Seeds

Monday night we roasted the pumpkin seeds from the pumpkins we carved on Sunday. I cleaned them, added a little butter, salt and sugar and then roasted them in the oven for 40 minutes. Last night I enjoyed them a little too much. I was sitting in my chair and clumsily dumped the bucket of empty shells on my lap. Here's me feeling stupid but still cracking up.

Pumpkin Party 2008

Last night Chad and I went to the Pumpkin Carving Party at our friends Jim and Kellie's house. We had dinner, drinks and candy before buckling down and carving our pumpkins. Because we used the pumpkins from our patch we brought three to work on this year. Chad has more imagination when it comes to pumpkin faces than I do so I let him carve two of them. Mine is on the left. Thanks to Kellie for the photo from last night.

Long Lost Project

I started this lap quilt way back in 2002 when my mom gave me a kit with the fabric. I chose the layout and sewed the pieces together. Why I chose this layout? Who knows. I probably would have done the pattern differently if I got the kit now, but that's OK. After finishing my place mats this week I had the confidence to finish this little quilt. Each time it gets a little easier and overall I'm happy with how it turned out.

Place Mats

This afternoon I finished the place mat set I started in a recent quilting class. I thought it was going to be a quick little project when I started but it turns out it wasn't. This class taught me how to make this fancy little block, quilt everything together using my new quilting foot and then bind it with mitered corners. The place mats definitely aren't perfect but I'm happy with how they turned out.

Pumpkins

Yesterday we harvested our first round of pumpkins. We found seven that were ready to be cut and left a handful of green gourds on the vine. Those should be bright orange just before Halloween. We delivered the largest ones to friends and neighbors yesterday.

Basketball

Yesterday we went with my parents to the LA Lakers/LA Clippers preseason game here in town. It was a blast! We had dinner beforehand at the Doghouse Grill and then headed across the street to the 7pm game. The Clippers were on fire and definitely deserved the win. The score was 107-80 (ouch, Lakers) and I'm sure the Clippers were thrilled with the outcome. Gold-medalist Kobe Bryant played and despite coach Phil Jackson's recent leg problems, he was there too.

I'm so glad we went. I wish we had an NBA team here!

Three Years!

Yesterday was our third wedding anniversary! How can three years go by so quickly but still feel like we've been married forever?

More on what we did on our anniversary in a few minutes. Tonight we're going to celebrate by going out to dinner. Somewhere we haven't been yet but have wanted to try.

Fall Wreath

It has been fall for a couple weeks but I'm just now getting around to decorating the house for it. My mom suggested I make a fabric wreath for our front door and I liked her great idea. After thinking on it for awhile this wreath is what I came up with. Chad suggested the raffia bow and I think it was the perfect touch to finish it off.

Fair

When there's a chance to hit up a local fair Chad and I are always there. San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles County, Tulare County, Paso Robles, Fresno, etc. --we've been to them all and most of them more than once. We love going mostly for the people watching, but then there's the home arts, the animals, the food and the photography exhibits that we like checking out too.

At last year's fair we saw part of the Jonas Brothers concert. This year we went for Gretchen Wilson and her show was great. We got there early, found a good place to stand and stayed for the entire show. She played all her hits, a handful of new songs from an upcoming album (they were catchy and fun) and a few rock and roll classics that the whole crowd knew. She put on a good party concert and we're definitely glad we went.