Pumpkin carving with LCS

Ladies Crafting Spectacular Pumpkin Carving!

On Monday evening, the ladies of the Ladies Crafting Spectacular carved us up some pumpkins!  We had such a great time! I had posted about our get together in conjunction with promoting Paperless Post which I used for the invitations (read about that here).  I have been looking forward to this for quite some time!  This is an amazing, crafting, funny group of girls and I was ready to carve me a punkin’!  We decided to include our men for this particular event–we needed someone to get all the pumpkin guts out.  Or that was our thought process.  Turns out the girls did most of the work and guys socialized.  Strange.

We, sadly, were missing a few LCS (yes, it now has an acronym) ladies, but we still had ourselves a grand ole time!  Some of my pictures aren’t the best and they are all grainy because it was dark outside, but I’m still pleased with how we captured our good times!

Gettin’ started with the carving!

Miss Natalie working really hard on her pumpkin!  She gets the award for cleanest pumpkin insides.  Mine still had all kinds of goop in it…I just gave up after a while.

And here’s my face about the whole matter. I had NO help getting the pumpkin guts out!

HUGE thanks to Rachel who thought to bring pumpkin carving knives.  They were WAY better than my kitchen knives we were trying to use. Embarrassing fact about me, our knives haven’t been sharpened since we got married.  3 years with 1 set of knives makes for VERY VERY dull knives.  I’m pretty sure someone might have lost a finger or a leg or something without Mrs. Rachel’s fancy knives that saved the day!

Here I go getting started!

Surprise surprise, I carved an Alabama ‘A’.  I did have a pattern that William traced onto the pumpkin for me.  I didn’t freehand it so don’t go getting all impressed on me.

OOOoooo… Ahhhhhh…

Some pretty girls I know.

Me and the pumpkin gutting champion!

Roll Tide!

Elsa of Always with Honor took the pumpkin guts, picked out a ton of seeds and made some amazing roasted pumpkin seeds for us.  She used maple syrup on one and the other had some great spices on it…I am forgetting right now what she used but they were great!  I have, strangely enough, never eaten pumpkin seeds before but they were quite tasty!

The best thing about the whole evening, besides the company of course, was the weather.  I cannot remember the last time I carved a pumpkin when it was COLD and felt like fall outside!  Actually I do, it was freezing in Mississippi one year when Mr. Fancy Pants and I carved pumpkins at MSU, but other than that…I can’t remember another time!  We discovered a new need for our backyard…a FIRE PIT!

This picture is so awkward and I love it. William was trying to use the lighter to make the ‘A’ light up…and this is what we ended up with.

TWINSIES! Let’s match more often!

Finished products!

From the top left down/top right down you have:

• Tyler & Elsa’s lighthouse
• Rachel & Eric’s initials
• Natalie’s amazing faced pumpkin…that to me looks like he’s wearing an eye patch but I’m not quite sure if he actually is
• Shannon’s (with the help of her hubby) cyclops
• Lizy’s BOO pumpkin (with the help of Travis)
• My Alabama ‘A’ pumpkin
• And the winner, winner chicken dinner…best pumpkin I’ve ever seen… DEXTER!  Abby carved this so carefully and it turned out AMAZING!  If there was a prize, which there wasn’t, she would have won!

Two pretty pretty ladies that I love!

Two more lovely ladies!

I’ll leave you with this picture.  Mainly because Rachel and Shannon’s faces are hilarious.  And I am awkwardly about to fall into/on top of my rosemary bush.  That staircase is NOT very wide! Regardless, great time was had by all!  I love fall!  I love pumpkin carving!  And I LOVE the Ladies Crafting Spectacular!  Can’t wait for next month!!!!

We were about tired of the picture taking by this point!

Paperless Post

Tonight I found my newest obsession.  I know I have mentioned this before but I love a good invitation, card, etc. I think that is part of the reason we put so much time into our Christmas cards each year. There is something really satisfying about opening a really well designed card or invitation. All that said, I am that person that has a box FULL of invitations that I have received over the years that I love.  What I’m going to do with them is beyond me.  But, I have them!

Tonight I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Sugar and Charm and she posted today about Paperless Post.  The post caught my eye because of the selected images of invite designs she had used for her landing page.  I clicked on the link to Paperless Post and what do you know?!  I have no idea how I haven’t heard of this company before!  It is a similar idea to evite, but WELL designed.  They have hundreds of invitation designs and they are all completely customizable.

I posted about how I was hosting our Ladies Crafting Spectacular Pumpkin Carving get together in my post this past Saturday.  I had planned on just sending out an email which is what I always do.  But I thought about how excited I am when I get a break from electric and internet bills in the actual mail, and what is so different in email?!  Between junk mail, spam, and work related emails, these should be a sight for sore eyes! I hope the ladies like them!  (please keep in mind that all of the ladies I sent these to could have designed something themselves WAY better, BUT us design and Photoshop challenged people have to stick to what we can do!  And that for me is “click here to input text” on a pre-made card!  Ha!)

