Halloween Weekend

We had one of those great weekends with the perfect amount of relaxation time and fun time. Friday night we carved pumpkins with some friends. It was cold and fall-ish just like I had hoped, so Jeremy got the fire pit going to keep us warm outside and I made some hot apple cider to keep our insides warm! Mostly everyone carved pumpkins and they turned out great! I was so excited finally after 3 falls being married we had a pumpkin carved.

In honor of hosting the pumpkin carving, I did finally throw some Halloween/fall decorations together!

These sparkley things were about 50 cents at CVS. I love anything with glitter and I love little white pumpkins.

I got the white and silver (fake) pumpkins from Target, and my Spooky thing holds our candy.

I got this runner from Crate and Barrel before Thanksgiving last year - I love it! The centerpiece is also from Target (where else?) and we had cookies, candy corn and spinach dip.

I think my mom gave me those Halloween paper napkins my sophomore year of college. I have tons! And I love filling that bowl with baby pumpkins and gourds each fall!

Jeremy getting the fire going! We really needed it - money well spent. (It's also from Target, surprised?)


Me with my "BOO!" ghost pumpkin

Our masterpieces: Kevin's {he's a little jokester, isn't he?}, mine, Jeremy's, Samantha's, Bennett's and Erin's/Drew's. I think Erin won based on how well her "peeping monster" photographed!

Saturday we slept way in (I was seriously exhausted after hosting, even though it wasn't that much work for a normal person!) and caught up on Thursday night TV (The Office, Parks & Recreation, Community and 30 Rock). Since we'd had a big night on Friday and the Longhorns were playing at 7pm, we kept it low-key. We got BBQ from a new place in our neighborhood and watched the game at home with Jeremy's parents. It was a good game where we got the lead early, so there was no fretting over a win, but it also wasn't overly boring. Go Horns, all the way to Pasadena!

We moved into our house a little over 2 years ago, so I was giddy when Halloween came around the first time. I was in a neighborhood and was sure I'd have tons of trick-or-treaters! I spent a small fortune on candy...and we had 2. And they live on our street. Bummer. Last year I was counting on at least 2...we had 1, who also lives on our street. This year I was worried we'd have none! (Especially with Jeremy yelling at the TV.) But this year we had a new record of 10! Seriously, that's a big record. I'm not sure why there aren't many kids out because we have 2 elementary schools in our neighborhood, but I wonder if it's a combination of a lot of people opting for Fall Festival carnivals at churches and we're the last block before a busy street, so I can understand parents skipping our block. I think our jack-o-lanterns helped, though! Also, I told the first kids they could take as much candy as they wanted since we don't get many kids and I think the word spread. :)

Sunday we ate leftover BBQ and watched a new show, Flash Forward, all day long. I had been recording all the episodes but we've never had a chance to catch up on them, so we watched TV until it was completely dark in our house (thanks to daylight savings time!). That night, our friends Justin, Emily and Sean hosted a "fancy" dinner for a group of us. We all dressed up and started with cocktails (fizzy pomegranate juice for me!) and appetizers, like tuna tartare in a tortilla chip with some mint and avocado and a fig with goat cheese and an almond on top. Justin made cocktails and they had gone a little crazy at Houston Wine Merchant. For dinner we started with a soup course made by Sean - a delicious bacon and corn chowder. Our main course was this amazing slow roasted tenderloin with bacon gravy. You could literally taste the bacon in the liquid. We also had asparagus and roasted fingerling potatoes topped with creme fraiche and chives. Emily also made these great cheesy biscuit things which are apparently similar to the bread from Fogo de Chao. We may or may not have eaten our weight in those also. For dessert Emily made us individual chocolate pots de creme with cherry whipped cream. Is your mouth watering yet? Because mine is. We worked off our gourmet dinner with some Wii bowling and boxing - a great way to end any evening! We collectively decided we need to do this regularly and probably not on a Sunday evening since we realized mid-way through dinner we all had to work in less than 12 hours. (I'm hoping Sam and Emily can share their pictures with me - we all looked so nice all dressed up!)