Another Halloween come and gone

This was the first year I've ever gone to a Trunk-or-Treat, and let me tell you: IT WAS AWESOME! Our ward's Trunk-or-Treat was held on October 30th at our church, and EVERYONE was there, including Sister Meine! Katie pulled a great last-minute costume together with the help of Goodwill and some black eye liner pencils. I donned my Wild Thing Max costume and we were off.

Everyone thought I was a rabbit, or a cat. Wrong. I had to explain to everyone who I was, but once they knew they were pretty impressed.

We aren't quite sure what Katie was supposed to be... a dead... beauty queen... ex-girlfriend of some kind.

After the Trunk-or-Treat Katie and I ran home so I could change into my next costume for the next party we were heading to. Ander came home from work just in time to go with us, so he dressed up as a Professional B. A. S. S. Fisherman. Go figure. It was too dark to really take any pictures there since it was outside, but we took these when we got home.

In case you can't tell, I'm a low-resolution picture. I'm all pixels. And it's so cool because from far away, like the picture below, I really do look pixelated.

And one last dramatic pose for the evening:

We had a lot of fun that night. We were also exhausted when we got home. I think all of us slept like babies. A fabulous night of good food, good friends, dress up, and spooks. Happy Halloween everyone!

Hot punkins!

Ander didn't work tonight, and neither did me or Katie, so we decided to carve out pumpkins! Ander and I sort of cheated, since we used stencils we found on the homestarrunner.com website, but Katie drew hers on her own. We had a lot of fun sitting around our table giving our pumpkins lobotomies while listening to Halloween music on Pandora radio. Check us out!

And ta-dah! Ander's is the one on the far left, mine is in the middle, and Katie's is on the right. I have to say, we were all pretty proud of our pumpkin carving skills!

And of course, this cute pic of two of my favorite beings ever to sum it all up.

The Sparrow

One of the most interesting, intriguing books I have ever read. Amazing story. I had to tell you all about it. I loved it.

A little extra cash and a monster on our porch

This month both me and Ander's car registrations are due, AND I have a parking ticket fine I have to pay. Yuck. This month is going to be really, REALLY tight. It happens, sometimes. Things pile up and you have to find little extra ways of making money. Some people go through their couches for extra change. I do this:

We bought this little guy for six dollars at Goodwill and decided to give it a go. We stuck with the music note theme since we have tons of leftover brown paint from my other dresser. This little gem sold for $75 on craigslist.org. Ahh, success! We've already started another Goodwill dresser.

As for the monster on our porch: back in February my mother-in-law sent me a TopsyTurvy Tomato planter for my birthday. I was so excited because I absolutely love tomatoes and now I could grow them for myself right out on our porch! It would be so lovely!

I was so excited because I absolutely love tomatoes and now I could grow them for myself right out on our porch! It would be so lovely!

This is what we have now. I 15 foot long tomato plant hanging from our porch ceiling that hasn't given us one single tomato. TELL ME HOW THAT WORKS?

He's very healthy, and apparently doesn't believe he needs to have babies. I think we should just throw the whole thing away and start over but Ander refuses to take it down. So, now we get awkward looks from people that walk by our apartment and see the monster of a plant we have growing upside down.

I also wanted to add this picture here, just because I love it so much

Love me some May-Merz

The best two years

Ander and I have now been in Austin for two whole years! I can't belIEVE how fast the time has flown by! I absolutely love it here in Austin and I can't imagine myself anywhere else. I love the weather, I love our ward, I love the scenery, I love the people, I love our apartment, I love everything! But I've just come to find that in the last two years, I have accomplished something quite wonderful. Over the last two years here in Austin I have read 90 different novels. I really owe it to the fact that we don't have TV in our home. I spend my time reading and playing video games. (which sounds insanely nerdy to me) Although I've now added decoupage to my hobbies, but I still prefer to read when I have the time. I know it's lame, but I put together a list of all the books I've read so far. I love this list. It really makes me happy: (I put asterisks next to the books I absolutely loved)

1984 by George Orwell

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

Animal Farm by George Orwell

The Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak******

The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut*

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

The City of Ember by Jeanne DePrau

Congo by Michael Crichton

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

The Unabridged Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Dune by Frank Herbert*

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynn Truss

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card*

Eragon by Christopher Paolini

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer*

The Help by Kathryn Stockett*

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Houng of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak*

In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster

Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton*

Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger

Life of Pi by Yann Martel*

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

The Lost World by Michael Crichton

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh Robert C. O’Brien

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane*

The Nanny Diaries by Emma MchLaughlin

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Paper Towns by John Green

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingslover

The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Sabriel by Garth Nix

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret History by Donna Tartt*

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut*

Someday my Prince Will Come: True Adventures of a Wannabe Princess by Jerramy Fine

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell*

Speaker for the Dead Orson Scott Card

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robery Louis Stevenson

Tales From Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Tales of Beetle the Bard by J. K. Rowling

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield*

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

Timeline by Michael Crichton

The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno: A Novel by Ellen Bryson

Treasure Island by Robery Louis Stevenson

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen*

Watership Down by Richard Adams*

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

And the list will continue throughout the years, I can assure you. I would like to thank my brother Joe for letting my borrow Dracula in October of 2008, which got me on my reading kick. I hope it never stops. Thanks Joe xoxo

We don't have bugs because...

Apparently we have Tarantulas around our apartment. We found another one outside our apartment that had been smashed by someone too just a week or two earlier. I told Ander to take this one down to South Austin and let him go in a lake but he said if we'd found two, there were obviously more living around here, so we let this guy go. Don't ask me how I did it, but I stood there and watching him crawl away from us. Oh well, I guess it's because of these guys I never really see bugs around, and let's be honest: a guy this size would have to knock on the door to get into our house.