November Happenings

November kicked off the start of the holiday season for us.  Every Thanksgiving, we always have my mom and Jason's dad over for Thanksgiving dinner.  I cook mostly everything, with the help of my mom making a few side dishes (her signature sweet potato casserole, YUM).  This was my third year roasting a turkey and it was another success!  I'm always terrified I'm going to mess it up... luckily my streak is holding strong.

I really do love Pinterest for showing me festive things like these that I stole for some snacks to munch on before dinner:

Turkey cheeseballs

Veggie turkey

Dinner was yummy as always!

Table before we sat down to eat

We're always left with food for days because I tend to over estimate on things....  So we made some Capriotti's Bobbie sandwiches with our leftovers.  To be honest, they were much better! 

drool.

Before Thanksgiving, our best friends had their second baby, Hudson.  We got to visit the day he was born and it totally made us baby swoon for one of our own someday!  He is a perfect little chunk, and we are so excited to be auntie and uncle to another awesome baby of the Luks family!

For a "before Black Friday" deal, we splurged on a Kitchenaid mixer that I've been wanting for a while.  We had put it on our wedding registry, realistically knowing it was way too expensive to be on there.  So once this deal came around, I had to get it!  It was worth every penny.  The first day we got it in the mail, I busted it open, cleaned it, and put it to use for some Ghiradelli Brownies.  

This thing is going to get lots of use!

Jason got a fun early Christmas gift from Brock... Christmas sweater beer koozies they can use together!  Bromance.

Best friends and their koozies.

Happy November!

Fall: Pumpkins, Apple Cider Donuts, and Halloween

For getting into the fall spirit, I wanted to visit Gilcrease Orchards on the other side of town to pick our own pumpkins!  We had never been before but have always heard great things about the orchard.  

The orchard entrance

They have many different fruits and vegetables that they grow year-round.  It is mostly an apple orchard, but anyone can go and pick their own fruits and vegetables for a super reasonable price!  When we got there, I instantly spotted the apple cider donuts and definitely needed to get some for us to munch on.

Seriously the best apple cider donuts EVER.

After we ate those up (in seriously 2 minutes), we walked down to the pumpkin patch.  On our way we saw the apple orchards.  There were aisles and aisles of apple trees.  We will definitely be going back to pick some of those next year when they are in season!  At the very end, we found the pumpkin patch and began our search for the perfect pumpkins.  There were quite a few gone since we went only a few days before Halloween, but we ended up finding ones exactly like we wanted.  I wanted Cinderella pumpkins, and Jason wanted to get a reject pumpkin: large, veiny and ugly.  He definitely found one!  And of course, we had to get a baby pumpkin for Harley.    

Apple orchard

Pumpkin patch

Jason and his "special" pumpkin on the left, Harley's on the right.

Cinderella pumpkins!

We loved everything about Gilcrease Orchard and I can't wait to make this a family tradition for us every fall!

We may or may not have gotten more donuts on the way out... (no judgement!)

For Halloween, our best friends invited us to spend the night Trick or Treating, snacking and hanging out with them at their house (which is about three seconds away from ours).  Scarlett was the most adorable Tinkerbell ever, and somehow, these are the only pictures I got of her that night.  Our neighborhoods are great during Halloween and make it super fun for the kids, so it was fun walking around with them for the night!

Tinkerbell saying CHEESE!

Jess always puts together the cutest headbands for her!

And finally, we always let Harley dress up for Halloween every year.  Usually we are pretty creative and go all out... but this year Halloween kind of snuck up on us to prepare his costume.  So, he ended up being a tourist in Hawaii since he was so jealous he missed out when we went for our honeymoon!  His shirt and his lei are actually gifts we  brought back from Hawaii for him, so he's pretty official!  

Harley saying CHEESE!

Hawaiian tourist

Harley and his pumpkin from the orchard

Happy Halloween!!