We Are Spooktacular

For some reason, Halloween was the only holiday I decorated for this year. I went all out!!! I tell you, there was cheesecloth all over the house, a black cat on the kitchen window, and bats hanging outside the door. I didn't take pictures of most of it, but here are the favorites:

The shape of these shelves was just too perfect! 
We had a very spooky wall.

Cutting eyes out of black tissue paper.
(Tip: I used cuticle scissors because the
tissue paper was so delicate that regular
scissors were ripping it.)

Spooky door! These eyes turned out great and you could totally see them glowing when the light was on!

We also carved pumpkins! James picked out the best pumpkins ever!

Best friends.

This was also the only year that I've had two costumes. It was quite fun! One was for work, where my team all dressed up as the seven dwarfs. I was Dopey :)

I was pretty proud that I made those pickaxes. I was worried where I was going to get the cardboard for the handles. But then a flash of inspiration came. JoAnn! I called them to ask if they discarded their empty fabric bolts, and they said yes and that I could come get some for free. They were the perfect size! Then I just taped on cardboard covered in foil.

The other costume was for my parents' Halloween party in West Jordan. James and I dressed up as....

Fry and Leela from Futurama!!! Pretty good eh? (Do you know how difficult it is to put a wig in a ponytail?!?! I would have dyed my hair but it was too short.)

We had a fun time at the party. James even helped my mom by decorating some cookies!

Yep. James did all of their faces.

Happy Halloween!

We've Been Basalted

One Saturday in October, James and I decided to drive to an area near Delta and Fillmore, Utah. The main attraction:
Lava Tubes.

But first! We made a pit stop at a cheese factory in Fillmore. We bought some fresh squeaky cheese, and saw some fun jams at the store too.









Then we were back on our way. Right before we arrived, we saw some people four-wheeling on this big sandy hill, and we stopped to look around.

Finally we arrived at our destination. These lava tubes are SUPER awesome. Above ground, it's just flat desert land, but all over the place there are these holes and cracks in the ground that lead into underground caves. 

The caves, or tubes, were created by very fast-flowing lava streams. According to James, the outside layer of the lava stream cooled and hardened faster than the inside. The inside was still very hot and continued to flow quickly through the hardened outside layer, carving out a tube.

We were the only people there for a while, so it was extremely quiet inside the lava tubes. The kind of quiet where you can hear your own heartbeat in your ears. It was very peaceful.

Me peeping up at James from underground. He's standing at ground level taking a picture directly down into a hole.

James peeping down at me from ground level.

We also found a volcano! And by "found a volcano," I mean "were right next to the volcano that had created the lava tubes in the first place." The whole place is just black volcanic rock (basalt) and little desert shrubs.

I'm standing on the lip of the volcano crater.

Here we are...INSIDE the volcano!! This field is a giant crater where the volcano originally spewed out a bunch of lava.

We had actually invited a couple friends to camp at the lava tubes with us, but just as they were headed out of Provo this HUGE storm came out of nowhere. We considered camping inside the lava tubes, but James was worried about flooding.

So we went home. We ended up telling our friends not to come, which worked out because they hadn't gotten very far. And we were able to spend a couple really nice hours together. Thus ended a beautiful and exciting day trip. We'll definitely be going back there in the summer!

Bundles of Bounteous Brown Bag Blotches

The next batch is here!!! I feel like some of these don't require captions so I'm just going to leave them blank.

May I just say... adorable

<3

Must have been a very sleepy week for me....

This is based on an internet meme called Sad Pepe. I don't really get it (neither does James) but it's just a very sad looking frog usually accompanied by sad captions. We just think the frog looks really funny plus his name is Pepe.



But that Panda face is super adorable!!!