For Halloween I wrote a post about Spooky Photography over at 1000 Words. Go check out some of the techniques I used. Aaron is featured as a very scary model.

Happy Halloween everyone!

An open letter to Mister Spider who is residing outside my front door.

Dear Spider Sir,

I noticed that you have decided to bunk down on the handrail of my front porch. Aaron won't let me dispose of you because he says you eat bad bugs. Looking at the size of you I think I maybe willing to take my chances with these bugs from the wrong side of the tracks. Honestly... don't you have a better spot to call your home? I hear Florida is nice this time of year. Take the tv... take the cat (sorry stu)... whatever... just move along.

Sincerely,
The resident behind the big green door

We finally made it out to the Coal Tower Restaurant for their pumpkin soup. Mmm mmm... it's like pumpkin pie in a bowl.

Unknown use for Jello #355: Gross props for mad chef costumes. Lime jello with eyeballs, severed fingers and flies is a nice stew for a cold autumn night. Cherry jello is the way to go when sauteing a fresh brain with worms. Delish!

Instead of our usual Halloween party this year, we rented a lodge at a local park and had a sit down, potluck, haunted Halloween dinner.

Aaron and I went as Hell's Kitchen chef contestants and Oscar was a stegosaurus. I made these Adam's Ribs and way too many baked potatoes... (32).

We had a great time and here are some pictures from the party on My Gallery.

Shoes... wonderful shoes... glorious shoes... lah lah lah lahhhhhh.

That's my little shoe song.

I got a card from the Gap informing me that they now have an online shoestore called Piperlime. The name makes me wonder how they came up with it and causes me to crave cracked pepper and lime potato chips... but I will forgive them.

The highlight of our Saturday morning trips to the dairy is checking in on how Ginger the Cow is doing. I especially like taking pictures of her. I've chronicled her since she arrived as a little calf.

We were thrilled to find recently the dairy had t-shirts made with little embroidered emblems of Ginger. I got one of course... I like to support the local milk production team.

Soon it will be that time of year where all moisture in the air evaporates and my skin will dry out like a crocodile stranded in the desert. My lip balm consumption doubles in the winter.

What I need is one of these cute Hello Kitty Humidifiers. Cute and functional! It would look nice next to my Hello Kitty Toaster and Hello Kitty Waffle Iron.

This has been a soggy, chilly October. I feel cheated. Usually some of my best pictures are taken at the pumpkin patch... green grass, bright orange pumpkins and blue sky. This year... nothing but soggy.

I did get this great picture of Lauren though. The picture says it all... weather is so crappy the poor kid had to come pumpkin picking dressed as a polar bear.

Today we picked helpless pumpkins, took them home, slaughtered them into pleasing shapes, then ate pie made of their innards. It was soggy out in the pumpkin patch but a satisfying day all in all.

I took lots of pictures... some really cool panoramic ones in the patch and of the lit pumpkins. They are available for viewing at My Gallery.

I realized that I posted all those pictures of my Pyrex and I forgot my favorite piece. I found this one myself at a yard sale... a 1957 pink Goosebery Pyrex baking dish. I only found the one small dish and it was missing a lid. My mom found a spare for it, though. Poor little lonely Gooseberry dish... missing the rest of it's family.

The squirrels are making a lot of headway on my indian corn. Freeloaders.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate squirrels... I think they are quite cute. In fact Aaron thinks I secretly enjoy this little fall rivalry I have with them.

He is probably right, but I am not going to be knitting myself a squirrel print playsuit like on this pattern book. My mom found a bunch of these old knitting magazines and I thought this one was hilarious.

Today Tina and I wandered down to Corn Hill Landing for lunch. It is a nice spot by the river with a new Thai restaurant, Mexican bakery, ice creamery and some other shops. It's nice to see some new development in the city.

I got Aaron a digital camera for his birthday and now he is into buying accessories for it. Like this Gorillapod. A tripod that can hold onto things. It is really great idea and I was sticking it all over the house. People have been using it to take all sorts of pictures.

I have a great idea. This weekend I am going to wrap it onto Oscar and Stewie, turn on the camera self-timer and take some pictures from their viewpoint. Hah hah! Stay tuned.

Aaron was in PA at a new Wegman's opening for the weekend. He brought me back a pack of vintage luggage labels from the airport giftshop.

I love how in the day's of yore (or is it yesteryear?) people would put stickers from their travels onto their suitcases. Why did people stop doing this? I guess when we started using fabric luggage.

I love the look of old luggage too. (talk to me after I had to lug it through an airport without wheelies and see how much I love it then) The thought of using used vintage luggage icks me out though for some reason. And the only old fashioned styled suitcase I have found online costs $1,695.00. Yowza. I think I will just stick the labels on my little vintage Samsonite Train Case my mom gave me.

My mom scored at the yard sales once again. She found me two Snowflake casseroles, a Craisy Daisy/Spring Blossom Green bake set and a Golden Pine 1961 Christmas Promotion casserole.

