till death thursday ; fun things to do in fall

in keeping with my fall theme, here are a few fun things to do in the fall with your honey!

-go on a hayride. whether haunted or not, a hayride is a good excuse to snuggle while taking in the sights and smells of fall.

-carve pumpkins. see who comes up with the scariest or most creative design!

-bake up pumpkin seeds together. pumpkin seeds are a good way to put the guts from your pumpkins to good use. you can sprinkle cinnamon or garlic salt over them, or spice them up with chili powder! there are a ton of recipes online.

-visit an apple orchard or fruit farm. i know here in northeastern ohio, we have white house fruit farms. they sell pumpkins, the BEST apples ever, cider, those yummy honey sticks, and all kinds of tasty things. joe's favorite are the donuts. we went last year and i even got to feed the ducks!

-revisit your childhood. play in the leaves together with your pooch!

-warm up apple cider and watch something fall-ish. like halloween or another spooky movie. i'd settle for some buffy!

-go for a walk. take a little stroll through your local park and check out the foliage!

-go to homecoming! what would bring back memories more than going to your alma-mater's homecoming football game? i loved walking around at the games and seeing all my friends. you know, before i had to grow up and get a job!



so whether you're old and married like me, or looking for something to do on a first date, i hope this helped!

wishlist wednesday > fall edition

things i'm hoping for this fall:

-actual FALL-like weather

-to be situated in our house by halloween

-to get our sweet kitchen table so i can have a nice thanksgiving dinner!

-for both of our football teams to do well.

-good grades!

-to get out and take some good pictures

-carve some sweet pumpkins

-to go to white house more than once

-to have a nice anniversary

-for mollie to have a nice birthday!

tasty tuesday -- fall edition

i decided since this is the first official full week of fall, everything is going to have to do with fall.
get pumped.

this first recipe may not seem fall-ish but it was listed under fall recipes. (i got the following two recipes from thenest.com)

Chocolate Cheese Fudge

Makes: About 36 squares

Ingredients
½ pound Velveeta cheese, sliced 
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup chopped nuts
2 16-ounce boxes confectioners’ sugar
½ cup cocoa

Preparation
Spray lightly the bottom of a 9 and 1/2-inch square pan with a nonstick spray. Over medium heat, in a saucepan, melt cheese and butter together, stirring constantly until smooth. Remove from heat. Add vanilla and nuts. In a large bowl, sift together sugar and cocoa. Pour cheese mixture into sugar-cocoa mixture, stirring until completely mixed. Candy will be very stiff. I have found it is easier to do the final mixing with my hands. Using your hands, remove candy from bowl and press evenly and firmly into pan. Because of the amount of butter in this recipe (which you must use), I like to pat the top of the candy with a paper towel to remove excess oil. At this point, you may want to refrigerate until firm, depending on how quickly you want to serve it. Thirty minutes will usually do the trick. Cut into squares.

by Paula Deen, courtesy of Simon & Schuster.

Reprinted with permission from The Lady & Sons Just Desserts: More than 120 Sweet Temptations from Savannah's Favorite Restaurant 

Caramel Apple Martini

Makes: 1 martini

Ingredients
1-1/2 oz Apple cider 
1-1/2 oz Van Gogh Wild Apple Vodka
1/2 oz Van Gogh Dutch Caramel Vodka
1/2 oz Apple Schnapps

Preparation

Glaze the inside of a chilled martini glass with caramel syrup and place glass in the refrigerator until ready to use. Add all ingredients into a shaker with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into chilled glass glazed with caramel syrup. Float a thinly sliced apple round (seeds removed) on top

FALL!

FALL, my FAVORITE time of the whole year started at 5.05 am on friday! fall brings so many great things; pretty colors, crunchy leaves, it's color so you can actually wear cute clothes, scarves, mollie's birthday, sorority recruitment, a new school year, HALLOWEEN! and new this year, mine and joe's wedding anniversary.
 fall always reminds me of and makes me miss when i did the wicca-pagan-y thing. which is totally not even like, ooh hey let's get on broomsticks and turn people into beavers. no one believes they can do that except for the mentally ill! haha it's all about energy and being a good person. there are a lot of similarities between wicca and the three big religions. they just pray in a different way. i loved the harvest celebrations--bonfires with the crisp air. that was the best. you feel so much more aware of everything around you. i really do miss it, but i feel like there are so many weird misconceptions about it that i couldn't do it now and be as "out" about it as i was in high school.

but anyway! enough of the theological discussion. in honor of fall, i wanted to share some photos i took screenshots of on instagram that i think are awesome.

oh hey

oh hey, we closed on the house today!

i should totally be doing my accounting exercises, seeing as how i have an exam tomorrow, but all i've wanted to do all day was blog! i still feel like shit, though.

this is such an easy-way-out entry.


