Boo!

There's something about Halloween that makes me grow a little bit younger. I find myself drawn to smiley-faced ghosts, mini pumpkins, and tootsie rolls. In fact, I even found myself making tiny happy ghosts out of tootsie pops. Call it childish, but I still think they're pretty darn cute. Plus, Halloween results in tons of cute pictures of babies in costumes. Loved all the little giraffes, pumpkins, puppies and monsters out there :)

This year, I had a blast decorating for Halloween. Jared and I also discovered my major weakness: craft store decorations. I first  splurged on some cute Halloween paper from the scrapbook store on the way back from getting some groceries. Then, I stumbled over a half-off sale at Jo-Anne fabrics, which resulted in a tiny fabric witches hat, a wooden table-top pumpkin cutout, and some sort of candy corn garland. The next week, I succombed to temptation again upon finding giant, twig acorns in a home decor store near my work. Some girls buy shoes, others buy purses...apparently I buy novelty oversized woodland decorations :) Three of them. But perhaps my greatest shame was the mini-pumpkins. In my lust to gain these cute little guys, I broke Canadian import regulation laws, sneaking five of them across the border. 

Altogether, though, these little sins and weaknesses make a pretty cute table-top display :)

 A couple weekends ago, Jared and I decided to have a lovely fall day wandering around a pumpkin patch. We drove to the most popular one in town, only to discover that admission to the patch would cost us 7 bucks each. Now, back home in Kalamazoo, Gene the pumpkin man would sell us two pumpkins for under 5 dollars total--plus we'd get the pleasure of walking around his little orange, over-the-top farm. I almost don't need to even say that Jared and I turned right around, empty handed. Instead, we made a lovely-fall-day stop to the local produce market, and spent $2.50 for two pumpkins. We're pretty good with bargains :)

Then, we got ready to carve. And much to our pleasure, we discovered that, somehow, our pumpkin-carving tools had followed us all the way out here. How they were deemed essential enough to make the trip, I have no idea, but we were thrilled they'd decided to join us.

 Here's how our creations turned out: 

Mine's the one on the left. Jared's is a pirate!

My love for Halloween may be influenced a teeny, tiny amount by the fact that my birthday comes right before it. This year, I turned the good solid age of 24, a number that I like. My work surprised me with doughnuts and cider in the second floor kitchen on Friday---somehow, my coworker Brittany had an inkling she'd be able to lure me down there with the promise of a free treat. It worked!

On Sunday, Jared made me bacon for breakfast, which is always a treat :) He also strategically placed my birthday gifts in the living room to see if I'd notice. It took a couple minutes, but eventually I spotted a new addition to my bike:

Such a pretty basket from my parents!

I'd received a couple gifts in the mail at work on Friday, and proved myself to be the epitome of self control by not opening them. In fact, this may have also been a border violation, but I was pretty confident none of my family members would be sending me anything illegal. I'm so excited for all my gifts!

Take note as well that Jared decided to feed my holiday decoration weakness by buying me a book specifically devoted to holiday crafts. It's a thing of beauty. In fact, I'm holding myself back from starting on Christmas decorations this week. There are just so many neat things to make--stockings, a tree skirt, popcorn and cranberry tree garlands. Let's just say, it's going to be a fun two months :)

Jared had two potential plans for Sunday afternoon: If the weather was nice, we'd celebrate with a picnic in Mt. Baker area's Heather Meadows. If the weather was crappy, we'd explore the museum of anthropology at University of British Columbia, followed by dinner in Vancouver. Grey skies and rain made our decision pretty obvious. So Jared and I enjoyed a lovely afternoon pretending to be college students again, exploring the museum and frolicking around the rain-soaked campus before eating delicious Greek food. All and all, it was a perfect day :)

Happy November everyone!