I am exhausted. We had exactly three hundred trick or treaters this evening. I ran out of candy and started giving them the rubber snakes and bugs I had gotten for the party food table.

Note the creepy stretched plastic bag garland on the front door. Combine that with a black light, fog machine and some scarey music and you get some kids too scared to come up the front steps.

Since the movies projected on the sheet could be seen through the sheet outside, I played some old Casper cartoons too.

I had my third Halloween Party this evening and it was a smash. Aaron and I went as Napoleon Dynamite and Deb. People who hadn't seen the movie thought we were Justin Timberlake and Eighties Girl.

We were projecting old moves onto a sheet/screen in the sunroom and at some point switched it to the Thriller video. Aaron demonstrated the dance for everyone. I may be scarred for life.

I will have to make project pages for the spooky food... devil eggs, graveyard dirt and Tina's bloody punch. Here are some pictures from the party.

We had some Darien Lake Six Flag tickets we didn't use this summer, so we decided to go and check out the Fright Night this evening.

I have crinkle marks on my back from Tina clinging to my coat as we went through the haunted house. Personally I was more worried the oogey old guy from the Six Flag commercials was going to jump out of the shadows and start dancing.

In the style of the infamous frog cupcakes, Wegmans is making pumpkin cupcakes for the Halloween season. Aaron brought me one home the other night.

They don't quite have the wide eyed wonderment expression that the frogs did, but you have to appreciate their goofy unknowing smile. Such innocence... such sweetness... such yumminess in my tummy.

When I was at Lettuce Knit for Amy's book signing, I bought a skein of Blue Sky Alpaca Bulky Hand Dyed Yarn that looked like cotton candy. Foolishly I only bought one skein. Not enough for the scarf I envisioned. What was I thinking? Must have been the chocolate cake on the brain. I unknit and made the scarf narrower and narrower, but it just wasn't enough.

I searched my usual yarn haunts for the stuff... nothing. Then I found Spirit Work Knitting and Designs on the Blue Sky website. ( I am loving Blue Sky... yummy yarns, cute patterns and it all comes from these critters... "alpaca is a small, rare and curious and intelligent fiber producing animal sheared once a year for the most luxurious fiber in the world" I want an alpaca... but who am I kidding? I can't even get yarn off of my rabbit) A call affirmed they had the yarn in question.... a visit and I was entranced. It is a wonderful, wonderful shop. Large yet cozy with couches to snuggle into and every yarn imaginable. And they have knitting classes around a big kitchen table. If you are in Rochester and you have a propensity for collecting yarn... you gotta check it out.

Today I was looking at the illustrated snowflakes on Robert's Snow, an online charity auction of artist's snowflakes for cancer research. After I viewed all of them, I realized that two of them were adorable pug snowflakes! No two snowflakes are alike eh? Who knew pugs were such a symbol of wintery weather.

charity link via Wee Me

Lil' Pumpkin

While we were picking pumpkins on Sunday, Sarah and Denis welcomed their own little pumpkin into the world!

Miss Carolyn Sylvia arrived at 1:59pm weighing 6lbs 13 oz.

Congratulations to the happy family!

 

I'm so sorry that you are so tasty

Wegmans was running a special promotion, lobsters for $5 a pound. Not ones to pass up a good deal, Chuck, Tina, Aaron and I signed up for six. Mind you it was very easy to put ones name down for six lobsters. Cooking them was another matter. None of us had ever done so before.

Tina and I had worked ourselves into a tizzy after her stepmom told us that lobsters scream when you put them in the water. Some investigation on the internet revealed that lobsters don't actually have vocal cords, the sound is steam escaping their shells. Screamers or not, Tina and I weren't too thrilled... we yelped and squirmed as we picked up the lobsters and ushered them home this weekend. Chuck and Aaron unceremoniously dumped them in the pots with nary a care while we huddled in the other room. I felt terrible. They were waving their little antenae at me.

(But they were tasty smothered in butter.)

Today was my sixth annual pumpkin picking/carving party. It was a little chilly out so we didn't dawdle at the patch.

Back at my house we had cheese and crackers while we carved up our victims. I was rather excited to try out my new handy dandy pumpkin gut scooper. Afterwards came the pumpkin pie (my total pumpkin pie production for this fall is now at 6 pies).

Aaron carved yet another humungous pumpkin while I carved out the word "boo". Only my "b" pumpkin was lopsided and rolls backwards so now it looks like it says "Doo". Ah well. More pictures of pumpkin picking/carving.

I was inspired by the pumpkins made by Hilary on my new favorite site, Wee Wonderfuls.

