An early California Christmas

This year Pat and I are spending the holidays in New Jersey with his family, but I just can't go without decorating our house. Even though we will miss almost two weeks of December in California, I still wanted to share in the holidays with my family. So, we brought out our decorations (and maybe a little of Sara's and G-ma's) and decorated. I love holiday decorations and I have to go all out. Since we were only in a small apartment last year, we didn't have too many decorations to fill up an entire house.

My solution: I just decorated the dining room/entry way so my things weren't spread too thin! We couldn't decorate the front half of the house (for reasons beyond our control) so our Christmas tree had to go in the dining room this year. Thankfully, most of the items we purchased last year worked in our new home and we now have a very Christmas-y entry. I absolutely love it and can't wait until next year when I will hopefully be able to spend a little more money to spread the holiday cheer into our family room and kitchen!

Of course, decorating isn't as fun if you know there won't be a lot of time to enjoy it, so I decided to host an early Christmas dinner with my parents and sister. So, 2 weeks before the big day, they came over for some good food, Christmas music, a walk through the neighborhood to see the lights, and to see our decorations on display.

On the menu:

Prime rib

Potato and parsnip gratin

roasted brussel sprouts with caramelized onions

salad

and...

Gingerbread cupcakes with eggnog frosting and apple streusel cupcakes! (this one thanks to my sister!)

What a great meal and a fun time with the family!

Playing a little rock band Beatles while the Prime rib was cooking...

A couple views of the table

Merry Christmas everyone!!

A Quarter Century!

Just a quick post to celebrate my husband's 25th Birthday! Not too big of a celebration since it was just the two of us but it was still a great day. We previously celebrated his birthday last weekend with my parents and sister at TAPS for an Octoberfest beer dinner which was amazing.

For his birthday dinner we decided to head to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch game 2 of the NLDS since Pat loves the place. We got to watch the Phillies on the big screen while enjoying great beer and wings. They gave us a scare the first half of the game but came back for a great win!

Wearing our Phillies gear!!

His birthday cake was delicious, but I wish I had time to hand make the cake itself instead of using a box. He wanted red velvet cake and I didn't want to hassle the food coloring so I bought a box instead. To make up for it I made the frosting from scratch and it turned out great! It was a cream cheese whipped cream frosting and it went perfect with the cake. To be honest, I wanted to just eat the frosting; the cake was more of an accompaniment to the deliciousness of the frosting. Hopefully next year I will have a great recipe for the cake as well so I don't have to use a box.

His birthday cake with 24 regular candles and a baseball glove on top of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup for the 25th!

So many candles!!! What an old man =)

Bon Appétit!

Pumpkin Patch

I don't know if it's just the nice fall weather or finally having a house to decorate, but I am so excited for Halloween this year! It has been a few years so I have really been looking forward to carving some pumpkins (and baking pumpkin seeds-yum!) Luckily I read an article out of a local event paper that highlighted a great family owned pumpkin patch in the area. Lavender Hill Pumpkin Farm is the place and it is in Fallbrook, CA. Only about 20 minutes from our house and we were in pumpkin wonderland!

I looked over their website before going and really thought it was a great choice since they were very low-thrills...just a good variety of home-grown pumpkins, and lots to choose from. What I really loved about the place was their quirky side. They had quite a few abnormal pumpkins and have named them all different and creative names.

The pumpkin "museum" with all of the named pumpkins

More of the named pumpkins

They named their pumpkins after all sorts of people, both real and made up. I saw a "Darth Vader," "Zeus," "Xerxes," "The Ugly Duckling," "Iago," and so on.

"Gargantua" the creamy one, and "Gort" the misshapen one, and

I can't remember the third one.

They have around 30 varieties of pumpkins to choose from which really makes your decision tough, especially if you are extra picky like me. I made Pat walk all over the pumpkin patch as I searched for the perfect large carving pumpkin, small carving pumpkins, and decorating pumpkins. In the front they had a bunch of small varieties to make your picking a little easier, which of course just made me want to buy even more.

I think this picture of the green and white pumpkin is my favorite type I found that day. Besides of course the "Cinderella" type which we will have to get next year.

My pumpkin I will carve into when we found it on our search.

Pat chose the perfect shirt for the day...Flyers started the pre-season today (I think) and a great orange color for the pumpkin patch. Though I don't know if he planned it like that.

2 pumpkins found so far...

Our bounty!

The guy told us all of the different varieties when we paid. Of course I don't remember them all but we did get a bumpy one that was a "Rumpelstiltskin" variety! Now we can start decorating for Halloween and Fall!

And I wanted to end with our adorable kitties...I take way too many pictures of them so I figured I might as well share one of them actually hanging out together. Happy October!