We are both hooked and spent an hour pouring over the Pyrex pattern website. I just need a nice corner cabinet with glass doors to showcase them in!

Long time readers should be well familiar with my ongoing battle with the neighborhood squirrels. I just hung some indian corn on my front porch and they have begun chomping on it once again.

This little stinker had the gawl to start feasting before I even backed out of the driveway.

I finally went back to my patio project gallery and added some captions that explained the whole grueling process. I also added this picture which is what we added in one corner. Oscar's pawprint, his name, our initials and a quarter from 2006. That was the best part of the whole project.

I had heard that there was a chance of snow last night, but when I got up this morning all was clear. Snow in the second week of October? Bah!

Then I parked next to this car in the parking lot at work. It had a good six inches of snow on top of it. They must have driven in from west of Rochester, because from there to Buffalo there was one to two feet of snowfall last night.

Note the cans of gas in the back too... probably in case they got stuck on the thruway.

I recently upgraded my Kodak V550 to the new V705. Mostly because it's PINK. (read about it in today's post on A Thousand Words)

Well ok, there are a couple of other reasons too. The V705 is a dual lens camera. That means it has a wide angle mode.

I didn't think that was a big deal until I started switching between the regular lens and the wide angle lens and realized how much more of the subject you can get in the frame with wide angle... like these bridges.

I also learned if I use the wide angle for closer pictures of people... certain tall people (aaron) with their heads at the top of the frame end up with slightly distorted heads. hah.

The other feature I love is the on-camera panoramic stitching. You take three pictures of your scene and the camera seams them together. It is really nice for landscapes, but I have fun using it around a table of people too. It creates a fish-eye type of effect.

Again I had to make sure I tried to get the seams between people or else my sister's head ended up wonky.

Last spring on a whim I planted strawberry popcorn in my garden. We just "harvested" it. I got about eight little funny ears of it.

The dilemma.. they are so cute as fall decorations... especially next to mini orange pumpkins. But I also just got a new fireplace popcorn popper.

Where should it go? In my dining room table centerpiece or in my tummy?

Well, I finally changed my banner to fall. I guess I had a hard time letting go of summer this year. Especially when we have had such perfect fall days when we can put the top down on the jeep and go for a drive in the country.

I have to say I always wondered if anyone really paid attention to my banners. After four or so comments regarding my slack this season I'm happy to see that they do.

When we were riding up the river yesterday I noticed a walkway that came out into the river at a spot that used to be where coal barges turned around. Turns out it is the newest part of the Genesee Riverway Trail. After the boat ride we drove down to it and walked out to that part of the trail. It is very cool. Another must see for Rochestarians.

My parents came up for Columbus Day weekend, and today we went for a ride up the gorge on the Genesee River. It was a perfect day for it... the leaves are making good headway on changing color.

If you are in Rochester I highly recommend a ride on the Harbor Town Belle. I uploaded pictures of our afternoon on My Gallery.

Today was our fourth and final wedding of the year, Aprille and Joel. Their wedding was especially fun, as it was at the Rochester Science Museum. They have a cool dinosaur exhibit there right now, by the way.

Here are some pictures I took at the reception... uploaded to My Gallery.

I am so excited that Nigella is back on the air. Her new show Nigella Feasts is on the Food Network. Look at this cute honey bee cake she made! Be sure to tune in on the 22nd... she is going to make food like Blood and Guts Baked Potatoes and green pea Slime Soup.

I have not been feeding my garden plants weird chemicals, I swear. I don't know why they do freaky stuff. Two butternut squash grew right into the fence and one carrot looks like a science experiment. Anybody have recipies for half a squash?

Is someone at Starbucks reading my blog? When we got back from Canada I was so bummed our Starbucks didn't have Maple Macchiatos. Today I got an email introducing the Maple Macchiato coming soon to a Starbucks near me.

Their website has maple facts, party ideas and recipes all in honor of the Maple Macchiato.

I am embarrassed to say that I have been so busy, I haven't answered emails for over two months. I just cleared out my inbox, so if you sent me an email recently... I wasn't ignoring you... I was just a little late.

In those emails there were some excellent websites to look at. Thanks you for all the great links!

• Pug revolution products
• A chocolate mess at Max Brenners
• Cupcake couture at Kitson
• A gallery of bunny yawns
• Pantone colletion dinnerware
• Happy dogs eating birthday cake (from the recipe I posted last year)

Oh, and this funny post regarding Brian from Guster.

Good stuff!

It is officially fall, and fall means apple picking. We went for a small basket full and loaded up on apple crisp, apple cider and candy apples in the process. A couple of picture of our afternoon are on My Gallery.

Yesterday, Aaron turned 30 on the 30th! I had a Fiesta! themed party for him out on our new patio! Complete with tacos, margaritas and a pinata!

I got some great pictures of us breaking in the new deck, whacking the pinata and Aaron trying to put out a small fire of 30 + 1 candles on his cake. All the pictures are up on My Gallery.