Happy Halloween!

I hope all of you have a great day today and have fun and be safe this weekend whatever you do for your Halloween festivities.  Michael and I went over the his cousin's house tonight to take pictures of the all the pumpkins that were carved this past Sunday.  Some were getting icky from the warm weather already.  The pictures aren't the greatest as it is hard to take night pictures without a flash.  Enjoy!

The history of the pumpkins

Here's the pumpkin I carved.  The side of his mouth was rotting already

Thoughts for Thursday-Halloween

With Halloween tomorrow, I thought it would be a good topic for Thoughts for Thursday. I, myself, are one of the very few it seems that isn't really into Halloween. I don't even think it was a big deal for me when I was a kid. I'll have my Dad confirm that one but I don't really understand the point of it. I know it's a day for people to become someone they aren't normally but the concept to me is weird. Another reason I have a dislike for Halloween is because I am uncreative. If I was serious about dressing up, I would need to start thinking in July about what I was going to be because it would take me that long to come up with something. I've avoided most Halloween parties throughout the years because I just end up getting stressed out about it. Don't get me wrong, when I have dressed up in the past, I have had fun doing it but I guess it's not worth it to me. My sister on the other hand, is a Halloween fanatic. She LOVES everything that has to do with Halloween or Dracula or vampires or ghosts or whatever it may be. Her dreams came true when her son was born on Friday the 13th on a full moon. A curse to some but a blessing to my sister! I love her enthusiasm for October 31st but she is very different than me. She is creative and loves to decorate her house for Halloween the same way you would for Christmas. She starts decorating on the cusp of October and enjoys her decorations for at least a month. She also does a fabulous job at making Halloween-themed foods. So tomorrow I plan on going over to my sister's, taking a few photos of my nephew, have some of her wonderful party food and going home to watch Pet Sematary (Yep, it's spelled that way) and Children of the Corn with Michael, even with the lights off.

My questions to you as follows;

How do you feel about Halloween? Yay or Nay? Do you still dress up? Do you enjoy the holiday for your kids only? Do you pass out candy to all the trick or treaters? Do you have any Halloween traditions? What do you plan on doing this Halloween?

Another TFT:

Ang-Why do you read or write blogs?

My family last year for Halloween. I am the Geisha girl, which I wore to satisfy my sister and make her happy that I dressed up for her. It was a costume I wore years earlier for a different Halloween party. See no creativity!

My nephews Keith and Hunter

One of Jamie's creative treats

See, I can dress up for the Vikings Halloween game!

Suck it up

Michael and I had a couple of friends over a few Friday's ago for a wine and beer night and I thought that I better do a quick vacuum in the living room.  I realized that the suction on the vacuum was not very good and it definitely wasn't performing very well.  I don't know how long vacuums are supposed to last.  I have purchased 2 vacuums in my life and they happened to be the exact same model.  So the following Monday, I bought a new vacuum.  I was pretty excited to get home and use it.  Since I did not want to take out a loan to buy a Dyson animal hair vacuum, I went with the Bissell Pet Hair Eraser instead and it still seemed expensive to me.  Ok, keep in mind that I just vacuumed a few days earlier.  I started the bagless vacuum up and no kidding, the thing was fully of dirt and mostly cat hair in less than a minute.  Pictures below to prove it!  Gross, but cool!  One of my cats is white so you can't see shedded hair over the whittish carpet we have.  So I continue to vacuum and empty canister after canister of cat hair and dirt.  I vacuumed the whole house, couches, edging the floor and ceiling and all, and I ended up dumping 12 canisters!  Isn't that gross?  You probably think I live in a dirt house.  Apparently I did.  The canister isn't very big and it doesn't take that much to fill it up, especially when it's fluffy cat hair.  I was surprised of how much actual dirt we had upstairs.  Yuck.  But now I have a fully-functioning vacuum again.  Who knew I would get so excited about this purchase and drag you through the whole experience?!  Have fun looking at the pictures of the vacuum and clean carpet.  Exciting, huh?

This is the only time Powder's not scared of the vacuum, when it's in the box.   

Fuzzer on the vacuum box trying to break it into it because he wanted to vacuum

Here's the fully assembled product!  I guess I didn't realize you need to put these things together.  What's that you say??  Oh,  yep, we do have purple textured walls! 

Full canister #1

Brand new clean carpet again!

Weekend Recap

Friday:

Michael and I went out to dinner at M&S Grill.  We love this place.  Have you ever heard of McCormick & Schmicks?  It's the same people, just a different restaurant.  We decided to go there a week early and celebrate for our upcoming anniversary.  We've been craving an appetizer for months that we had there a year ago.  It was the cold crab legs served over ice.  They are so delicious.  We look at the menu and it said crab cocktail and asked if it was the same thing and our server said yes.  We ordered it, despite the $19.95 price tag.  Remember, this is an appetizer!  It came to our table and it was not what we wanted.   What we were served was a lump of crab with cocktail sauce poured over it in a little fancy dish with little baby forks.  It still tasted good but not what we anticipated.  I got a Caesar salad and Michael ate bread until our dinner came.  We both ordered the filet mignon.  I love filet mignon.  It's the only steak I order.  We also got mashed potatoes and Parmesan crusted hash browns a la carte.  We were stuffed and couldn't think of dessert.  We pretty much always get creme brulee when we go out to a nice place like this but not this time.  If you haven't been there, I recommend splurging a little and having one of the best steaks!

