Halloween Fun!

 

 Can you guess what our costumes are going to be? 

 

I hit up Pinterest and got ideas for Halloween appropriate food items to take to the party we were invited to.  I decided to take one healthy item, assuming there would be lots of delicious junk food there so I made the tangerine pumpkins.

 

Our costumes came together very quickly. We eyeballed the outlines and cut the items out of foam insulation, then spray-painted them.  I cut out the eyes from colored paper and even made eyelashes for the Mrs. Pacman.

 

I made some delicious pimento cheese if I say so myself.  I used about a pound each of sharp Cabot white cheddar, and yellow Cabot sharp cheddar.  Roughly 2 cups of mayo, I sliced some roasted jarred red peppers.  Spices:  Lots of black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, chipotle chile powder, a little cayenne powder.

 

The finished products.

 

We got to the party and didn't know anyone because the couple that invited us had not arrived yet.  I was so glad that we had thought to ask what to bring so at least we came in bearing gifts.  We mingled and met lots of new people, I am so bad with names, I was wishing that we all had nametags.  We put out our food along with all the other goulish treats, there was a great spread!

 

Clay made sure I got a picture of the rib skeleton.  The whole house was decorated, ghosts and spiders and rats around every corner.  I was entertained all night just looking around at everything.  There were lots of good costumes too: Pop-eye and Olive oil, Elvis, Palm Reader, Niki Manaj, catwoman, medusa, a gladiator, and several others.  

 

 

The little bones on the table above were marshmallows stuck on the ends of pretzel sticks dipped in white chocolate and they were Amazing!  Clay and I kept going back for more of those.  Our friend, who was the palm reader passed out little Pixie stick love potions.  They also had contests for best costume which we all voted on and guess how many M&Ms were in a jar.  I was nowhere close!  Clay and I won a surprise prize for best entertainment when we were being "played" via pretend joystick.  I was ghost-chasing Clay around the living room and he was being "controlled" by Elvis with his microphone turned Joystick. 

 

Great Georgia Airshow

 

 
Last weekend Clay and I went to the Great Georgia Airshow up in Peachtree City.  It was a nice back-roads drive up and perfect weather.   I can't remember ever going to an airshow before and to be honest I was a little apprehensive because of the accidents I have seen on the news that have occurred at these things.  That being said, I didn't realize how big this event was going to be.  I was surprised when we had to park in this giant field at an industrial building and cram into buses to get to the actual event.

We brought a couple of waters and 2 fold out chairs and found us a place to set up.  One shared funnel cake and bar b que sandwich later we were settled in for some neck-straining fun.  We watched planes do loop-d-loops, and spirals turns, fly straight up in the air, fall straight down toward the ground, or more impressively fall fluttering toward the ground.  We even saw a rocket truck race and beat a plane, it went about 364 miles per hour. 

 

 

 

 
When the rocket truck started up it made this giant wall of smoke that moved across the field where everyone was sitting.  I think it scared a few people and they started jumping up and the poor kid below starting running away.  The cloud of smoke blew around us for a minute and blocked the sun for just a bit then we were back to being roasted.  It was a beautiful and sunny day and both of us forgot to apply sunscreen.  We stayed till there were no more aerial acrobatics to be seen, then we waited in a 30 minute line for the buses to pick up back up.  Then we were hungry, Yelped, and found a great little spot called the Pita by Beruit.  Delicious! 

 

 

 

What have we been doing lately?

 

We went out to Decatur for Clay's birthday.  Sitting outside a pub there having appetizers we saw a couple with their rather chunk vizsla.  Clay talked to the owners and it turns out that she came from the same breeder, Wingshot Kennels, that Lily came from.  They also said she had never been particularly active....What!  Lily is straight concentrated energy.  

Later we had a delicious dinner at the Iberian Pig!  Fantastic mushroom pizza, super moist tenderloin, and delicious bacon wrapped dates filled our bellies up.  We watched the fireworks that had been postponed from 4th of July then moved over to Leon's Full Service where we played bocce ball.  Happy Birthday Clay!

