Heaps of Food, Halloween, and Hiking

Sometimes alliteration is not my favourite but it just worked for this post, so too bad. We have had a fun couple weeks, busy, but fun. Last Friday my aunt Darlyn and uncle Ben came into town from California. When they come for a quick weekend we usually just get to meet them for dinner, which is great, but we love when they come for long visits! We got to meet them at Benihana, one of my favourite restaurants. My parents, sister, my cousin, grandma, and Ben and Darlyn's family friends all came to dinner. It was really fun! Good food, good company, and a great cook! At Benihana they cook at your table and the guy at our table was so good!

Greg, Payton, and I waiting for our food

The whole gang! 

The Monday before going to Benihana, we got to go to my grandparent's house in Spanish Fork Canyon and it was a beautiful fall day in the canyon. The leaves were gorgeous. My grandma makes THE best applesauce. She cans it and then there is delicious homemade applesauce all year. I went to help her Monday after work and we had a great time. She uses several different kinds of apples, Jonagolds, Honey Crisp, Braeburns, and Macintosh. She had a couple of golden delicious apples in there too. We cored, peeled, and cut all the apples into thin slices. We pulled out a large pot and boiled the apples until they were really soft. We mashed them up, added cinnamon, nutmeg, and honey, and voila! Delicious and healthy applesauce. We got about 9 pints done and Greg and I ate a whole pint in about a day and a half. I love this stuff!

I haven't dressed up for Halloween for a couple years and wasn't planning on it this year, but my co-worker showed me a really cute picture of the costume she was going to make. It was a witch with a cute multi-coloured tutu. I decided I really wanted a tutu so I searched Pinterest for a costume I could do and found this really cute Queen of Hearts costumed. So I got some JoAnn and Michael's coupons together and got to work. My mom is a master seamstress so I asked her opinion on the best way to do this. She told me what she thought would work best, and sure enough it worked out great! I bout 3/4" elastic, measured the amount I needed, and just safety pinned it together. My tulle was 54" wide so it would be a perfect length for what I wanted so all I had to do was cut it up into 5-6" strips. I put my elastic around one of our kitchen chairs and just tied the strips in knots all the way around the elastic. I think I ended up using about 15 yards of tulle. I made a belt out of red and white tulle and just cut the card suits out of cardstock to go on the belt. I was pretty happy with the outcome.

My handsome hubby dressed up as Indiana Jones. He looked so good!

We went to a Halloween party at our friend Mike's house. It was fun! Good food, good company, fun costumes, and we watched Hocus Pocus which is my favourite Halloween movie.

Shannon and Jonathan as Kevin and Russell from Up, they looked so cute!

One of Mike's friends as Seneca Crane from The Hunger Games, it was a great costume!

Mike and Vanessa as Ginny and Harry! This cute couple is getting married in a month and a half and we are really excited for them!

Yesterday was a nice, chill fall day and we so wanted to get out and enjoy the crisp weather. We decided to go hiking and it was great! It felt so good up in the mountains and it was beautiful.

Yesterday was my cousin, Jacoby's birthday. He and I are 6 weeks apart so we have always been close. We had a birthday dinner at my Grandma's house for him last night. It was great! Tons of food, tons of people (I think Jacoby brought like 12 guys with him), and lots of laughs. When we got home we watched the Jazz game which was awesome! I love when the Jazz win! And even better, today my Dolphins destroyed the Chargers! 37-0! It was great!! And BYU won on Saturday too so it's been a great weekend for sports.
I've also tried some really yummy  recipes lately! For Mike's Halloween party I made soft pretzel bites using this easy recipe. It was my first time using yeast so I was nervous but they turned out pretty well. I also made caramels using my friend Ina Garten's recipe. Ok we're not actually friends but I love her show, does that count? I didn't use the fancy salt she did and they still turned out well. Warning, when she says be careful, BE CAREFUL! It really does bubble up violently!
Since we have Church at nine I started cooking something for lunch and dinner so I have one less meal to cook during the week. For lunch today I tried this one pan garlic Parmesan pasta and it was really good! I used 1% milk instead of non-fat milk because that's what I had on hand. It was easy, creamy, rich, and comforting. Pasta is like my go to comfort food.
Tonight I made ribs with my own sauce. I just got boneless pork ribs, rubbed salt and pepper on each one and put a little of the sauce on. For the sauce I took about a cup and a half of BBQ sauce, mixed in a couple tablespoons of maple syrup and about 1/4 cup of peach jam. I mixed it all together and heated it up. Once I had just a little sauce on the ribs I covered them with aluminum foil and put them in a 325 degree oven for about 2 hours. I put the rest of the sauce all over the ribs and baked for another 20 minutes. They came out sticky, sweet, tender, and juicy. We love ribs!!

Needless to say, this was a great weekend, but of course Monday has to come tomorrow...