Saturday:

I woke up early and started prepping the kitchen to paint.  We have been doing some updates to our house.  We put a new floor in the kitchen and we are painting the kitchen and hallway to the living room.  (Yes, we would have painted and then put down the floor but it's not a perfect world)  I painted from 10-5:30 pm, with a quick break for Jimmy John's for lunch.  We ended up running out of paint and I ran to Menard's to get more so we could continue the next day.  I had to quit painting for the day because Michael and I were going out to see Cheech & Chong.  The comedic duo have been touring this year after have been "broken up" for about 27 years.  They finally reunited this year for what I would assume be their last tour.  That is part of the reason Michael and I wanted to go as this was a one-time chance to see the legendary pair.  Tommy Chong is now 70 and Cheech Marin is 62.  I tried to imagine what the crowd was going to be like before we got there.  Whatever I imagined, I was wrong.  The crowd looked so "normal." I guess I would have thought it would have been a bunch of hippie stoner types and it wasn't.  While they were there too, it was more like your mom and dad and a very good mix of older and younger.  There were some characters in the crowd but overall you wouldn't be able to judge who or what was playing by the crowd if you didn't see their names on the marquee outside the Orpheum Theatre.  The show itself was like a variety show.  There were skits and reenactments from their movies, songs that were performed and some stand up.  Chong's wife, Shelby opened for them.  After the show, we even had the chance to meet the duo!  They were so quiet and soft spoken when we met them and it was weird to think that they were the same people we saw perform.  

I wasn't trying to be creative here with the branch.  It's the best picture I got and the branch happens to be in the way.

Our new "friend", Gary, who we met on the street

Toasting a shot.  Who's 3rd glass is that you say?  Well it's new friend Gary's glass!

Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin

Ok, I had to pose next to this ad at the bus stop.  I don't know what it's for as there weren't any words on it and I thought it was creepy that a little boy is sitting in a towel on the couch.

Sunday: 

I woke up early and started painting.  I painted for a couple of hours before my sister and her family came over.  They arrived at our house at 11:30 am and we all went to Michael's cousin, Jason's house.  They live in Roseville, just minutes from us.  Every year they have a pumpkin carving party.  This year they had 200 pumpkins to be carved.  Jason and Amy gutted out all the pumpkins starting Friday night.  They spent 12 hours doing it!  It definitely made it easier for us to just show up and carve.  They had tons of patterns and carving tools of all sorts.  I hadn't carved a pumpkin since I was a kid so I was a little worried going into this since I do not have much creativity in these bones.  Then after I saw there were patterns, I was all about it. We all had fun carving.  Our friends Tanya and Chris came over to carve also.  Amy also made a ton of food for the event.  There were sloppy Joe's, hotdogs, BBQ sausage, fruit, chips, cookies, cupcakes and candy.  Everyone really enjoyed themselves and I can't wait to carve my pumpkin for next year!

My sister Jamie

Jamie's pumpkin

Keith's pumpkin he helped carve with him mom

The Seaberg family

Here's my pumpkin.  Squint and take a look at that scary monster!

Michael's own designed pumpkin

Tanya and Chris 

Chris's flame pumpkin

All the chaos!  It was so much busier than this at one point.  People just kept coming and going.

Master carver, Tanya and her pumpkin of Barack Obama

Obama!  

I'll be going over to Jason and Amy's later this week and I'll update you with the display of lit pumpkins later!

 

Thoughts for Thursday-Nutritional Labels

Every time I buy or at least pick up a product at the grocery store, I examine the nutrition label. I look at the calories, fat, fiber, sugar and servings per container for everything. I don't always buy stuff that is nutritious or healthy for me, but I am at least conscious of what I am putting in my body. I do eat cookies and the bad chips every once in a while. I do pay some attention to Partially Hydrogenated Oils (PHO's), which is the same as trans fat, but I do not go out of my way to avoid it as I probably should. It takes 57 days to digest PHO's as it is not natural. Food producers use it because it is cheap. I do stray away from aspartame and Splenda as much as possible though. If I see something has aspartame in it, I do not buy it. There are many studies out there that state that aspartame is very bad for your health. Splenda too, but it hasn't been on the market as long as aspartame so it's hard to determine the health effects at this point.

Do you read the nutrition labels? To what extent? Do you know how to read the label? How conscious are you of the food you put in your mouth? Be honest!

Here are some other TFT:

Michelle-Expensive Clothes

Ang-Optimism

Kristi-Caffeine

Saturday and Sunday-Mother Nature

This past Saturday, I was inspired by my friend Kristi to take a trip to Tamarack Nature Center in White Bear Lake.  I hadn't been there for since at least my early 20's and it is something that was on my list of things I wanted to do this fall.  I went by myself and it was a beautiful sunny, but windy day.  It was a good feeling to just think and get away from everything. (even though you can still hear cars from the freeway)  Here are some of my favorite pictures from the day.  I apologize as some of them may be the same as Kristi's.  

I just loved this tree

Sunday was a gorgeous unseasonably warm day so Michael and I decided to take the motorcycle out for one of the last trips of the season.  We just went down to Vadnais Lake by our house but I am so glad we did as we were lucky to see some Trumpeter Swans stopping there during their migration process.  First of all, they are huge!  They are the largest native North American bird and weigh 20-35 lbs and some males can have a wingspan up to 10 feet but average is 7 feet.  The Candian Geese looked small next to these guys and the ducks in the picture below look tiny.  They were almost extinct at one point and there are current conservation efforts to save and maintain the species.  I was so fascinated by them, I ended up taking lots of pictures.