It's almost Halloween!!

Oh my gosh you guys, I am SO excited that it's almost Halloween!!  October has truly flown by.  I figured I should update my Fall Bucket List since we've done more of the items now! 

We went to Linvilla Orchards as I mentioned in my last post, so we picked some apples and we also picked out our pumpkins and gourds!  We just haven't carved our pumpkins yet, and we'll probably do that this weekend or maybe on Halloween...  And we've decorated INSIDE our house for Halloween, but we haven't done our window/outdoor decorations yet!  We'll definitely do the window/outdoor stuff this weekend, but I figured I'd show you the indoor decorations now: 

This is our TV stand... Our green plastic bucket up there is what we use to hand out candy, and then these are our mummy lights!  I love the mummy lights. 

Here's our little random decorations on our TV stand... a few monsters, a cute raccoon, and Snoopy! 

Our fireplace mantel!  The lantern pumpkin on the right is a new decoration we got at Linvilla this year!!  All of the others we've had for a while :) 

Our little side table with a few decorations and our gourds and little white pumpkin! 

Kitchen towels!  We have a few more too, but these are the only ones we're using right now. I got that Hocus Pocus towel last year!  

This pillow was a gift from my parents (last year I think? Or maybe the year before...). 

We have a few more random decorations, but I figured this was enough pictures! :)  We've been busy making soups, breads, Crockpot meals, etc too, but I'm just not ready to check those off the list quite yet :)  We've also seen a few of the Halloween movies off our list, but we still have a few more great ones to go! And tonight we are going to start Season 2 of Stranger Things!!  We are SO excited.  We just re-watched the first season recently (for the 3rd time?), and it's just such an amazing show.  If you haven't seen it yet, stop what you're doing right now and go watch it on Netflix! You'll love it, I promise. It's such a good show to watch to get you in that Halloween mood too!! 

I have to travel for work the day after Halloween (BOOOOOO.... Ugh...), but I will try to post an update that next evening from my hotel so you can see our carved pumpkins and our outdoor decorations sand I'll tell you about our Halloween!  I hope you all have an AMAZING Halloween!! 

Fall Activities, Timmy's birthday party, and a soccer game!

This past weekend was another blur!!  We had a LOT of fun though.  On Friday night we were able to just chill at home, and we spent some time hanging out in our back porch area (the weather was sooo perfect!!) and having a few drinks and relaxing, and then we went inside and watched Hocus Pocus!!  We'll probably end up watching Hocus Pocus again before (or on) Halloween, but it is just SO good. 

On Saturday morning we went to Linvilla Orchards!  We didn't make it there last year, so it was especially awesome this year since it'd been quite a while since we'd seen it!!  We got there shortly after it opened, so it wasn't crowded at all which was amazing :)  We spent some time walking through their store areas, and then spent quite a while walking around looking at all of the pumpkins!!  They also had an area with a bunch of carved pumpkins, and some were VERY impressive!!  We picked out a few AMAZING pumpkins (I really love the ones we picked out!!), and a few gourds too because I think they're SO fun and I love that they're all so unique!

Kevin with our pumpkins and gourds! Our pumpkins have a LOT of character this year. They're kinda amazing. 

Can you see the David Bowie one to the right?  So good. 

It's Jack Nicholson from The Shining right on top!  So good. 

These were so fun!  They're outdoor fireplaces. They were too big for us (we'd have nowhere to keep them the other 11 months of the year...), but they were awesome. 

After we loaded our pumpkins into our car, we went over to the apple orchard area and wandered around and found a bunch of great apples!!  We got enough for me to make at least one pie and have some leftover for just eating :)  It was such a nice day for wandering around and apple picking!!  When we were done and ready to leave, we noticed that the pumpkin area was getting SO busy!  I'm really glad that we got there early so we didn't have to deal with those crowds! :) 

We drove back home and worked on a few house projects!  And then once evening rolled around it was time to head into the city to go to Timmy's surprise birthday party!  Our friends Anthony and Rob hosted the surprise party at their apartment in the city, and my goodness was Timmy surprised!!  His reaction was amazing. I didn't capture his surprise on camera because I was too busy enjoying it, but I got a few pictures while we were hanging out at the apartment!  After we all spent some time hanging out there, we went to a few bars!  Kevin and I left around 12:30 to head to the train station, and we ended up getting home around 2am!  My gosh we were hurting the next day.

Here's City Hall!  My favorite building in Philly. 

Some of the trees around the city are decorated with beautiful lights!  So pretty. 

Such a pretty city!  I love how it's such a mix of old buildings and modern buildings. 

Here's part of the group of people that surprised Timmy!  That's Juliff on the left, then Anthony, Ashley, me, McGee, Rob, and then Timmy is in the front! 

The next day we had a soccer game to go to though!  It was the last Philadelphia Union game of the season, and Kevin and his friend Juliff were the "Season Ticket Holders of the Match" so they got to go into the tunnel when the players were heading onto the field, and they also got to stand with the players on the field before the match and get their picture taken with the team!  I was going because I wanted to try to capture a few pictures of them on the field and with the players and stuff (plus it was such beautiful weather for a game!), but when the Union employee was introducing himself to Kevin and Juliff before the match he was like, "I'll get a wristband for your wife too!  No reason she can't join us for everything!" so I got to tag along too!  It was crazy being on the field.  I grabbed a few pictures, but I don't have a copy of the professional photo of us with the team yet. 

Our tailgating spot before the game started! 

McGee and Juliff were SO excited!! 

We're in the tunnel as the team is getting ready to go onto the field! 

A ceremony right before the match for a player that was retiring!  After this is when we got to walk to the middle of the field and have our picture taken with the team!  Then we went back to our seats. 