 

 

On one of my runs this little guy caught my eye just hanging out in the road.  Maybe it was praying not to get run over?  I got the beautiful and different flower arrangement from the Mulberry Market farmers market in Macon.  That table also sells fresh herbs and I got some lemongrass and made a delicious thai salad and lemongrass dressing.

 

See that little dot at the top of the hill below?  That is Lily.  I recently took her off leash on accident and since she was already off I decided to give it a go and see how she did.  She pleasantly surprised me.  She would run around and check things out but never got too far away and would often turn around to make sure I was still coming.

 

On Saturday we went to a shooting competition for Clay in Conyers.  He did really well, can't wait to see the results.  Luckily he finished up before the downpour started.  We had an uneventful rest of the day with some shopping at Target (complete with pumpkin spice and chai at Starbucks), Petsmart (had a friends and family discount), and had some good food at Jim n' Nick's bar-b-que.  We tried on crazy Halloween foam hair at Target to entertain ourselves.  Clay even found an hilarious mask of a giant eyeball.

 

 

 

 

 

Today we went fishing.  We caught a LOT of brim and threw them back, eventually Clay found the right spot on the pond where the catfish were hiding and started catching them back to back.  He got about 5 total, 2 were big enough to keep and Clay had them in a bucket.  I think he felt bad for me since I kept "checking on them" and let them go before we left.  No fish for us for supper, which was ok because we already had stroganoff cooked at home.  I got my run in today and went for another 2 miler this afternoon that was fast for me.

 

 

 

Long Weekend

 

Last Weekend Clay and I took a long weekend trip up to the mountains in northeast Ga.  

 

While we were there I took advantage of having some time off and got my hair cut for the year.  I got some bangs and layers to try something different.  The salon is really neat, it is in and old gas/service station.

 

Ok, so you can't tell at all in this picture that I got my hair cut.  We were mostly lazy, reading books, watching movies, and sitting around enjoying the view and the fallish weather.  I did go hiking on Saturday.  Lily and I did about 8 miles in the Warwoman WMA.  I tried to drive up into the WMA to park but my car started sliding back down the gravel road and my brakes locked up forcing me to pull my emergency brake and back down the road to park at the bottom.

 

Just to the left of the parking area off Tuckaluge Creek road was this creek  with lots of great sitting rocks.  We didn't go to it until we finished our hike and I took my shoes off and soaked my legs in the chilly water which felt wonderful.

 

We kept hiking and hiking on the gravel roads of the WMA looking for a great lookout spot but with all the leaves on the trees there never was a good vantage points to look out to the other mountains.  I want to try this again in the winter because I bet the views will be spectacular.

 

Lily was a happy camper!   I thought she would be tired after we got finished but I was WRONG!  She was just getting started and continued to run around and wanted to play the rest of the day until the sun started to go down.

Ocmulgee (Pope's Ferry to Waterworks Park)

 
Mom came up last weekend and brought Nico for a kayak trip.

 

We got up, had breakfast a la Eric, and loaded the vehicles.  Off we went to drop the last vehicle at Waterworks park.  We put in at Pope's Ferry, the river was listed at 4.5' at Dame's Ferry and around 1500cfs.  The run started out pretty good, but we quickly started running into shoals which became the story of the day. 

 

 
 We stopped less than an hour in when we found a swimming hole.  What a great way to cool off!

 

 

We have piece by piece completed the length of the Ocmulgee from Jackson to Macon.

 

 
Check out this strange flower we found on the island where we stopped to swim.

 
What we thought would be a 3-4 hour trip kept getting longer and longer, eventually ending at 7 hours.  What took the most time was Clay and Eric and mom getting stuck on rock after rock.  Mom and Eric dumped out at one point, losing her glasses and her chewbacca shirt.   Even though it was a long stretch it was one of the prettiest parts of the river.  I would like to do it again, but Clay isn't so sure.  He thinks maybe if the river was another 1.5 feet higher.

 
There were beautiful rocky outcroppings and sections with homes on the banks which provided some eye candy.

 
By the time we got finished we were so hungry we each devoured Five Guys burgers and fries in record breaking time.