Remember, remember... the month of November?

Yes, it's March, but I'm still stuck in November...for now.But at least I'm doing it.

What happened in November?

Well, we voted. Yep... that's all I'll say about that.

We went to the Dominican Republic,so if you missed it, here it is.

My mom had a birthday, Happy Birthday Mom!  (Here she is showing off her new apron which her most favorite daughter hand crafted just for her)

Thanksgiving! It was wonderful, we ate more than we should ever eat in one day, but that's what we do to celebrate, right?

PASTA! Probably the highlight of November for me was making homemade pasta with my mom and Grandmother. We decided we were going to have an Italian Christmas, so we were making all our pasta ahead of time to freeze it, that way Christmas day we could just cook it and enjoy being with each other rather than slaving over the dough all day.

And of course the best part of making pasta is being able to eat all the mis-formed ones and the scraps for dinner than night! Yummo! We had cheese raviolis, gnocchi, ragu (which my mom learned to make in Italy by a sweet Italian woman), and pink sauce. One thing's for sure, I didn't leave with an empty stomach!

'Friend'-tober

I officially dubbed October as 'Friend'-tober because this month I got the chance to see all of my best friends throughout the month.

But first it started with our  anniversary! 

Cambria
Can you believe it's been 7 years?!? Time just disappears! We spent our anniversary driving along Hwy 1, camping one night, Brad spear fishing, staying the night in a hotel, next day in Cambria and visiting friends in Atascadero.

Cambria was having a scarecrow festival, some of them were really fantastic, others were quite  unsettling. We ate breakfast at my favorite little bakery, The French Corner Bakery, and we tried dinner at a new place we'd never been called The Sow's Ear which was pretty wonderful! Their bread comes baked in a terracotta pot, warm and delicious! We ordered the fried Brie Cheese appetizer, which was amazing! For our dinner Brad ordered a special seafood penne pasta of some kind, I ordered Jack Daniels-Pancetta Filet Mignon, it was probably the most tender filet I've ever had, very tasty! 

The 'Ville'
I ventured the 6  hour drive to spend a weekend with J-sizzle and celebrate her birthday a month early. 

We went to an awesome pumpkin patch which had a "little" corn maze. We figured 'what the heck, this should be easy' but little did we know the corn maze stretched much farther than we had anticipated and it ended up taking us the better part of an hour or so to get through it. But it was fun! Susanville really is beautiful, the views from the pumpkin patch were awesome! There were also a TON of adorable little kids with their pumpkins and wagons, I was tempted to take a bunch of pictures of these kids, but I didn't want their parents to think I was some kind of weirdo nutcase...but they were so cute...

During my stay we also went and browsed the local thrift stores and of course we had to see a movie! There were no good chick flicks out so we opted for Pitch Perfect. LOVED it!

I had a fantastic time hangin' with my homie! Miss you Jamie!

Party of 4
My dear friend Savannah and her hubby Ruben came for the weekend. I convinced Savannah, with the help and encouragement of Ruben, to get a pedicure for the first time in her life. She LOVED it! I'm so glad she decided to get one. We had a great dinner and just hung out for the weekend and it was awesome!

I was in the crafty mood so I actually made those placemats and the table runner, I also made  this tea towel, which I was pretty excited about. 

Alo-HA!
My friend Ashley moved to Maui in June, I told her I would come visit, so I found a cheap ticket and hopped on the plane to see her. My flight, being as cheap as it was routed me from CA to Salt Lake City (weird right? who knew Salt Lake was on the way to Hawaii from CA?) but it worked out superb for me because I got to see my bestie Hayley during my 2 hour layover in Salt Lake City. 

After my short visit in Utah I flew back to CA with another 2 hour layover and finally made it to Hawaii. Crazy that a normally 5 hour flight took me 12 hours this time. My good friend Erica met me in Hawaii and the three of us set off on an adventure.

We watched the sunrise...who packs scarves and jackets to go to Hawaii? WE DID!

We went to a pumpkin patch, as well as a lavender farm

We also went to a Luau

We had a lot of fun and did a lot of exploring. We were there for the "tsunami" and were even evacuated to Ashley's friend's house where Erica and I got to share a twin size bed for the evening. We rode on the road to Hana and stopped off at a few places to swim and take in the views. It was a great trip! Thanks Ashley for letting us stay with you and use your car and for showing us around all the fun things we did!

You can visit Ashley's blog to see some of her pictures and a more detailed description of what we did here and here.

Halloween!

I love dressing up, either in costume, or fancy for a party. So when I heard you could dress up in costume for a $2 burrito bowl at Chipotle I was all over that business!

I went as Charlie Chaplin and Brad was a redneck mullet man. I do have to say, Halloween is the only time it's acceptable to go to a restaurant half naked, as seen from Chipotle this trojan warrior with little of anything on. 

Brad and I also carved pumpkins, which was fun. I LOVE how Brad's turned out. Even the neighbor kids were impressed!

Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to do a quick post today to wish anyone and everyone a Merry Christmas! For those of you that haven't received a Christmas card/letter I wanted to post it up here. Enjoy!

I will try to update October, November and December by the new year...stay tuned.