happy halloween!

Unlike the past few years, tonight I am staying in and handing out the candy. I got a huge bag from costco last week and after having candy for breakfast the next morning, brought it to my neighbors for safe keeping. Today I carved the pumpkin and made some pumpkin spiders to hang outside. The squirrels must have been extra hungry since they basically ate the entire thing. Crazy. I made a fire in the fireplace, put on a good movie, and am currently pausing it every two minutes to hand out candy. Our neighborhood is prime trick-or-treating area, and kids come in from all over the place- tonight more so than normal. Consequently, i totally ran out of candy after the first hour. This has never happened. Usually I have a bunch of leftovers that I try to pawn off to the last few kids at night. Tonight I had to go next door to steal some from my neighbors. Though I'm all for shutting the porch light off early, 7:15 is pushing it. Hopefully this will hold me over until at least 8:30 or 9.

goodbye vivian, hello stella

It's now been two days since i've had my new car, stella! I love, love, love her, and am still getting used to the idea that i don't have to stress out anytime i have to drive somewhere! It was actually a lot harder to trade in vivian than i'd anticipated. After 10.5 years, i'd become quite attached to her, and felt like i was abandoning a child just because she'd gotten a little older. I guess it's a good thing i was so excited about and in love with my new car or it would have been a lot harder! I love you viv!

Here's the last picture of vivian and me:

And the first of stella and me:

I anticipate many fun road trips in our future!

produce

I've been growing stuff in my vegetable garden for some time now, and finally picked what was left and pulled everything else out today. While I lost a bunch of stuff to the termite poison, the small garden did a good job providing me with tons of green beans, herbs, a couple beets, and carrots. Here are some pictures I've taken over the past couple of weeks.

This is the biggest carrot I managed to grow. Not bad, considering the garden is a raised bed only on foot high. The other ones I pulled today are all cut up in the bowl in the background.

Here are the beets and another batch of carrots.

And lastly, here are the beets (cooked) and some of the green beans. I love the rings of color in the beets. While the envelope the seeds came in said that would happen, I was still excited to see it really happened!