Almost the last of the October pics!

Apparently October was a busy month! One thing that went by in blogland unmentioned was our anniversary. Mike hit the gift jackpot this year! He did the one small gift a day thing--a card on our actual anniversary, flowers the next day (for facebookers, that was the same day we found a dead, decomposing chipmunk in the garage), and the big, awesome gift? Tickets to Wicked! I was pretty pumped. I read the book last year and wanted to see the musical (I prefer the musical, much less grim!). Even better, he bought the tickets around my birthday in September and kept it a secret. AND EVEN BETTER, he got the tickets on the front row of the mezzanine so I didn't have to try to look over and around some tall person's head. It never fails. I always end up behind the tall person.


Nanny and Boppa watched Autumn that night. Because great grandparents get to do this, they kept her up until she totally crashed out on the couch. So cute.


Here's a random "Autumn is a cat" shot.


Back to Halloween, Autumn and I usually do a little visiting. This year, our first stop was to see Aunt Penny's unit at Baptist East. Penny actually just won The Daisy Award for Extraordinary Nurses! I am very proud of her and completely not surprised. The person who nominated her was someone that she stopped to help on the side of the road.


Our next stop was to see Stephan's mom. She just loves Autumn so I try to bring Autumn by whenever I can.


Then we went to Ridgeway's Fall Festival which was really great. This was by far Autumn's favorite game. She was totally enraptured by the disk falling down the board...it was actually pretty funny.


Here we are looking somewhat perky. :D


Here's Lainey...


And Boppa...


And look! Mike left the cave and came with us! With almost no fuss!


Funny enough, Autumn was kind of weirded out by the vest that Papa D had to wear to direct traffic. Mr. Shackelford is there in the back. His son Fred was voted vp of the Tennessee Baptist Convention. How cool is that?


And, last but never least, Nanny!


Definitely one of the best halloweens ever!

The First of Many (I hope)

SO! We had a small party, right? This was a great opportunity to do what I love the most (throwing parties) but also gave a push to get some finishing touches on the house. Cheri (who did donnie and Liz's flowers) came over and got our shelves and tabletops looking truly amazing with the stuff I already had...and borrowed from Lainey. :D You'll recognize some of the table decor from Donnie and Liz's rehearsal dinner. Living around the corner from my in laws ftw!!

Here's a picture of one side of the bookcases in our living room. The only thing I changed from what Cheri did was I added the gorgeously illustrated Zen Ghosts book to the bookshelves and took down something Mike wanted in his office instead. I love the how the book looks there so I think I'll switch out for another book in the series when we decorate for Christmas.


Remember this?
Craziness.


The other side. There's also a nice little table setup behind the rock banders that I don't have a photo of. All we need is furniture. Or not! We have a great open space for playing rock band and charades, hahaha.


Here's my first buffet in this house. I didn't make enough savory food but I think it ended up being okay.


See that little black bowl?


There's vampire blood in it. :D It's hand sanitizer that I got for what was going to be Liz's halloween bachelorette party before they moved the wedding up.


This is what the former owners used as a desk. I USE IT FOR CHOCOLATE.


Everything's good with chocolate, right? Well, some things more than others. Every year I adjust and add to the chocolate dipping bar. Last year, the runaway favorite addition was donut holes. Tamara brought those for me this year. The new surprise favorite? Waffles.


I got a little theme happy with the drinks.


I got the printables from Hostess with the Mostess. If you ever have to plan a party and need a theme or ideas, make that site one of your first stops, for real.


I absolutely could not resist these bottles.


Mike's dad got creative with covering up a loose step we have in the front yard. He took this creepy little pumpkin man that my mom got us (she does that a lot. Remember the coconut monkey?) and put a flashlight in it.


Now for some costumes! I was sooooo happy because everyone but my brother came in costume. Seriously. It was so much fun. If we ever have another Halloween party, I want to be sure to install someone at the front door to take pictures of everyone in costume because I didn't get nearly enough photos. But, I got a few cute ones. Penny was a kitty and so was Frank's wife Emily.


Valerie came as a boy (complete with black eye) and brought Miss Roxie as a whoopie cushion. Maaaan. So cute and weird!


Tamara was...guess who? Landon is in the rock band pic above as a zombie. The "braiiiiins" he wrote my dry erase board is still there. XD


We had not one, but TWO Indiana Joneses!


After discovering that Cathy was mostly sure her gun was unloaded, Mike decided he'd rather pose with Annie Oakley in the beginning duel position rather than the ending.


I wish I could photoshop either Mike's real eyes into this or maybe those Pirates of the Caribbean Captain Jack eyes on his eyelids because this is an otherwise great picture.


These guys win for creativity...Matt and Jamie were the Black Eyed Peas. I love it!


I love this picture. Notice Donnie rocking out in the background. Also notice Matt from Kali's (as opposed to the above Matt from community group) cool coat cuff.


Anyway, that was our first real party here at the new house! It even ended on a funny note: our neighbor came by and told us he had called the police to complain about our party noise. The police didn't come into our house because you couldn't actually hear anything from outside. Insisting that it was, in fact, our party making the noise, the neighbor decided to come over himself which I wish he had done in the first place because he would have discovered it wasn't us without dragging the poor police out on a wild goose chase.

Apparently, there was another party in the neighborhood that was very loud. When the neighbor asked if it was our radio that was playing (and I could hear what he was talking about), I was able to tell him no because at that point, the 5 remaining people were standing in the hallways getting ready to leave and we had no more music or rock band going. :D He came over the day to apologize and that was very nice. But it does tell us a little about our neighbors. They are really going to hate our Christmas parties!

Alll righty, this is really long. I'll go ahead and split my post in two, hopefully before Tuesday so I can get caught up! But since this post is noticeably Autumn-light, say hello to Princess Bunny.


:) Every day is Halloween at our house.