may or may not sometimes feel like a giant around my tiny friends and my super-skinny husband. :-) And I may or may not have had to lug that giant box to a UPS store later.

And that's your dose of random for today!!

Perfect fall weekend

This past weekend was great! I'm so glad, especially because we had been in NC just a week ago, and it's easy to dwell on missing people. Luckily, the weather cooperated on Saturday, and we got to spend time outside. We were planning to go to the corn maze (we planned to do this once before, and it didn't happen that time either!), but it was closed due to (what else, St. Louis weather???) rain. Luckily we checked the website before we drove out there! So instead, we went to the Cahokia Indian mounds just over the state line in Illinois. Fun fact: the mounds are named for Native Americans that didn't actually build them, but stayed there later. The Mississippians were the actual mound builders. That's my takeaway from the lovely museum, which (to me) was way less enjoyable than wandering around and seeing the grounds. Ben might beg to differ. And he might have lots more information to share. But this isn't his blog, now is it??? :-)

A mound, for your viewing pleasure

Some beautiful fall foliage

Another mound

A view across the street of Monks Mound, the largest one!

One of the sets of stairs that leads up to the top of Monks Mound

View of St Louis from the top!

Prairie-like landscape

I had a lot of fun exploring, and the weather was just perfect! To top it off, on our way home we stopped and bought a pumpkin! We carved in on Sunday--I have pictures of that too, but I think I'll save them for next time. :-)

We went to Chicago

Like I said before, we did go to Chicago...oh about three weeks ago! But it was SO much fun, and I'm so excited to re-live our trip a little bit. We drove in on a Friday afternoon--it took about 6 hours to get there. Luckily for us (well, I take most of the credit, really :-), my awesome friend and old roomie lives right downtown. And her awesome boyfriend got us a pass to park in a parking deck near their apartments. So we left our car for the weekend, and walked everywhere!

We did all we could to see Chicago in a day, and I think we did a great job of it (in spite of the rain!! haha).

The view from Katherine's apartment...gorgeous!

I just have to mention my jealousy here....her apartment was gorgeous, in a huge, tall building (on the 32nd floor!), with windows EVERYWHERE, and she could walk to SO many things. It's a completely different lifestyle from the one we're living here, and this was the first time I've ever even wanted to live that way. I couldn't do it forever, of course. And I do love our little homey apartment here in the suburbs. Still, I did love every second of our visit!

One of the first things we did was visit Millennium Park, and see the big bean! Ben loved it.

All of us, reflected in the bean (see Katherine and me in the background?)

The bean itself!

We walked all around for a while in the nicer weather on Saturday morning. We saw the AWESOME library....huge huge huge with a new teen center. And a children's section as big as some library buildings. That was fun, but I didn't get any pictures!

We also saw the Chicago Tribune building which has pieces of famous places/buildings from around the world. That was another favorite of Ben's!

Katherine and I (most pictures of me this whole trip are this bad or worse--hence why you aren't seeing anymore...but I had to show one of me and my sweet friend who hosted us :-)

What else did we do?? It seems like hundreds of things! We rode the subway out to Wrigley Field right when a game was about to start.

Ben's favorite place ever

We rode a bus out to Navy Pier, right as it started to rain like crazy.

The rain had finally stopped here!

We walked the Magnificent Mile and saw all kinds of shops (including a huge American Girl store--the kind that has a restaurant, salon, etc. inside--I made everyone go in!). We ate the best stuffed pizza EVER. It just may still be my favorite part of our whole trip. We ate some yummy Thai food, too. We saw Lee Ann Womack perform at Chicago's country music festival--again in the rain. :-) And went up in the Hancock Tower at night--the views weren't great cause of the weather, and I may or may not have accidentally ordered $7 tea. Haha.

It was just a fun, whirlwind trip, and I am so glad that we went. We left pretty early on Sunday morning, but we sure made the most of our day in Chicago.

My favorite picture of the trip! :-)

Snapshots

We've been busy. It's been great. I have high hopes about job possibilities. Each of these subjects probably deserves its own post--and may very well get one someday. But for now...

We went to Chicago!

(Ben taking photo; me and Katherine in the background; all of us reflected in the bean!)

I decorated for Halloween

(and we have a real pumpkin now; and we're going to carve it!)

We went home to NC

(Words cannot express how much good it did me to see my wonderful friends and family)

In non-pictured news, when we got back from NC, there was a WONDERFUL care package waiting for me from my wonderful co-workers in Chapel Hill. I really should've taken a picture of it, but it had SO many goodies. Pink markers, sticky notes, regular note cards, pasta, pretty coasters, Tupperware, jewelry, soap, stickers, on and on and on. I felt so loved! :-)

We also got a sweet package from my wonderful mother-in-law with cute pumpkin towels and more gifts off our wedding registry--ones I was really wishing we'd gotten! It was another sweet surprise.

Also, my mother took me shopping while I was in NC--to buy clothes for interviews. And those very clothes got complimented at my first interview! Yay for that!

Lastly, I got my hair cut and highlighted right before we went to NC. My mother-in-law gave me a generous gift certificate to my salon, and my sweet mom pitched in when I decided to go for the (more expensive) highlights. I am so glad to have women in my life who appreciate the need for good hair. I am SO GLAD that I got my hair cut and layered--I thought my hair was a permanent tangled mess, but it turns out it was just the cut. Thank goodness!

Well, that's enough randomness for now, I guess. Although Ben and I did go to the Cahokia Indian mounds today. It was a beautiful day, and I took lots of pictures. Quite possibly another post to look forward to!!

It's been a while....

I've been in a funk lately, with the job search really getting me down in the dumps. But, I feel like I was losing perspective on a lot of things (the economy, the actual length of my search, etc.), and I am feeling much better about life in general and about job possibilities on the horizon. Granted, I have a few more hopeful possibilities than I had before, so that might have something to do with it. And, we have a fun weekend planned for this weekend. And my wonderful in-laws are flying us home for a visit VERY soon. So, all-in-all, things are looking up! I hope to be posting more again soon.

Fun things from lately:

Cutest things ever! You can edit the text and type in addresses. You can print them out on sticky paper, and have easy labels. Or you can print them out on regular paper and glue them to envelopes. If you've gotten any mail from me recently, you've seen them! :-) They're fun!

I found that site through this one. It's focused on weddings, but she posts tons of cute craft stuff that you can use for lots of different occasions!

Fall TV! Including, but not limited to, The Office (Pam and Jim have a wedding website, which I just learned about thanks to my friend Allison. FUN!), Project Runway, Top Chef (what is up with no new episode this week??), that new show Modern Family (I loooove it!).

OK, well I need to go get ready for this weekend! :-)