Happy Christmas!

Hooray, this was my first year with a Christmas tree over 4 ft tall :) We got this beauty from one of those guys that goes into the mountains and cuts down trees and sells them from his RV. Whoah that sounded totally shady - but it wasn't!

We also had to tie it to my houseplants in the window sill because the trunk was so small it kept tilting out of the stand. So my tree is a little wonkey, but i still love it :)

Spooky Punkin

Chris and I either go all out or do nothing for Halloween. Since I was in charge of making a scene for my work for the local Pumpkin Walk, I wasn't really into planning a party or even thinking of a costume.

We did carve a pumpkin though. We like to each do one side of the face. Usually I carve first while Chris prepares the seeds for toasting. Then i cover my half and he carves his half. Then we have the reveal and see how we did. Somehow it always turns out pretty good. We carved the pumpkin Friday night.

For halloween this is what we did:

We ate dinner

Got some awesome Fro-Yo from this new place - Twizzle Berry

Watched TV shows all night

And guess what . . . It was awesome!

Birthday Cake!

So a while ago it was my grandpa's birthday. I decided to make him a cake since it was the big 8-5 and all. I also made his 80th birthday cake so there was appropriate symmetry :)

I also wanted to try using modeling chocolate. It turned out to be super easy to make and moderately easy to use. You just need strong hands to warm it up and roll it out. If you have a pasta roller outer, that would make it waaaaay easier.

If you want to give it a try use this recipe from cake decorator extrodinaire Colette Peters. I

recommend melting the chocolate in the microwave 30 sec at a time. No need to bother with the double boiler thing. Also, buy high quality chocolate, things turn out better that way. It ends up tasting like really dark tootsie rolls. Yum!

And here is the finished result:

A month goes by in the blink of an eye!

Despite my lack of posts, there has been a lot going on in the last couple of weeks.

I finished a project for the Cache Foster Care Resource Center. I was raising money and collecting donations of clothes and furniture for local foster families. We also had a comedy night featuring a really funny improv group called Out of the Blue Entertainment. All in all we raised $1900 in goods and cash. I feel pretty good about that :)

Also I sold this:

And bought this:

Yes, I finally upgraded from the '94 Ford Escort to an '09 Hyundai Sonata. It's nice to have 4 doors instead of 2. I like having air conditioning again after 4 HOT summers. The windows go up and down with the push of a button. And I'm pretty sure the door handles/locks won't freeze this winter.

Coming up in October is the Pumpkin Walk in North Logan. My boss signed me up and the theme is the Magic of Animation. So cartoons from TV, animated movies, that kind of stuff. The theme for our scene is the movie "Corpse Bride." I only have a week and a half to gather all the necessary stuff, so hopefully I can pull it off.

Also, a personal victory, I got my visiting teaching done for the first time in 2010. All the credit must go to my VT partner Maevis, but hopefully I can establish a good pattern in my life from now on :)