A. Age: 21
B. Bed size: queen, soon to be king once we move in.
C. Chore that you hate: lawn-mowing.
D. Dogs: mollie, duh. you all know that.
E. Essential start to your day: opening my eyes.
F. Favorite color: pink and green. i swear i liked them even before i joined DZ.
G. Gold or Silver: ew! silver
H. Height: 5’6"
I. Instruments you play: guitar and bass
J. Job title: server and hostess. but most importantly, student.
K. Kids: none yet. but i really want 4- Joe Jr, Konnor Preston, Katrina Francis, Kristina Anne
L. Live: right now, poland, oh.
M. Mother’s name: diane
N. Nicknames: kel, kelly-girl, k-mac (thanks dalene.)
O. Overnight hospital stays: not till i pop one out hopefully.
P. Pet peeves: when people interrupt during a story to ask a question that will be answered in the rest of the story, when i'm talking and the other person let's someone else distract them, liars, poor grammar 
Q. Quote from a movie: satan is in the house, he killed my mom and turned her into a bull.
R. Right or left handed: Right
S. Siblings: my brother, matt.
U. Underwear: i'm wearing steelers ones.
V. Vegetable you hate: not applicable!
W. What makes you run late: my inability to get up and get moving.
X. X-Rays you’ve had: teeth
Y. Yummy food that you make: buffalo chicken dip and taco salad.
Z. Zoo animal: penguins, obviously.

and these are from a couple weeks ago, i looked like such a creep but it was so pretty!

catching up.

my life. i totally thought that i had MRSA all last week. i had a weird lump under the skin on my leg. it felt like a black and blue mark but it's just a red spot. i went to the doctor on friday and he said it's nothing to worry about. so that was good. saturday, i attended my very first preference ceremony as a delta zeta alum. 4 hours standing up in high heels did not help my back which was already a little sore from friday. by the end of the night, my back and neck hurt so bad that i thought i was going to puke. i woke up in the middle of the night sweating to death. i went back to the doctor yesterday. i have a viral infection...GREAT. i get to stay home from work until friday and of course i have two tests this week of all weeks. ugh.

oh and we had tickets to go see the foo fighters last night but i'm obviously too sick for that.. :(

so i've actually been getting really discouraged when it comes to blogging. i feel like my ideas are kinda dumb and that my writing ability has gone down the drain. i'm not looking for compliments, just venting. i know with all my free time i should be cranking out scheduled posts, but i haven't done ANYTHING. i wasn't really sure what i could possibly blog about today.

ever since i was young, like 7 or 8 years old, i've had polaroids, barbie cameras, disposables, stolen my mom's from time to time, i even have a million videos of me and my friends. i've always loved taking pictures. but as i got into high school, i started taking less and less because i felt more and more awkward saying, ok picture time! i'm not sure why. now that i have a film camera and a DSLR, my problem is finding ways to make everyday objects interesting in a picture/picture-worthy. i clearly can't go out anywhere right now to find things so i thought i'd take up a big challenge for me and force myself to find things around the apartment/relating to me being sick to take pictures of. i think it's extra hard to do this when they're things you see and pass-over everyday.  so here's a few.

oh yeah and the pens are on tonight!

adventures in homeownership

i have good news and bad news! 

first the bad news. everything with the house has just been one big headache lately. the appraisal came back $2700 less than the price we agreed on. the seller wanted to take the three day labor day weekend to think about it. they came back that WEDNESDAY and said they wouldn't accept the new price because he doesn't want any less than $130,000. first of all, THANKS for making us wait that long for a response. second of all, you knew that from the beginning when you put your house on the market so i'm not sure why you didn't just say that when you heard the appraisal results.

good news. we worked it out, we just have to pay our own closing costs now. which is LAME. 

so we're waiting on our realtor to pressure them into giving us a move-out date so we can move in. we're shooting for october 1. 

here's a paint sneak-peak! (please excuse the picture-quality, i used my phone for these!)

sunroom, downstairs half-bath and possibly the family room.

this color is actually a deep red.
it's going in the upstairs bathrooms.

i love love LOVE this color. it's more the cerulean blue.
it's going in my office. 

not the darkest brown, but the one right above it.
it's going in the bedrooms and joe's office.

once again, not the darkest but the one above it.
it's going in the living room and dining room and possibly the kitchen.
the lightest color it going in the hallways!

tasty tuesday

hi guys! so this week's tasty tuesday isn't from tonight (cheater!), it's from last week. i always end up making too much sloppy joe meat. i buy the 3 pound packs of meat because, that's just what i buy. so i made up the whole 3 pounds. after a week we were totally sick of it. i googled what to do with the leftovers and i found a few casseroles. i let joe pick from the top two and this is the one he picked!

