Halloween 2013: Little Red Riding Hood

Happy Halloween from the Peaden Household! This year we decided to dress Lydia up as Little Red Riding Hood and we decided to be her supporting cast members: Grandma and the Woodsman. We also carried around a little stuffed dog/wolf. (Which was the subject of my hashtag debut on facebook: #JustALittleBigBadWolf.) We had a great day and Lydia really loved learning how to trick-or-treat. 

  We started the day at David's office. They let the kids come and trick or treat around all of the desks. It's fun to see David's co-workers and nice of them to bring candy to work for the kids to have. At first Lydia was a little intimidated and wasn't sure what we wanted her to do. But she caught on pretty quickly. Pick up the candy and put it in the basket. One of her favorite things to do right now is to move a set of objects from one place to another (into a pile, back into a box, into a pile, etc...) so she was all over this! It was so cute to watch her learn to pick the candy and then put it in the basket. She started taking handfuls of candy and we had to teach her that you just take one at a time. I seriously couldn't get enough of watching her smile as she put the candy into her little Red Riding Hood basket.

We loved playing with David at his work. She sure loves her Daddy. After we were done trick or treating, we took some pictures by the fountains at the Triad Center.

 We stopped here last year and I thought that it would be fun to make a little tradition of taking a Halloween picture by the fountain. I can hardly believe how much bigger she has gotten in just one year. Look at those baby cheeks and darling chubby legs? Oh. My baby girl. So sweet.

I didn't think about the fact that both of her costumes were red - but I absolutely love the way Little Red Riding Hood turned out. The coat is one that my mom bought for Lydia for Christmas - but I loved it so much I pulled it out and started having her wear it to church. It was so pretty that I knew we needed to incorporate it into our Halloween costumes. David let his primary class give suggestions and then vote on what we should be for Halloween and they narrowed it down to Little Red Riding Hood, the Grandma, and the Woodsman or Ketchup, Mustard, and BBQ sauce. Either one would have worked out with her coat. But this one was just a little more darling. :) David is going to take a picture to church with him and show his class how awesome we turned out. 

Our little photoshoot by the fountain turned out great. I love the pictures. 

 

Later than night, Melissa and Blake came to our house for dinner and games. We think that we'd like to make a tradition of having soup on Halloween and it made it even more special to share it with some of our favorite people. We ate a yummy dinner amid 300 little kids trick-or-treating at our door and enjoyed spending the time with these two. 

 

 

Happy Halloween!

Fall Festivities

This month has been full of fun events, most of which we've hosted - which is a little out of our normal routine. I really like playing host, but so metimes I'm a little intimidated and so even though I say that I want to have a party or whatever I never follow through with it. But for some reason, lately we've been making things happen and it has been SO fun. The following are a few things that we've been up to. 

Book Club

I hosted this month's book club meeting at our house. We read the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. 

I read the book in college and loved it, and loved it just as much as I read it again in preparation for book club. I didn't get any great pictures of the meeting (I felt like that would be taking my blogging/documenting a bit too far), but I did get a picture of this yummy Triple Chocolate Bunt Cake that I made. (I made this chocolate bunt cake and some rice crispies as a subtle nod to the black and white/good and evil theme of the book.) The recipe is up on our food blog now - if you are looking for a yummy cake to make - this is so easy and SOOO good. 

Grandma's House Yard Sale

David's grandma was recently moved into a Memory Care Facility due to her Alzheimer's (as I mentioned in the post about our new piano) and so her house is being sold. It needs to be done - as she doesn't need the space anymore, but it's kind of a bittersweet thing. I've been helping Sue to go through things in the house and get them organized and sometimes I was just overwhelmed with amazement at the little things that had been collected through all their years of life. Everything in that house meant something to them and I felt like we had the responsibility of handling everything with care and love. Many of the things were given to family and the rest of them were organized for a massive estate/yard sale. David and I woke up early and headed to WJ to help run the yard sale and were pretty much swamped for the rest of the day (although during one of the slower times in the afternoon David went out back and helped his dad fix the covered porch). It was a busy day, but definitely worth it as we made $500 for his grandma. Overall, we feel blessed to have been able to take home some really nice things from his Grandma's house. The piano - of course, a freezer for our garage, his grandma's sewing machine and sewing table, and lots of other miscellaneous items - including some very pretty glassware and some beautiful china. I really love things like pretty goblets and plates as you'll see in the below photos that we've already put them to good use. Here are some pictures of our new pretty glassware/dishware. 

(This one is one of my favorites - it's like an appetizer plate. We used it for our Murder Mystery dinner and had chips, spinach artichoke dip, fruit, and a vegetable tray and it was SO fun to use these little plates before dinner.) 

Murder Mystery Dinner Party

So i've been wanting to host a Murder Mystery Dinner party for SO long. Finally this year David and I decided that we were just going to make it happen. We invited my sister Melissa and Blake, our good friends Ashley and Scott Cooper, and some friends from our ward that we want to be better friends with Karli and Garret Shields. Unfortunately Blake got sick that day and so he and Melissa weren't able to come, but we had SO much fun! The scene was the Underwood Wine Estates in California and even though we didn't do much in the way of decorating, the fun little grape glassware that we got from David's grandma seemed to make the perfect centerpiece. 

It was a really fun time of playing whodunnit and getting to know each other better. We loved it and are already planning our next Murder Mystery dinner. So fun. Also, the next day when Lydia came down in the morning, she loved playing with the booklets and little grape glasses. She was being so darling I couldn't help but take pictures. She wanted us to fill the little grape glasses with water so she could drink out of them - it was super cute. 

Pumpkin Carving

Our last fun festivity before Halloween was a Halloween Dinner/FHE/Pumpkin carving with the Coopers and the Griffins. Ashley provided the yummiest White Chicken Chili and then after dinner we carved pumpkins. We love getting together with these guys and are glad that it worked out. This was Lydia's first time carving pumpkins (she's always been asleep when we've done it before) and she thought that it was so fun. 

I'd say that our pumpkins were a smashing success! (If you look closely at our pumpkin, the little part inside of the P is a little pumpkin - carved by David. It's so cute.) 

   

Carson gave Lydia a hug and they both ended up on the ground. 

 

It was double nice to be able to spend time with the Griffins. We don't see them as often but it's fun to think that these two went to high school together. (Actually Scott went to the same high school - isn't that crazy? He was just a little bit older than them.) I love that they have kept in touch. 

JCW's 

As we were preparing meal plans for the week before Halloween, we decided that we wanted to go out to eat for FHE that Monday. We hadn't tried JCW's yet and so we put it on our calendar and were super excited. That day I saw that the Outlet Mall across I-15 at Traverse Mountain was having a little Halloween Storytelling Time so we decided to hit that up first and then grab something to eat. The storytelling was fun although Lydia wasn't super interested and she just cuddled up on David's lap the whole time. I got really into the story and was afraid that I was going to have nightmares about the Who-by-yas, but enjoyed it nonetheless. Dinner was wonderful and we got yummy burgers, fries, onion rings, and some ice cream (we decided to splurge because we have been so good on our restaurant budget for the last couple of months). We didn't snag any pictures until we got home, but I really love it and thought it would be the perfect end to this post.

Our Halloween was packed with fun things - it was such a fun month! I'm so glad that we were able to do so much. We certainly are blessed to have such a happy life. Now we are looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas and all of the festivities that go along with those holidays.