I haven't blogged in a while, for more than a month actually, and I have a whole list of things just begging to be blogged about! I have been training a new receptionist at work and so I haven't had a computer during the day to blog on (not that I blog at work...), but now I have a few spare moments so I am going to record some of the things on my list.
First of all, Bradford and I had a lot of fun with our Fall o'Festivities. We went to the corn maze at Thanksgiving Point with his sister and brother-in-law, and had a lot of fun there. The corn maze itself was kind of lame... but the company and food was fun. That same night, before the corn maze, we celebrated our 2-year anniversary. We went to California Pizza Kitchen and Cold Stone. That's where we went on the date we decided to become official. Insert "Awws" here. :)
Bradford's sister, Amanda, also put together a really fun evening for the adults in the family. It was a full on pirate themed murder mystery dinner. Complete with costumes and crazy accents. Bradford was a British Lieutenant and I was an African witch doctor. Because of our budgets I decided I would hone my creative skills and make our costumes myself. For mine I bought some clearanced fabric at the fabric store and made myself a robe and skirt. I probably should have used a pattern but the patterns cost more than my materials did so I decided to just wing it. Surprisingly, it turned out looking ok. The hood was the only part that didn't turn out exactly how I would have liked but I guess that's what I get for not using a pattern. Then I bought a cheap skeleton from a discount store, disassembled him, and strung him into a necklace with a few plastic spiders here and there. I then used a scarf for my head dress. Bradford's costume turned out even better than I'd hoped. He had some BYU men's chorus jackets that the previous tenant had left in his closet so I took one of them to use for his naval officer outfit. I took off the men's chorus badge, sewed some gold trimming across the buttons, and I made the shoulder fringe things with two sponges painted gold and gold trim hot glued around the edges. Then I sewed them onto the shoulder pads in the jacket. I bought a foam sword from Wal-mart for 2 dollars and painted the handle gold (it was blue). Then I sewed a sash out of some red fabric and a ruffly collar thing out of some white fabric. I made his hat out of a dollar store straw hat that I sewed up on the sides and added some gold trim around the edges. Lastly, I used the khaki pants he wore for our Halloween costumes last year (he was Colonel Mustard for a Clue party my friends threw), and I cut them off and added some blue ribbon to the bottoms to tie on the sides. And he wore tights... I tried to find knee-highs but to no avail. He didn't seem to mind them. I'm not sure what that means... ;) Overall I only spent about $40-$50 all together. Here is a picture of us in our costumes my roommate took for us. Doesn't Bradford look dashing?
Another thing on my list of festivities that we did was drive up the canyon to see the leaves. It was such a refreshing afternoon. We grabbed a pizza and headed up for a relaxing drive and some good conversation. We topped off the night with some hot chocolate. Here are a couple pictures we took up at the canyon. It was a little chilly, hence my rudolph nose. And yes, I kiss boys. Well, just one actually.
Bradford and I also went to the pumpkin patch and then carved some jack-o-lanterns. I love going to the pumpkin patch. I don't know why exactly, but I love it. My pumpkin is the sad/scared one. Its supposed to be scared but it looks kinda sad instead. I wanted to do a scared jack-o-lantern because jack-o-lanterns are usually scary, not scared, so I thought it would be some good irony. My pumpkin was particularly fibrous. I had a hard time carving it because the fibers kept peeling away. It was interesting and made the whole pumpkin carving even more challenging. Anyway, we carved them the night before Halloween and then on Halloween we watched a bunch of scary movies and ate a bunch of candy. A few days ago we smashed our pumpkins and took a video of them.
Here is Bradford at the pumpkin patch, cutting the vine to one of the lucky pumpkins that gets to come home with us:
And here are our finished jack-o-lanterns. I wanted to carve the little gourd but that thing was hard as rock. I couldn't have made a single notch in it without at least losing a finger.
Here is a picture of my pumpkin after he had been smashed. Poor thing.
And this is the pumpkin smashing video:
Another thing we did that was on my list of things to do this fall was to buy some fall clothes. Bradford actually came with me believe it or not and didn't get sick of shopping until hours later. I'm so proud of him. ;) We went up to Park City to do our shopping at the outlet mall up there. I love going up to Park City. It always feels like a vacation. It was a lot of fun and we found a lot of stuff for some really good deals. I bought a long light jacket, nine west brand, that was orginally $200 but I got it for $30, and I bought some new black dress pants for work and a black ruffly-ish blouse, brown flats, a silk blouse, and another blouse at the Banana Republic outlet for a steal. Then I got a sweater and a new black cardigan at the Gap outlet and I can't remember what else... maybe that was it. I also got a new umbrella later back in Orem at Target. We went to dinner after our spree and drove back home. It was really a lot of fun. Bradford enjoyed it at least as much as I did too.
All in all, it has been a great month since I last wrote. I anticipate the next month to be just as good. Hopefully though, it won't be that long before I blog again...