Front of the envelope the invitation recipient sees before they “open” the invitation

Inside of the invite that I designed for our pumpkin carving night (before the invitation slides out of the envelope!)

I didn’t send one to myself so I’m not QUITE sure if this is the way it works, but I assume you receive a link to click on.  The actual “opening” of the invitation is animated which I thought was great.  You first see the envelope with your name on it.  It then turns over and the top opens.  Then out slides your invitation!

Took me 4 tries but I captured it AS it’s coming out of the envelope!

I haven’t quite figured out all of the options to “share” the invitations.  I emailed mine but there was a Facebook/Twitter option as well.  Keep in mind these aren’t free.  Each invitation costs one “stamp” and if you customize the envelope, add your logo or some other things, it costs one “stamp” + one “coin”.  They give you free stamps and coins just for signing up.  And if you “like” their Facebook page you get additional ones.  SO, I created this card without having to purchase anything.  I used the freebies I got for signing up.  But, I checked out the prices and it’s $10 for 75 “coins”, which I don’t care how you look at it that’s cheaper than designing, printing, and pony-mailing invitations!

Lastly, here’s the precious invitation! Looks much better when the information isn’t blurred out, BUT I don’t want strangers a-knockin!

Here are some other examples of their Halloween cards (I snagged these images from Sugar and Charm.  This is what caught my eye in the first place):

Y’all should check out BOTH Sugar and Charm and Paperless Post!  SO glad I stumbled across their site tonight!  I’m going to be sending one out for my birthday get together next week!  I’m already picking out which one I want to use!!

**As a side note, just because I am always incredibly impressed by young people, I was reading the ‘About’ section on their site, and Paperless Post was created by a brother and sister and the site debuted just in time for their 23rd and 25th birthdays!  WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?!  Wow. They’re pretty sweeeet!

Overwhelmed. In a strangely good way.

I realized this afternoon as I was plopped on the couch watching football with William how overwhelmed I am.  But not in the traditional way that you would think when someone says they are overwhelmed.  I’m overwhelmed in a strangely good way.

Today starts October.  Which starts (in my mind) fall, though here in Portland it has felt like fall for about a month now.  Keeping in mind that I’m from Texas and the weather in October there most of the time doesn’t even feel like fall, but that’s still my mindset.  Apparently it needs to be readjusted. Regardless, October enters in pumpkins, and sweaters, and boots, and my birthday, and Christmas is around the corner, AND my mind is FULL of parties and events and gatherings I want to host.  I, like every other female in America it seems, have a growing addiction to Pinterest which has just made my condition worse.

Now that we live somewhere that the weather is actually reflecting what time of year it is, I have so many things that I want to do and what feels like so little time to do it.  How much of a serious problem do I have that I am anxious about being able to host all of the get togethers that I want to before the rain sets in?  Answer: a large problem.

Not everything has a date set in stone yet, but here are the things I have planned for the next month and a half:

• Hosting my first supper club with an amazing group of girls from the Junior League of Portland (that I have recently joined)
• Making a trip, tomorrow actually, to Sauvie Island to not 1 but 2 amazing pumpkin farms.  And yes, William is thrilled this tradition has followed us to Portland
• Hosting a pumpkin carving party with our newly created little “woman’s crafting group” started by the amazingly talented lady behind Always With Honor.  (side note, I was PUMPED to be included in this group.  All of the ladies are incredibly talented and I was thrown in the mix–thank God!! They are inspiring and crafty and just plain amazing.)
• Celebrating my 25th birthday with new friends in less than 2 weeks
• Heading to the Oregon Coast for the first time since we’ve moved here with my parents to celebrate my birthday when they come in town
• Potentially hosting a Halloween party at our house!  I should rephrase.  I want to host a Fall Carnival.  I’m not kidding.  I’m really excited about this one.
• Host a weekly dinner for those who are “cashing in” their wooden nickels at Dixieland Delight.  I’m going to make posts about these…I’m pretty excited about them.
• Lastly, hosting a football/tailgating party at our place a little later in the season (might have to move into November for this one).  Our new friends up here think our passion for football is quite comical and I want to have people over for a real football party to give them a taste of what being a fan (in the South) is really about!

WHEW!  I’m telling you I could be the world’s best party planner.  Not really, but I do enjoy throwing a good party.  I am making a post about this mostly because I think getting all of my ideas out in the open will force me to see them through.  I am so thankful our new friends here in Portland are just plain fun people.  They’d totally be down for all of this.  Otherwise we’d be partyin’ alone!  Calling out to all my party people in Portland!  Get ready.  The Bryants are about to show you some fun!

I have also promised myself to post 3-4 days out of the week until the end of 2011.  Starting today October 1.  I am actually doing a little personal experiment with this.  Hoping I impress myself.  Happy Fall everyone!