This morning Aaron and I swung by Grossman's Nursery to chunk pumpkins. I was kinda disapointed that I didn't get to actually load the pumpkin into the catapult myself. All we had to do was pull a rope.

It was still immensely satisfying to send the little orange spheres sailing into the wild blue yonder. One of our smacked into the target shed and left a big smear. Oscar went along and we told him we were gonna pop him into the catapult too. He ignored us as usual. Here are pictures of pumpkins meeting their end.

I love supporting a good cause, and I really love supporting a good cause that makes such good use of the color pink! I have been searching around for pink wristbands ala LiveStrong style for awhile now. They sold out of them at the walk quite early.

I then found that Target has them and a whole bunch of other breast cancer awareness items in its Pink shop. I ordered the wristbands (not to come in til the end of Oct though) and tried to get the flip flops, but there was something wrong with the flip flop order button. I was rather disgruntled having worked on an online shop at one time myself. It's like when you used to be a waitress (4 years during college!), and you find yourself critiqueing how full the salt shakers are and how often your server refills your water. I mean... uhhh not that I actually do that or anything... *ahem*

You can now find dog toys that are Lab Tested. No, I don't mean tested in a laboratory.. I mean they are tested by an expert labrador retriever who is "quite bent on destroying every toy brought into the house".

It's Oscar's favorite new site.

I have had a crushing disapointment, as I have not been able to find a box of Boo Berry this Halloween season. There was a display at Target, but all that sat on the shelf was stupid ol' Count Chocula (no offence to Count Chocula fans). I checked at Wegmans for it and was probably heard mumbling my discontent when I bumped into a blog reader (Hey Stefani!) in the cereal aisle.

I managed to comfort myself with the new fangled drink contraption at Target called the Triple Flav. It's a cup with three compartments. Why choose just one flavor? Why choose just two flavors? Drown your Boo Berry sorrows in three sugary cold beverages! (We had grape blob, cherry rush and sprite with a raspberry shot)

Tina and I have become quite the Maroon 5 fans. So when we found out that our favorite band Guster was opening for Maroon 5 in London... it was almost too much to bear. I am actually going to be in London visiting my friend Kristen, but a full two months after the November concert date. So... close... yet... so ... far.

I run to the tv whenever I hear the Maroon 5 "She Will Be Loved" video playing. Has anyone else noticed though... the striking resemblance the starring actress, Kelly Preston (married to John Travolta and sporting brown hair in this performance) has to actress Stockard Channing (of Grease and West Wing)? Wait! There is a John Travolta connection there! Weird!

On Saturday Tina had a party for her sister's new baby boy (pictured here sporting an original Ljc baby onesie). I got to decorate.

Once again I held back from taking over the entire affair and busied myself with decorating her house. Check out her blog for the details and more pictures... mini hay bale! Yeah!

This morning Tina and I walked in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk. It was a little drizzly and cold (why can't July be breast cancer awareness month?!), but we were so glad we did it. Team "Jennina" raised a bit of money thanks to the folks in our office.

It was hard not to get choked up reading some of the walker's signs. I especially enjoyed seeing dogs with pink bandanas out there doing their part. Pictures of the walk here...

It is now officially pie baking season.

It's not enough that we carve them up and eat them.

I made a run to the pumpkin patch today to get some precious Snacky Jacks and decorations for Tina's sister's baby shower tomorrow. As I was rubbing mud off the little guys in the wet grass I noticed a strange contraption across the field.

Turns out it is a pumpkin chunker. Our local Grossmans Nursery is having a "Pumpkin Chunkin' Competition. Contestants try their hand at loading a pumpkin into the catapult and attempting to hit a 22-foot long mobile home 250+ feet away." Ooohweee! I wanna try!

It may not be at quite the level of the National Pumpkin Chunkin Competition where you can enter a chunker powered by air, centrifugal, catapult, or human power, but I still want to hurl a helpless ten pound orange gourd across a field to his impending doom... splat. Mwah-hah hah.

Ok, I am going to go a little design nerd on you. This is about browsers. What a history I have with internet browsers! I started off years ago with Netscape Navigator, completely shunning Internet Exploder... there was a little stint with Safari when I went to OSX, then I switched to open source Mozilla. In between I had brief affairs with Opera and Konqueror too.

And now.. now it's Firefox. Yes, it has the tabbed browsing and built in Google. But I must say it was the super cute icon designs that got me. I am enamoured with the nifty Firefox icon and the email app, Thunderbird icon. It's everything I would expect from a group that can create something like Bugzilla that actually includes a bug in it's design. Cute. God bless.

