thankful.

even though i was about a month behind on my halloween post, i'm already prepared to share a thanksgiving post with you. keeping you on your toes, i guess.

austin and i started thursday by doing our usual thing of taking pictures for our christmas cards. i'm hoping by this point you've noticed the blog {and even my facebook} got a nice little update and i used some of the pictures we took for our card. but we actually got quite a few good ones, at least i think so.

and then, of course, we brought out the guns. literally. cause that's what people do on thanksgiving, right? actually this was the first time i ever shot a gun. and turns out i'm a pretty good shot. #scary

after photoshooting and gun shooting, we got to the main part of thanksgiving: the food. we had the usual thanksgiving menu items. and after a slight miscalculation on turkey frying time, i was thankful for my tofurkey as everyone else got to debate the edible-ness of the bird. this year i really stepped it up with my contribution to the meal by bringing tofurkey, macaroni and cheese, homemade bread, and french silk chocolate pie. and if i may so so myself, my food was delicious. but i might be a bit biased.

but since austin was really craving some turkey we decided to have a little thanksgiving do-over on our own. i was pumped to be able to set our table with the cute wooden turkeys we made this year.

and i even made us little place cards with pumpkins. austin made fun of me. jerk.

and even though i said it was a "little" do-over, we still had tons of food. turkey {for him}, potatoes, gravy, green beans, stuffing, mac and cheese, and bread. too much food, actually.

so anyway. i hope you all had a fabulous thanksgiving with your families/friends/whomever. i'm thankful for all of you. :) also, i missed my family very much and i can't wait to see you all for christmas!

oops... halloween.

so i know we all just stuffed ourselves on turkey tofurky for thanksgiving, but as i was uploading pictures of thanksgiving festivities i realized i never finished my post about halloween. so even though it's a bit late and irrelevant at this point, here ya go.

first, austin and i dressed as thieves for a halloween party at my friend shelley's house.

this butterfly/party host herself!

and, of course, austin and i carved awesome pumpkins. i carved the bat and he carved the creepy coffin. and also I FOUND MY SCARY PUMPKIN TEETH. i thought for sure that austin threw them away somehow they got misplaced. so last minute i made the scary pumpkin, too.

and i have to thank bun for giving me these cute little pumpkin men stands.

and on halloween, austin and i dressed up to hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters. he wore his thief costume and i wore my hello kitty costume {complete with pink eyelashes. thanks, momma!}.

and if by any weird, kinda creepy chance any of my neighbors are followers of my blog, we need to talk. listen, people. just because you are old and grumpy doesn't mean you get to act like halloween isn't a thing. next year go to the store, buy the cheapest candy you can, put a pumpkin on the porch and turn your lights on so the trick-or-treaters will come up the street to the end where our house is because none of you did that this year and so nobody came to our house and we had way, waaay too much candy and nobody even got to see our awesome decorations. and i cried.

true story.

so let's fix that before next year, yes?

birthday week extravaganza part 2

have you been sitting on the edge of your seat since i posted birthday week extravaganza part 1? no? oh, well. here's part two even if you weren't anxiously waiting...

for my birthday eve dinner, austin cooked me a delicious meal of vegetarian barbecue meatloaf and mashed potatoes at my request. he also made me quite possibly the best cake i've ever had. seriously. peanut butter cake with whipped cream and peanut butter icing topped with graham cracker crumbs, drizzled chocolate and chocolate shavings. oh. em. gee.

{somewhat unrelated and very blurry picture of my cute puppy begging for cake which she was of course given and loved every bite of it}

on the day of my birthday austin's family took us out to eat at fork and pie {one of my new favorite places}. i had the spinach orzo pie and chocolate chess pie for dessert. i highly recommend each of these.

thursday evening, we all went downtown to the aquarium.

i had an awesome birthday week, the celebrations just kept on and on and who could complain about that? thanks to everyone for the sweet cards, texts, phone calls, etc sending me birthday wishes. although i do have to say that the best call of them all was my momma calling to sing me our family's special birthday song. made. my. day.

so here's to the next 365 days of my life {less than that now, but you get the point} until my next birthday!