Such an amazing view from our seats in the stadium!  

That was our weekend!  I hope you all had a great weekend too!!  I can't believe Halloween is almost here!!  Crazy!! 

Last Weekend

Wow, things have been sooo busy that I have had no time to post anything!!  So, I'm going to do a whole post about LAST weekend (Oct 14-15), because if I combined it with this past weekend (Oct 21-22) it would be wayyyyy too long!!  So, I'll do a separate post about this past weekend. 

So, LAST weekend was crazy busy!!  On Friday night we went into the city for a concert!  Kevin's sisters had bought tickets for the whole family as gifts for Kevin's birthday and Kevin's dad's birthday!  It was a Blues Traveler concert, and MY GOODNESS was it packed!  Silly me and Kevin were thinking it wouldn't be super packed and that it'd be kinda chill because Blues Traveler haven't really been popular in quite a while... But WOW were we wrong. It was super packed and crazy. I only recognized 3 songs, and turns out Blues Traveler has become quite a jam band!  A lot of their songs were like 20 minutes long because they were just jamming. It was a fun show, but wow were we exhausted by the time it was over! 

My pictures didn't come out very well (we were standing in the upper balcony area), but that's John Popper playing the harmonica.  Just trust me on that.  Haha :) 

 

On Saturday we had TWO birthday parties to go to.  First was the 2nd Birthday party for Kevin's cousin's son Michael.  We call him Baby Michael (I guess that won't work for much longer...) because Baby Michael's dad is also a Michael, plus we have a few friends that are Michaels. So, it's confusing. Haha :) That party was very fun, and Baby Michael liked our gifts!  

It was a farm theme! The cake was super cute, and all of the foods had themed names too. 

Kevin's cousin Kelly, her husband Michael, and Baby Michael!  Plus Kelly is pregnant with Baby #2! 

Baby Michael is opening up gifts, and Kevin is talking to his Uncle Chris! 

After that we went to a birthday party for Kevin's cousin Patrick (which is also a confusing name for me, because Kevin's dad's name is Pat, and one of his aunts (Patrick's mom) is also named Pat...).  Patrick's party was at an indoor skydiving place, so we did not go indoor-skydiving (we got there a little late because of Baby Michael's party...), but we got to watch some other people do it.  It looked like everyone was having fun, but it's definitely not something I'm interested in trying now that I've watched it. We had fun hanging out with everyone there though! 

There's Patrick getting ready to blow out his candles!!  

After that, we were EXHAUSTED!! On Sunday we tried to work on some items around the house and also run some errands. And my goodness was the following work week busy!!  We both worked some very long hours and had very stressful days.  The next post will be all about this past weekend!! 

Hello October!!!

I think October might be my favorite month.  Or maybe November... But probably October. I just love the Fall weather, the changing leaves, all of the fun Fall activities and foods, and Halloween!  It's a fun month! 

Our neighborhood is starting to look a little Fall-y!!  I've taken a few pictures on my walks with Guinness around our neighborhood, and I figure it'll be fun to compare them over the next two months or so to see all of the changes with the trees!  Maybe that'll just be fun for me?  Probably... Haha.  The deer are also starting to get REALLY active in our neighborhood again, so we're seeing them a lot in our yard and when we're on walks.  Earlier this week I also saw a HUGE groundhog by my neighbor's house, which was a new animal for our neighborhood! We usually see a lot of deer, squirrels, and foxes... But we hadn't seen a groundhog in our neighborhood before!

There's a deer!

This is just at the top of the hill about a week ago. 

And here is the same spot this morning... so not much difference yet. 

This is the corner of our property. That's our house to the right in the pic. Still green... 

This is our house!  It's not looking super Fall-y yet... But soon I think. 

Here's another part of our neighborhood... That's Valley Forge through those trees!  There's bits of yellow and orange starting to show up... 

This tree is feeling Fall-y!  This is at a neighbor's house.

Groundhog! It was about the size of a cat. 

The last weekend in September we had a wedding to go to for our friends Juliff and Ashley, and that was fun!  Kevin was one of the groomsmen, and our friend Michael (the opera singer) sang two songs during the ceremony, so it was a really fun day/night! The weather was pretty perfect that day too... The high temp was only about 60 degrees!

Kevin at the Juliff reception!  And he's drinking the signature drink for the wedding which was a "Mint Juliff" (basically a Mint Julep).  Isn't that a cute name? 

There's Juliff towards the left of the pic (he's the tallest man, and he has glasses), Ashley is the beautiful bride, and I think most of you will recognize handsome Timmy (our friend who performed our wedding ceremony), and Michael is on the right edge of the picture with the bow tie. 

And this was at the end of the night after the wedding reception.  We were all hanging at the bar at the hotel, and then Kevin's friend Mike Gazzara requested a lesson on how to tie a bowtie, so Michael obliged! It was adorable, and went on for about 15 minutes. 

I've made some progress on Fall Bucket List items!

I've decorated the inside of our house for Halloween (I'll take pictures as Halloween gets closer), but we won't do our few outdoor decorations until a little closer to Halloween so I'll do an update then on that.  I also made some pumpkin goodness!  I made a Pumpkin Cobbler, which was AMAZING.  It was like the filling of a pumpkin pie, with cobbler-type biscuits on top.  By now you guys know that my food pictures are terrible, so I will use the picture from the recipe:

I also made another soup (chicken and dumplings - a recipe from my Foods class in high school) and some parmesan biscuits! 

Here's one of the parmesan biscuits!  It was quite good, if I do say so myself. I kinda love making biscuits and breads.

Ugh, why do my food pictures always look terrible?  This was delicious, I swear.  I've been using this same recipe since high school, and it's awesome.

That's about all of the updates for now I think!  I'll do another post soon.