November in a Nutshell

In November I hosted a birthday dinner for one of my Bible Study friends. I went with a black and white check and gold theme.

I was very pleased with the way it all turned out.

Since it's an autumn birthday I also decorated with pumpkins and autumn leaves.

It was one of the rare occasions when everyone was able to attend!

I saw this cheeseball made to look like a pumpkin on Pinterest, which I thought was super cute. It was pretty easy to make and turned out well. The stem is from a yellow pepper.

It was a fun gathering of dear ladies.

I made mini pumpkin bread loaves to give as favors. I used my Silhouette machine to cut out the autumn leaves and attached the pumpkin bread labels to them.
 

Later in the month I went to see the play Hamilton in Richmond. I wanted to see it because I'd heard so much about it.

I wasn't impressed. Some of the music was good, but overall I didn't like it. I guess now I know and I won't have to wonder what all the fuss was about.

One evening at the end of the month we went to Winterfest at Kings Dominion to see their Christmas lights display.

It wasn't nearly as spectacular as Christmas Town in Busch Gardens, but it had the advantage of only being 45 minutes away instead of two hours.

Not much to say about the photos, just showing off all the fun lights.

I was happy to see a life-sized nativity set in the midst of the mostly secular displays.

There was a Peanuts Christmas show that we went to. It wasn't Broadway quality, but it was cute.

Seeing a Christmas lights display is always a great way to kick off the Christmas season!!

The Rest of October

Here are pictures from the rest of the month of October!

 Photos from my annual Halloween Piano Party. I've been fortunate I've been able to hold it outside

for most of the years I've been having it.

We also hosted a luau under our back deck for some couples from the ward. The backdrop was painted by Jennifer Johnson when she was in the Relief Society presidency with me and we had a luau as an activity. 

I have quite a few luau decorations and wanted an excuse to use them again. 

I was going through some of my old memorabilia and discovered I had some postcards from when we went to Hawaii in the 1990's, and I used those as the invitations. (They're inside an orange vellum envelope) 

This matching authentic Hawaiian dress and Aloha shirt were my mom and dad's from a trip to Hawaii, which was another reason I wanted to have a luau! 

The buffet table before any food was put on it, I wish I'd thought to take a picture with the food! I made Hawiian baked beans with pineapple in them, gourmet glazed Spam, and a coconut cream pie. Everyone else brought Hawaiian themed food, too. The small picture on the table is a picture of my mom and dad in the Hawaiian clothes.

                              

Most of the women, at least, dressed appropriately!

Autumn is always a fabulously gorgeous season in Virginia.

We took a quick trip to Pennsylvania to visit one of our favorite places in the state, Longwood Gardens.

Since it was too late for most flowers and too early for Christmas decorations, we spent most of our time in the Green house.

This is a 1,000 bloom chrysanthemum from a single plant. Very impressive!!

Some of the fall colors at the garden, and a bamboo display inside the green house.

                                            

And of course, one of the main reasons we love Longwood Gardens, the fountain dancing waters light show! The music that will be used is listed on the internet, so I always try to choose a night to attend when the music will be familiar to us. 

It's impossible to capture the amazingness of the fountains in a snapshot. It's just a fantastic combination of fun music and dancing water, with even some flames involved on some songs. (As in the photo above.)

I just had to put in a picture of Tyler's family Halloween costumes. They borrowed our German clothes from the 80's and early 90's when we lived in Germany. They got the German hats from Amazon, and of course Tyler had to add a bushy mustache. They looked absolutely perfect, and I loved that they used the German clothes I'd saved!

Here are our family pictures wearing our German clothes in 1989and in 1992 right before we moved back to the states.