Pumpkin Carving and a Little Somethin' from the Garden

Jason and I decided to carve pumpkins. Today. Yep, a day before Halloween. Oh well. At least we don't have to worry about the pumpkins rotting before Halloween comes. We ventured on over to the nearby pumpkin patch and it turns out that a decent size pumpkin is $10. Um. yeah. I probably would have considered it except for the fact that I had just been at Trader Joe's where they are selling the same size pumpkins for $2.99. So...off to Trader Joe's we went. We first picked out our two lovely pumpkins and prepared what we needed to carve them.

Then I considered just leaving my pumpkin like this. It looks rather hard core and brutal...
After that I decided that maybe I'd actually carve it instead of brutally stabbing it...so we started to cut the top off.

Next we scrapped and got all the guts out...
Once we were done with that we picked our design and carved away (which we have no pictures of that process). Then we proudly displayed our works of art...

Finally we stuck candles in them and watched them glow. Yay. I love Jason's! It's the classic Jack 'O' Lantern look. :)

Once that was all done I went inside and roasted the pumpkin seeds that we saved from the pumpkins. I little bit of vegetable oil sprinkled on them with some salt at 300 degrees for 45 minutes. Yum.

As you can tell they were good...being Jas couldn't even wait for me to take the picture before he stuck his hand in the bowl :)

At the end of it all I made a pumpkin cake. In a bundt pan. Because I thought that it kinda looked like half a pumpkin...with a hole in it. Anyways, the cake was not made with the pumpkin guts. It was made from a can. My mom made both types of pumpkin pies once (one from a pumpkin and one from the can). They both tasted the same and yet the one from the pumpkin was 3x's the work.
In other news. I thought that I would show you this fall season's bounty from my garden. Take a good long look...

Yep. That's it. One radish plant. And it was a tasty radish plant. You see, I actually planted lettuce, radishes, carrots, and Brussels Sprouts. Because we aren't rolling in the dough I bought seeds which wound up being a whopping $5. It turns out though that I don't really like to water plants. Especially ones that I can't see. Like little seeds that will apparently and eventually turn into actual plants. But, some how this one little radish plant made it. I have no clue how but it did. The funny part is that now that it has rained...I have all of my seeds sprouting out there. Hopefully they will make it before the frost comes. I think come spring I will break down and by the actual plants rather than the seeds. I'll probably be better about watering it if I know that it cost me more than $5. :)

Our Estate Sale Finds...We are so Weird.

Today, on the way home from grocery shopping I spotted an estate sale about 2 blocks from our house. When I got home I asked Jason if he wanted to come with. He said yep and off we went.

It was totally old, and dirty but so fun. The funniest part about it was how naive I was in thinking that I would actually be the one to take longer. HA! Yeah right. Jason was the one that probably had the most fun. It was an old man who passed away and his kids were selling his stuff. He had a ton of old tools and random fishing stuff so Jason was having a good old time sorting through all of his stuff. I found an old 1900's illustrated Little Men book. Also, for $1 I bought a press for the stove top grill I'm hoping to get for Christmas. ;)

Jason is getting more and more into wood working and he bought about 9 wood files for $3. We also found a super old "Rock Cod identifying" book for Jason (Some Rock Cod are illegal to catch but it's really hard to find any literature with good illustrations and descriptions. This book had it!) And some old heavy duty jigs and hooks.

I thought we were done after a while and then Jason went BACK to the table to look through all the tools one more time. All of a sudden he said, "Whoa, Cool!" From beneath a pile he pulls out a rusty metal thing. I realized too what it was and.....It was an old antique animal trap. Hahahahaha. Even the kids that were selling it didn't know it was there. They are completely illegal to use because they are very inhumane but it's still pretty cool. Jason was out back for a while trying to engage the thing. It took a lot of strength and struggling but he finally set it up and proudly showed me how an animal (his wooden stick) could get caught in it. I don't know where our camera is so here is a pic of one kind of like it from google. It's similar to this but ours is probably quite a bit older by the judge of the chain...and that it was made in the USA. I mean, do we make anything anymore? ;0) Good times.

Last Week and Weekend In Bullet Form

• Friday Night Date Night was great fun this last Friday. We went to a place called "Kingdom of Dumpling" to have, you guessed it...dumplings! So, it's basically the Chinese ravioli. Soooo good. It was a total hole in the wall where we were practically the only white people. We ordered some super yummy chow mien and two types of dumplings...pork and cabbage and pork and corn. Pork and corn...random huh? It was really good though. All in all we had Chinese food for 2 people (and it was a lot of food) for $21. What a deal!

• This afternoon Autumn, a friend of mine who recently moved up to the Bay area came on down and we went thrifting. We went to this place in the Mission district that was HUGE. Literally ginormous. Two stories. Autumn found a rad wall hangy thing...and some funky plates to go with her growing collection that she has. We got some yummy coffee and overall just had fun catching it up and enjoying each other.
  

• Church has been going great. I have really grown to love it and look forward to going every Sunday. We are in a small group that is super cool. It has a few young married couples in it...of which we are meeting up with on Monday to have dinner. It's really nice to be getting plugged in and creating relationships. The church is very solid and I would love to get more involved in ministries.
  

• So, update on the whole "what am I going to do with my life" thing. I have done some thinking and talking with Jas...and Jesus :) and have decided that nursing is something that I may be interested in...but not enough to really pursue it, at least right now. I think that for now I'm content with the little skills I possess and if the Lord one day gives me the opportunity to go to school then I may go for it. For now though, I'd say I'm way more passionate about food then I am nursing sooooo...nursing just isn't calling to me. It was an easy thing to go for. Highly practical, the schooling was affordable, the pay afterward is good. In the end though I think you should be passionate about what you do. Not just do it because it's convenient. I'm not going toward a career in food or anything. Just not going for nursing as of now. So there you have it. :)

• Jason has been enjoying school. He seems to be learning a ton...including some Chinese. I have to admit that I laugh sometimes when he's practicing because...it's just such a different sounding language. Both my doctors at my work speak it though and about half the population of SF (ok, maybe not that many) so it's becoming not quite so foreign of a language! :)

• Plans for tomorrow...church, wash the truck, pull some weeds, work on our Chile scrapbook, maybe see what's happening with Fleet Week. The Blue Angels are in town and it's been super cool to see them flying around in formation!
  

HAPPY....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!

Today is my mother dearests birthday and I can't be there... :(

But...

Thanks for being such a fantastic and great mom! Hope your day is special and you feel loved.

Love,

Anna and Jason