More catch up!

I still have a lot of catching up to do on this poor blog!

This is a picture of me at the Cream of the Crop party that I blogged about last time with those pumpkin cupcakes.  The sun was bright!  There is this huge spider down by the road and I think he is so cute!



I worked at the pumpkin patch at my church a couple of times.  I also helped unload the first shipment of 1200 pumpkins and that was a lot more work than I thought it would be!  Next year, I think I will make a batch of refreshments because after 2 hours of pumpkin passing down the line, we all we hungry and thirsty!  At least I was!



I went to the Arkansas State Fair!



I ate some chili cheese fries.  They obviously were good:



I also had some fried oreos.  I wanted to try at least one thing that I had never eaten before.  They were definitely not worth as many calories as they were!  I would much rather just eat a regular Oreo!  I think it was because they were mushy, but they did help warm me up since it was so cold outside.



I answered a question about cows correctly and won this awesome glow bracelet and we saw a monkey show.

 

I got sent to jail where they gave me a sucker.



And I visited the farm.



My Sunday School class had a Halloween costume party last Friday.  I bought a tie and learned how to tie it by watching a You Tube video.  Took me three tries, but I was pretty happy with how it turned out.



I was a Gryffindor from Harry Potter.  I wasn't a specific character, just one of the students.



Please ignore the dirty mirror.  One of these days I will remember to clean it.  For some reason it never looks dirty in real life, only in pictures.

Well I think that's enough for one day.  I'm also watching the World Series game right now and blogging on commercials.  :)  I don't really have a favorite professional baseball team, so I pretty much only watch during the World Series....

Pumpkin cupcakes

My church had a Cream of the Crop party a while ago to celebrate the opening of our pumpkin patch.  There was a chili cook off and a pumpkin dessert competition.  I entered the dessert competition with some pumpkin cupcakes that looked and tasted like pumpkin.  They were pretty tasty!  Unfortunately they did not win the competition, but I thought they were cute.

First I made some pumpkin cupcakes and then iced them with some orange icing.
       

Then I rolled the iced cupcakes in a bowl of orange decorating sugar.  I love sprinkles!



The next step is to make the ridges in the pumpking with some different colored orange icing.  Mine were ugly- I started out actually using a toothpick to make indentions and then filling it in with the icing, but I decided it wasn't worth the effort.



Then I cut some green apple flavored licorice for pumpkin stems, and here is the final product!



A lady at my work is getting married on Halloween and she saw these and asked for them at her shower that we are having for her at work.  I am going to do these as well as a couple of other designs if I can get all the supplies in time. 

30 before 30 check-in

So I'm 26 now.  Time to check in on my progress on the 30 before 30 list.

1. Get Married
2. Finish all the cookie recipes in my first cookie cookbook (500+ recipes)
3. Get a job I actually enjoy
4. Get to my goal weight
5. Finish the cake decorating classes that I started
6. Get a new car
7. Get a master's degree
8. Get a pet
9. Become a regular volunteer at Stone Soup
10. Learn how to mow the yard
11. Read the whole Bible
12. Learn to sew
13. Remember to bring my reusable bags to the grocery store on a regular basis
14. Get into the habit of flossing my teeth everyday (maybe TMI?)
15. Run (not walk) a 5K
16. Get a pedicure
17. Get eyebrows threaded
18. Be a bridesmaid in someone's wedding
19. Go to some sort of "pick your own" farm
20. Learn to parallel park without looking like an idiot
21. Go deep sea fishing
22. Attend my high school reunion
23. Take a picture with someone famous
24. Be truly 100% surprised
25. Ride in a helicopter
26. Visit a new state
27. Visit a new country
28. Ride a horse
29. Make a good meringue
30. See Beth Moore in person

11/30 = 36% completed.

The highlighted ones are the tasks I'm trying to check off the list before my next check in!

Who wants to do one of these with me?

Pumpkins and picnics

First things first- I got this fortune in my fortune cookie last time.  :)


I somewhat decorated my house for Halloween.  I wasn't going to decorate but then I found this pumpkin that I love so much!
 

I made some spinach mushroom ravioli from Giada's recipe.  It took forever!  It turned out pretty well though.  Pics with and without the homemade sauce:
 

We had our Employee Appreciation Picnic at work.  This is cactus ring toss and jalapeno eating contest.

 

This is the sack race.  Check out that awesome hair!



I was the winner!  I got this chili pepper necklace.  Obviously this was a high- budget shindig that we had going on.



And I won a door prize.  It actually was not that awesome, but it is now decorating my cubicle.

 

OK... so this post was lacking on the pumpkins in the title.  At least there was one!  More to come later!

Baby Shower

Back in September ( I know, I know), I hosted a baby shower with Lydia for our friend Lyndsey.  We had a fun time celebrating baby Graham!

I started out on Friday night making the cupcakes and cookies.   Also please notice the GIANT to-do list....  I guess I am more OCD than I thought.  I had specific things planned out to do each day starting with Tuesday before the Saturday shower.

Also please notice the insane amount of bananas!  I had a recipe for banana mousse.  It was good, but I only used 1/2 of the bananas called for in the recipe, and obviously this has a ton of bananas in it!  Also mine was not nearly as pretty as the one in the picture on the recipe, but here it is:

These are some of the desserts.  The round cookies have a "G" on them for Graham, and the other weird shaped ones are onesies.  We aren't going to have a close-up, since my decorating on the cookies was sub-par, but they were tasty!

We had a bunch of leftover cupcakes and cookies, so I took them to church on Sunday and said the cookies were G for God. ha!  That was Lydia's idea and it made me laugh!  Oh and also that 3 tier thing that the cookies are on- yeah.  How long do you think it should take an engineer to put that together?!?  I felt so dumb when I figured out that I had the black part upside down! haha!

Here's an up close view of the vanilla cupcakes.  They were blue since it was a baby boy shower- duh.  And I made little blue vanilla candy razorbacks for the top of the cupcakes since Lyndsey is such a big Razorbacks fan and it was also a game day.  This was my first time to use my Razorback candy mold and I think they turned out cute!

And this is a close-up of the chocolate cupcakes.  I just love those pearl sprinkles!

This was the punch.  I found these ducks at Target and thought they were so cute!

This was the fireplace.  The bags each have a letter on them to spell out "Baby Shower" and each has a gift inside corresponding to the letter on the bag.  I love this game!

I made this sign to hang on the front door.  It was fun to make and I think it is super cute!

Here is a picture of me and the guest of honor!

Me with my friends Ashley and Cherry:

I would say the shower was a success!  There were not a ton of people there, but enough that we had a good time and the house was not super crowded.  Baby Graham got a lot of stuff!  Can't wait to meet him!