Sloppy Joe Casserole


2 packages crescent rolls (i used the buttery-flavored)
1 pound ground beef
1 can sloppy joe mix
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese


cook up the sloppy joe mix and meat like normal. spray a 9 x 13 pan. unroll one tube of rolls as a sheet and pinch together the seams. lay it in the bottom of the pan

spread meat on top. cover evenly with cheese. unroll second tube of rolls. lay it as a sheet on top of the casserole.

cook at 350* for 15 minutes (or until rolls are golden-brown.

We Remember...

on september 11, 2001, i was 11 years old. we walked into art class like any normal day. someone said, "the president is dead!" obviously that wasn't true. i just remember being really confused. i don't think i'd really even heard of the world trade center until that day. i can't remember if we were sent back to our period 1/2 classes or if we just went back ourselves. our art teacher wouldn't turn the TV on, but when we went back to 1/2, we watched the whole thing. we saw the second plane hit the second building.. i remember being so fascinated by that image. it was so..almost nonchalant, like it was no big deal to run a plane into a building, or like it was just a spur of the moment decision.

we watched, cried, were confused, and saw our teacher's co-teacher freak out over the location of her husband. he was okay, thankfully. before lunch, my mom came and got my childhood best friend, katie, and me. we went back to my house and watched, still mesmerized. that was when we heard that al queda may have been involved. the weirdos that we were, we got out my ouija board and asked it, haha.

i can remember walking down to highland dairy to get a newspaper. i just looked at the sky towards new york. it was so strange to think that i was standing on the same ground that this horrific event was taking place on. watching it on tv, it seemed like it was a whole world away. but looking up at the sky, like i was going to be able to see smoke, i felt so overwhelmed. i couldn't even imagine what the world would come to be like after that day.

later that evening, the church that my family attended wasn't holding services. however the catholic church was. my mom's friend, my mom and i went to st rose for their service. we aren't catholic, so we didn't know that when you enter the pew, you kneel first. we almost tripped and fell over linda in front of the whole church! a small bit of laughter on such a horrible day.

after that day, i kept newspaper cut-outs. especially the one that showed a photo of what people thought was satan's face in the smoke pouring out of the buildings. horrible things like this fascinate me. i'm not a patriot by any means, but i get so emotional over 9/11. i get infuriated, in fact. how could you do this to innocent people? i'm skeptical of whether bush was involved in this; if he was, how could he? tonight we watched the accidental 9/11 documentary. our high school economics teacher showed us some of it, but not all of it. it's intense to say the least. faced with the decision to either jump out the window of the 90th floor or attempt to escape or burn alive..i'm not sure what i would do. and still, 4 years after the first time i saw the film, i still get emotional when i hear the bodies hitting the cement.

so that's my garbled story.

now here are some tunes.

one photo per hour for a day :: the first day of school.

my first day of school was last monday. i decided to do one of those projects where you take a photo every hour. i really liked it, it's just hard to find something good to get a shot of!

7.46 on my way to school

8.21 great breakfast bought in williamson's schwebel cafe that is now an actual cafe

9.51 i managed to get the same desk in macro that i had in micro. they washed off all of my cheats and tried to get rid of all of my leftover crack lyrics! 

10.45 shlepping all over campus.

11.45 welcome to YSU, kiddos. the article is quite hilarious and sad. learn how to speak your native language, please.

12.58 got some lunch to take over to kelli

1.59 headed back to boardman after class!

2.40 miniature shopping trip. toy for mollie, shoes, sewing kit for kelli, umbrella earrings and over-sized blue coffee cups.

3.15 oreos and peanutbutter for snack time. thanks, parent trap.

4.18 relaxing with mollie. the afternoon drags while i wait for joe to come home.

5.52 i walked in on joe making a surprise for me so i had to leave. 

6.28 i caved and gave mollie her birthday present over a month early! spoiled.

7.05 breakfast for dinner! (it's your favorite, paulie.)

8.07 relaxed little husband feet.

9.00 sunset walk with mollie

10.01 someone brought us handel's

11.06 bedtime!

i think that if we were all trying to find someone interesting and worthwhile to take a picture of every hour of every day, maybe we would enjoy our lives a little bit more.