Yeah October!

It's officially October, so I can pull out the Halloween decorations without shame (ok, I pulled them out on September 30). While bummed about the end of summer, I love fall. I just do. And yeah for almost Halloween! :) Note: I didn't even see Heidi in this shot until I uploaded it. Sneaky camera hog pooch!

To continue the fall celebration, I whipped up a new recipe to make use of the some of the last tomatoes of the season, my bevy of potatoes, and my yet-to-be-tried acorn squash. It was DELICIOUS. I highly recommend it.

Starch Overload Skillet

butter or olive oil

1 small onion

2 cups uncooked rice

1 cup veggie broth

5 to 6 medium potatoes, sliced or diced

1/2 to 1 lb acorn squash, sliced or diced

salt, pepper, red pepper, nutmeg

2 small to medium tomatoes

mushrooms

cook rice

whilst cooking rice...

melt butter or heat olive oil

saute onions for 5 minutes

add potatoes and squash and broth

season with nutmeg, red pepper, salt, and pepper

bring to a boil

cook over medium heat 20 minutes

add tomatoes and mushrooms

reduce heat, cook 5 more minutes

serve over rice (white, of course, because brown is yuck!)

Crafty McCraft

So once I finished my Heidi layout, I really got the scrapbook bug up my butt. I went out Saturday and got a bunch of new supplies -- some diecuts, paper, more letter stencils, a few new pens... And I sat down over the next two days and put together my first random scrapbook layout. Inspired by Sara's never-ending creativity, I decided to do a Sara layout! I'm not super thrilled with it -- the colors ended up being a little bland, but I didn't want to overwhelm it with a patterned background. So here it is!

By the way, I'm really enjoying my new crafting space. It gives me a space to fiddle around and hang out with Brad while he's on the treadmill, and it gives Heidi a chance to play outside because the door is right there, so I just leash her up and she's got full reign of the backyard.

Handy tip: Sara tipped me off to Picasa, free downloadable photo editing software. Dude. It's amazing. I've been using the software that came with my Sony camera, and it sucks. Sucks sucks. Picasa has the coolest functions, and I've already improved my photos tenfold with the "sharpen" and "warmify" auto buttons. Other fun functions are a blur effect, color tinting (pink!), and, well, lots of things I can't remember right now.