There was a point this weekend when both Kira and I were staring wide eyed at the tv. It was a commercial for a Sephora shopping Barbie.

"For the first time Sephora and Mattel team up to bring you a doll that illustrates today’s independent, informed, and fiercely individualistic urban girl. Nolee is a multi-cultural doll whose favorite place to go is Sephora. This doll captures the fashion-forward, chic attitude of teens and their favorite place to shop. Manned with a cell phone, a PDA and an attitude, Nolee is ready to shop."

Holy cow. Fiercely individualistic sounds a little scary. I am spooked... yet strangely attracted to this doll. I look at the doll... multicultural, shopping bag, cell phone... and it's me! Yikes!

How was our trip to Arizona?

The architecture and scenery were amazing.

The pools were refreshing.

The food *burp* ...delish.

... and our nieces... adorable! more photos here.

I am hoping we can get to the Phoenix Zoo this trip. There is a cool website for these two Rhinos that are traveling from Ohio to the Phoenix Zoo.

Check out their blog entry for October 6..."The Rhinos have made it to St. Louis. After a quick snack at the P.F. Chang’s they are back on the road." - bah hah!

We are staying in my sister in law's company condo at the Biltmore Resort. I am excited because I read that the Biltmore was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Supposedly, Steven Spielburg has the condo across from the one we are staying in... so I will be keeping an eye peeled for comings and goings.

I don't know much about Scotsdale. Usually, when I travel somewhere I have lots of spots to check out. I am not worried about this trip because I did a little research and found that Scotsdale is home to the five establishments guaranteed to make any visit a pleasant one. 1. In-n-Out Burger 2. Baja Fresh 3. Jamba Juice 4. Cheesecake Factory (oh hello Chicken Madiera... we meet again) and 5. Sephora You won't find that in any travel book!

Aaron and I are leaving at the crack of dawn today to fly to Scotsdale, Arizona for the weekend. We are meeting his brother's family there and meeting our new niece.

I am hoping it is nice and warm for some pool lounging time.

I have watched "Emma" four times in the past five days. Aaron somehow finagled us a free trial of HBO on demand.

Am fearing the day I scroll to the menu and it is no longer there. Surely the good people at HBO won't leave it there forever?

It's cat! It's a parrot! It's.... my weird dog.

Oscar has taken to perching on the arms and back of the couch. It's unsettling how he plants himself there... watching our every move.

Always ready with a cool new spot for us to check out, Amy recommended The Distillery as a place to visit while we were in Toronto. It's an old... well... uh distillery, that has been revamped as a location for stores, restaurants and galleries.

We wandered around and checked out a cute wee dog store, an exhibit of torso photos and a delish little chocoate shop that made authentic Mexican hot chocolate. It was spicy! I think this area is going become super popular and can't wait to see what new stuff they have next time we visit.

Tina and I were wandering around Toronto the morning after the book signing and we happened upon a store front with two Smart ForTwo Cars in the window. They were each sitting upon four Wedgewood china teacups, one under each wheel. They. Are. So. Cute. We are both extremely bitter that we aren't getting them in the US until 2006. It's not even gonna be this cute version... but an SUV version! What the?! Not that I would give up my bug, but I think I could convince Aaron to switch from the jeep to one of these. Hmmm... wonder if he would fit?

Yesterday, after Sarah's baby shower, Tina and I hopped in the car and tore up to Canada for Squib's big book signing party! It was in a super cute yarn shop called Lettuce Knit. I got chills when I saw stacks of the book with her name on the spine! And there was cake! And champagne! And Tina won a door prize! I managed to take a few pictures. I am so happy for Amy and the book is gorgeous! Go and buy one now!

I was "recognized" by two people while I was there. Always a nice yet surreal feeling. Was anyone else there that reads my blog?

I am so excited for my friends Sarah and Denis who are expecting their first baby at the end of October. I got to cohost the baby shower and had to control myself from taking over the entire affair (sorry Lisa!). I was assigned invites, favors and games/favors. I made a project page to cover the stuff I did. (I may need a new category for my project page to cover "parties".)

Anyhow, it was a cozy party with a yummy duck cake that we mercilessly cut into and lots of cooing over little pink items (it's a girl!)

It's been a crazy busy week at work and I have a full weekend ahead of me, but if this season slipped past me without any apple picking, I would be severely disapointed. So as soon as we were done at work, Tina and I went to the apple orchard with Aaron and picked apples to our hearts content. I also ate a fair amount off apples right there amongst the trees. Gorging is actually the word that comes to mind. Pictures here of apples meeting their fate and the cute dogs that watched.