October Favorites!

Not only will this post be about my favorites, but it will encompass all that was October, since I am waaay behind on posts! My sincere apologies to those patiently waiting for cruise pics. Not sure how this happened, but I managed to have all four of my October favorites start with a "C". Now, I think this is cool....ah, another "C"! I can't stop! :)

1.        Cruise! (Big surprise here, right!)

One word?? Um, there isn't just one word, sorry. We had a fabulous time on our cruise! We were just so relaxed and enjoyed being transported up and down the East coast while drowning ourselves in food and ice cream, shows, dancing classes, hot tubs, wine tastings, bingo games, more ice cream, shopping, movies, casino playing, and that's just all while on the ship! This boat was fantastic! RCI is the first cruise line to have an ice rink on board, they have a promenade deck where you could shop and eat and one of three restaurants, and they had a casino underneath that! The boat was impressive, for sure. We enjoyed dinner in the dinning room each night with our table mates from South Whales. They were very knowledgeable when it came to American culture and history, sometimes more than us. (Sad, I know.) But they must have taught us so much more about their culture, for sure.  Although, we did have to explain what "a la mode" meant, and they thought it was odd that we didn't drink tea after dinner like they did. They were a family of four, a husband and wife and his parents, who were so cute! On our last night with them (day 9), the mother asked me "So, do you have a hard time understanding our accents?" I answered with  "I'm sorry?!?". Dang, just as I was getting good. The whole table laughed! Cool. They had also never tried salt water taffy before, which we couldn't get enough of at each port, so we gave them some to try. They were very sweet and it was hard to say goodbye.

It was cold and windy most of the time, but nothing we couldn't handle. No snow yet! The only disappointing part was that the leaves really still hadn't reached their peak in color, so my visions of the beautiful fall colors in Maine never really came to life. But the ports were as charming as ever. We didn't sign up for any shore excursions this time. Instead, we opted to explore each town by foot (this is the only reason I didn't come home as twice my size.) We stopped in:

Portland, ME- great cobble-stoned streets and small shops (and we stumbled across a Starbucks)
Bar Harbor, ME- quaint, little town we needed to be tendered into. Lots of shops and fudge, taffy and clam chowda!

PAUSE- I KNOW YOU'VE ALREADY SCROLLED DOWN TO FIND PICTURES,

BUT I WILL BE POSTING THOSE IN THE NEXT POST.

Saitnt John, New Brunswick- a little industrial, so we stayed on board that chilly day. 
Hallifax, Nova Scotia- home of the "WIFI waterfront", mall and the cleanest casino ever! (+smoke free!) 

BOSTON, MA-  Where we walked the Freedom Trail, to find the home of Paul Revere and to the site of the signing of the Declaration Of Independence. We shopped Quincy market and had lunch in a little rain. More taffy. More chowda. Plus, enjoyed some authentic Italian desserts- there were over 100 Italian restaurants in one district alone. Boston was awesome!

We saw two whales while eating lunch one day. We met amazing people-everyone was so friendly. We laughed and enjoyed so many small things, it would be impossible for me to cover it all! Please check back soon for pictures!

2. Costumes!

We jumped right into Halloween as soon as we got back home. Luckily, I had prepared my costume early this year so I wasn't panicking at the last second for the best costume. As I've said before, every year our office at work is always decorated as a haunted house and people are deemed boring if you don't dress up because it's our bosses absolute favorite holiday. It's fun because no one tells what their dressing up as, so it's always a big deal on the day of the party when Shanda walks in. Well, this year only the girls dressed up and non of our costumes were scary, but I think we looked pretty good:

Jan as a hippie, Shanda as Mary Jane Frehse in Wild West Movies , and Me as Sandy from Grease

I didn't get any pictures of our office (it was too dark anyway) but this year we had a few items that went off as someone walked by, which was funny at first, but then slightly annoying by the end of the day. The other slightly annoying part, people kept confusing my Sandy from Grease costume with  Dolly Parton! So, when it came time Sunday to go trick-or-treating with our niece and nephew, I decided if I can't bet 'um, I might as well join 'um.....and went as Dolly Parton instead!

Michaela as Princess Peach, Ryan as Wolverine, and their Aunt Amanda as Dolly Parton.

3. Cupcakes! 

I had made smores cupcakes about a few months ago after finding an easy recipe online and I was thinking I should make something cute for our office costume party. I remembered the smore cupcake recipe and quickly came up with an easy, spooky twist! These are devil's food cupcakes with chocolate chips melted in them, topped with the smore's frosting recipe. The I crushed the cookie parts of oreo cookies in a large ziplock bag and rolled the already frosted cupcakes in the "dirt". Then, when I would usually reach for my pastry bags, I grabbed another ziplock bag cut a small sliver in a corner and put a small amount of the leftover frosting in it- I used this to write on the chocolate covered graham cracker tombstone! Then added a sour gummi worm on top of the cookie dirt and there you have it. Everyone loved having an individual cupcake made just for them and they were pretty tasty, too. I decided to put some effort into these because it was my stand in for pumpkin carving this year. With our traveling, we didn't think we'd have time to do pumpkins and enjoy them. Oh well, next year!

4. Color Catcher!

 

And, last but not certainly least, my new favorite household product- Shout's Color Catcher! You just throw this fabric-softener-looking sheet into your wash load combined with all sorts of colors, textures, etc. and it catches your bleeding colors! And you can put anything in there together- jeans, reds, new items never before washed--All in one load! Don't believe me? Here's my proof:

On the bottom, a new sheet. On the top, the sheet pulled out of a recent load of laundry.

I'll let you run out to the store now. Until next time!