Photo by Seth Schaeffer, hand lettering by me!

Pumpkin Carving has become one of my favorite fall traditions. We pack my house out with friends and family and carve to our little heart’s content. First we eat chili with all of the fixins. Carrie made her famous chili. And I made a giant batch of Chicken Posole. This year Carrie came in and declared, “Happy Meet-iversary”. The pumpkin carving party last year was the first time I met Josh.

Carrie says to me, “How is a person supposed to fit into one of these?”

We threw Carrie a baby shower on a warm Sunday afternoon in April. I created a secret board on Pinterest and invited all of our friends to help make the food. I have this thing about needing every event I throw to be exactly how I envision it, so being able to send someone a recipe with a picture was the perfect way to have things the way I wanted while still being able to have help. I’m pretty sure this was the biggest baby shower we’ve ever had at Tangle with over 30 people in attendance. It went perfectly.

Carrie, being a lover of all things mustache, designed the shower invites.

We served tea and scones and clotted cream. Mustache cookies and fruit kebabs and chickpea tomato salad and avocado chicken salad and guacamole deviled eggs. All served on my vintage china collection with red and navy napkins and red striped paper straws. I love having showers at Tangle, the colorful yarn backdrop is perfect and requires very little decoration!

A month ago we had little pumpkin carving party. I served red chili and white bean chicken chili, cornbread, peanut honey carmel corn, hot apple cider and pumpkin muffins (thanks to Carrie for making them!). After we feasted, we cleared away the furniture and covered the living room floor with orange plastic. I’m always down for a craft, so it was so super fun to get to carve pumpkins with all of my buddies.

Thanks to Lisa and Josh for letting me steal pictures. Click any picture to see the whole set.

I woke up on my 31st birthday in Cimarron. What a place to wake up in on your birthday! Brian got the whole staff and the whole YWAM staff to sing to me at breakfast and after we finished our morning session, we all packed up and headed home. I hadn’t had service up in Cimarron for a couple of days, so as we came off the mountain, my phone started blowing up with voicemails and texts and Facebook messages… nothing makes me feel more loved than being remembered on my birthday. We stopped in Montrose on our way home for coffee and wandered around Main Street for a couple minutes before heading home.

As soon as I got home I started cooking. I had 4 hours to make dinner for 50 people and get the rest of my house in order. Thankfully Rickelle and Brian came over to help me pull it all together and I got three soups and a giant salad made just in time for my friends to start arriving. I put several tables end to end in my back yard with white table cloths and served the soups in the kitchen buffet style.

Soup is one of my very favorite meals so I almost always have it for my birthday. This year I made Chicken Posole, Broccoli Corn Chowder with Bacon, and Artichoke Sausage Soup. I asked everyone to either bring bread or wine and we had some delicious selections of both.

I had 28 adults and 18 kids in my backyard to celebrate my birthday that night and it was just perfect. I had so much fun catching up with friends I hadn’t seen in awhile and connecting to new friends too. Thanks to Lisa for taking all the photos!

a small selection of the kiddos that were there!

Brooke is SO beautiful.

Kev & Sarah

My Collection of Anthropologie plates

reading my cards by candlelight

packed backyard

Soup buffet

On Sunday Carrie and I threw a baby shower for our dear friend Danielle who is expecting her first baby, a boy. We hosted the shower at Tangle (which is a great place to have parties!) and it was so much fun!

Mama Danielle looking beautiful.

the goodies lined up on the counter

We served everything on stacks of old china. My collection is ever-growing.

Our color theme was aqua and orange.

Everyone, young and old, is always impressed with chocolate covered marshmallows.

Fruit filled waffle cones are one of my most favorite things in the world.

The straws are from Shop Sweet Lulu.

mason jar’s are my favorite

I didn’t get to take pictures of Danielle opening her presents from me so she was kind enough to send these to me. A camo baby sweater with my signature orange stripe.

And a super soft blanket made from a plush yarn.

Queen of themes, Carrie, decided that it would be fun to have a progressive dinner for this year’s Halloween costume party. So we assigned courses to all of our friends and went to work planning our meal. We were in charge of the main course so we went with Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic and braised greens. Both of which were really amazing. Because we were only in charge of making one course rather than a whole meal, we wanted to make it special.

The whole week leading up to the party we worked on decor and place settings. We set the table with my ever-expanding collection of mismatched china, white linens and glittery leaves as our place cards. Our glittery pumpkins were spread out across the middle of the table with red leaves sprinkled all over that were sneakily borrowed from our neighbors tree.

To see the whole set of photos from the dinner party, click here.

Carrie’s version of the story is here.

Seth and Carrie (aka my housemates) host a pumpkin carving party every year so, this year, the party was at my house. Carrie made her famous spicy chili and we had cornbread, salad, homemade pumpkin pies, apple cider and homemade eggnog. Just before the party there was a slight mishap with one of the pies – the cat and dog colluded and the cat knocked the pie off the table so they could eat all of the crust (guess they don’t like pumpkin). So after shipping the dog off to grandma’s house, and fetching a pie from the store, we were ready to party.

Carrie cleared the rugs out of the living room and put down plastic table cloths so when we were finished, clean up was really easy. Everyone brought their own pumpkins and Carrie provided the tools. She has amassed quite a collection from her years of pumpkin carving parties.

The kids did so great, they carved their pumpkins all by their selves. And sat for hours working on them. Their creativity cracks me up!

I love the pictures Seth got of my house at night:

And I’m amazed at what kind of photos his camera takes – I took this one:

(To glitter pumpkins, use a foam brush and apply a thin coat of glue, we used modge podge, but elmers would work perfectly. Then sprinkle on a thick coat of fine glitter.)

I had to take a break from carving to do a little knitting… of course.

To see the whole set of photos, click here.

Read Carrie’s version of the story here.

This number one question I get now that I’m divorced is if we are going to start celebrating all the holidays that we used to skip. I know Halloween was a strange one to start with, but we have had so much fun doing all the fall activities that we have missed out on all these years. I’m still not sure how I fit the pagan roots of the holiday in with our spiritual beliefs, but for now, I’m just taking this as a really fun time with friends and a chance to feel so much freedom – a chance to make my own decisions for my life and do whatever I want. And for that I am thankful.