update!

Obviously many things have happened since I've been absent from my blogging...

Pippa has been growing like a weed. I attempted to introduce her to Justin's dog Buck....

Notttt too successful. She is quite the maniac lately until night time when she likes to lay across my neck like a scarf and suffocate me. Both mine and Shawn's hands are covered in scratches from her attacks. To the point where I've had multiple random people ask me if I have a cat. Luckily I can say yes, but I keep thinking about what an awkward question that would be if I didn't...

Thinking back over October and what we've been up to, I can pretty much only think of one thing: Halloween. I don't believe I've ever done so many Halloween-related activities in my life. To start, Shawn worked in a haunted house for the month of October, which involved a daily dousing of fake blood and wearing of white-out eye contacts which all began to not even strike me as unusual around Day 10. 

Then came Zombie Crawl. Thousands of people dressed as zombies rambling around the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver. There were definitely some sights to see. And some sticky blood to be had, considering the fake stuff we made was mainly corn syrup. Oh yeah, that felt good :(

Sometime in the Halloween blur of October, we managed to carve what seemed like a thousand pumpkins:

Can you guess who is who?

Shawn did this one for work.

All that pumpkin meant that of course we had 2 rounds of toasted pumpkin seeds, a loaf of pumpkin bread, and are now in the process of making pumpkin soup to freeze for Thanksgiving :)

Speaking of Fall recipes.. I finally managed to make a tart with my tart pan I bought months ago... a scrumptious caramelized apple and onion tart with homemade rosemary crust. Deeelicious. I must apologize to my dear mother for hating her rosemary potatoes so much growing up because I now think it's one of my favorite flavors. Who knew?

You'd think with all this Halloween-ing we would've planned our costumes ahead of time.. but no. So basically at the last minute before we headed out to our apartment community get-together, I had the grand idea to be Goldilocks and Shawn would be a bear. Pretty much based solely on the fact that he was wearing big bear feet slippers and I have a blonde wig that I need to lower my PPW on (Price Per Wear, that is). So I whipped up this little ensemble and then got to work making Shawn into a bear.

This may have involved a brown pillowcase over his head with a cutout for his face. The two corners tied at the top to make ears. Let's just say he did not love, and thus, no pictures :( But he was a good sport and I was freezing. Very jealous of his brown snow pants and brown hoodie. The party was actually thrown by our apartment management company who owns a ton of properties around Denver. Two of our neighbor friends won $250 off rent and $500 off rent. We walked away with a $100 gift certificate. Not too shabby! For the record, it was a random drawing, not a costume contest :)

Aside from all that nonsense, I've been staying quite busy at the j-o-b's. Things are going very well at the Holiday Inn. There's been talk of putting me strictly in charge of the wedding business. Which sounds like a fantastic idea to me! I've also been working with Pink Posey here and there, which got me a little gig making a sign for a bride's ring bearer to carry down the aisle:

Still waiting to see the professional photos from that one, but I can't imagine how it was not the cutest thing ever. It also allowed me to decorate my first ice cake. Shawn actually helped with this one. The bough of flowers across the bottom was his lovely idea :)

Unfortunately, with all this working there haven't been many estate sale visits. Or perhaps it's the fact that our tiny apartment has reached capacity. This hasn't stopped Shawn from Craigslisting, however, and I am "proud" to say that we are now the "happy" owners of:

60 bottles of hot sauce from around the globe...

A cat condo larger than my own body...

A PS3 that is the reason I am undistracted enough to be writing this at the moment...

More fish and aquatic beings than I can even count...

And an iguana who basically came and went (i.e. got the boot) in one weekend. Luckily while he was here, it was necessary for us to acquire another ginormous tank so we have a home for the next "surprise" !!!

Needless to say, things are never dull. But it finally feels like we're getting into the groove of normal life for the most part, which is a nice change from the semi-chaos of the past few months. And to top it all off, there's a Jacksonville trip on the horizon! December 1-6 we'll be home to visit for the holidays. Can't wait!