happy halloween.

Ooooooooooo, it was a spooky evening.
It all started with wrapping my oldest up in his costume.
That was a nightmare!
2 full hours of wrap and pin work.
By the end of the night, he was just a pile of rags. He tripped once and spilled his candy in the street.
I will never make a mummy costume as long as I live.
But he did turn out as cute as a button.
My favorite part was:
That would constantly peek out from under his costume.
.
Ben was darling as:

The best costume around. No pinning required.
Precious!

Hope you got lots of chocolate in your candy bucket!

what do you feed a goblin?

Tooooooniiiiight we celebrated the day before Halloween with a:

Bwah-hah-hah!
Each goblin rejoiced in their very own:

And no spooky gathering is complete without a few:

What was on the menu?
It was night of the living dead with our:

Don't you totally dig their mustard seed eyes?
.
Our party included a myriad of:

And Oooooooooooooooo-- I did craft some of the creepiest:
The eyeballs tasted like honeydew melon. Yum.
.
The mummy nestled down nicely on a bed of frog eyes.(with catchup for dipping.)
.
We topped it all off with some of our favorite:
It was full of:
Afterward, we snuggled up for a viewing of some of our seasonal favorites.
Enjoy!







(parts one through three)

you can pause the music on the bottom of my blog.

punkin' heads.

The tradition continues.
Out come the pumpkins.

Out come the knives.

Out come the spoons.

It's:

Josh was the laziest pumpkin scraper, ever.

He refused to get out all the gunk. (but wanted to eat it?! He begged to lick the spoon!) I had to finish it off for him.

Ben was very precise about the whole ordeal.

He made sure to pick out every seed by hand.

Every single seed.

I had the boys design their own pumpkin face on a piece of paper. And then I went to work--

Here we have our finished product.

(Ben's party prize pumpkin. He brought this home from a church party.)

Josh's patch pumpkin. The bottom left tooth broke off when I was carving it, causing much stress and upset. I jammed a nail down into it to fix the tooth, but it will sporadically fall out.

Ben's spooky patch pumpkin. He wanted something "extra scary"!

Don't they just haunt our porch!

are you there fall? it's me, emily.

Monday, Josh had a break from school.
Jeff was home after a 6 day trip so we decided to get out and do what we do best!

We drove and drove and drove to quaint, Daingerfield Lake.
It was so gorgeous.

But:

The temperatures had dropped down into the 50's for the day, and the breeze had picked up a bit. (this kept the crowds down. We were the only ones there!)

We quickly ate our lunch and huddled for warmth.

Josh really:

And Jeff stayed warm if he:

After lunch, we spotted some:

Seriously, the best kind.
Worn in, painted bright colors, and made of metal.
The favorite was the slide.
We all gave it a try.

Over by the playground, we saw an old boathouse. We walked out onto the dock and:

They ate the rest of our lunch leftovers, but we kept our distance considering our last encounter at the park with ducks and geese. (do you remember this?)

Soon, it came time for the best part:

I was on the hunt for:

And I found some!
It was perfect.

Crisp breeze.

Campfire smell.

My wonderful family and:

Oh, those crunchy leaves.
One of my favorite things in all the land is walking through crunchy leaves.
.
Well into the hike, Jeff taught the boys a little bit about:

We even spotted some baby tree sprouts.
.
But, we couldn't stay long-- the trail was 2 and a half miles long. We had to:

Ben helped me collect treasures along the way.
We were fascinated by the:

And we got a kick out of the fact that Josh blended into nature quite well.
The boys stuffed their pockets with:
And, even I left the forest with:
Ours was a:

In fact, it was quite magical.

high as the sky apple pie.

This week I found apples for 57 cents a pound at the farmers market.

Can you guess how many pounds I bought.

If you guessed 15, you know me all too well.

What do you do with 15 pounds of:

You bake things out of 'em, right?

I had been dreaming about a homemade apple pie for weeks anyway.
I figured that yesterday was going to be the day that I did it!

I wish I owned an apple peeler, but I don't. So, I had to do it:

Which just means that I appreciate the end result even more. Right?!
Ben was my kitchen shadow:
Peeling apples can get a bit monotonous.
This is what happens if you have mountains and mountains of apple peels and are starting to go a little stir crazy.

You make an:We even took it a step further and fashioned some:
Which, I have to say-- make Ben look especially studious.
.
After my bowl was full, I added the:
This is the point in my pie that things went a little awry.
I mixed and rolled out my crust.
Prepared my pie pan.

Dumped the apples into the middle and then took a look and decided that this could either turn out to be:

considering that I had about 4 times as many apples as I needed. (which was actually slightly planned. I was not folowing a recipe, just flying by the seat of my pants.) I had a little anxiety attack.

I rolled out the top crust.

Put that sucker on top.

Pinched the edges (I was not going for beautiful, this thing was a monster.)

And then tucked it in for bedtime. (and crossed my fingers.)

But, all was well!
She came out gorgeous. (and smelling divine too.)

I had an extra large piece for dinner.

Because I am an adult, and I make my own choices.