Halloween Spirit

The Nonerick house is ready for Halloween. As you may know, I LOVE Halloween. Ryan and I carve pumpkins, decorate the house, and watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The first two steps are complete (see below) -- next up is a fake horror film starring a transsexual from Transylvania!

Ryan in the zone.

Assessing the the pumpkin as it relates to his creative vision.

It's very important to have a lot of work space for a properly carved pumpkin.

My pumpkin is a spider web with arachnid front and center.

Ryan's haunted house pumpkin with flickering LED light.

The Trick or Treat Cauldron

Ceramic pumpkins hanging from one of our trees.

A Ghostly Visitor

Spooky Garden

Halloween Wreath and Mutant Tarantula
Be careful where you knock on our front door!
You never know when the giant spider will spring to life!

Happy Halloween, Everyone!

Amy and Byron's Annual Doughnut Party!

To ring in the fall, our friends, Amy and Byron, host a doughnut party every October. You can revisit the fun from last year's party here.

In previous years, the party has included a pumpkin carving component. Since pumpkin carving is messy and makes you really cold with all the goo on your hands, Amy and Byron decided to encourage costumes instead. Ryan and I were the only adults to come in costume (every kid had a costume of course), but Ryan's took the cake. He went as "Joe Six Pack". I didn't get a picture of it because Ryan recycled his Pabst Blue Ribbon six pack necklace. What a party pooper! We have another costume party this week, and I guarantee that I will snap a photo of him as Sarah Palin's favorite boy-toy (besides Todd Palin).

The "Joe" Name Tag

The "Joe" T-Shirt + A Six Pack

Go ahead and say what you're thinking -- yep, we are classy people.

Amy eating her yogurt filled doughnut while onlookers wait for vomit.
She claimed it tasted great. We know better...

Ryan made the dreaded yogurt doughnut in (and with) his own bare hands.

One satisfied customer!

Hot doughnuts right out of the fryer and ready for frosting!

Sadie's lady bug costume

More News From The Garden

This morning, I spent more time in the garden. Ryan got bored and decided to join. He planted his first plant all by himself!

Can you feel the enthusiasm?

Our Vermont shaped stepping stone.
It makes us think of the good ol' days with the Yorras!

Almost done!
Hopefully this bed will grow and bloom in the spring. I'm most excited about the alium bulbs that are like hidden presents for next season. To answer your question, "Yes, I'm a garden geek."

You made your bed, but DON'T lay in it

My friend, Amy, suggested posting more before and after pictures of our home and garden projects. I have to agree, and unfortunately, I haven't been the best at following through. Rookie homeowner mistake!

Anyway, Ryan and I spent an unusually sunny fall day trying to kill the grass in our front yard/garden. You may be wondering why on God's "green" earth we would want to kill our grass. Well, grass is finicky; it requires lots of water and care; and I want beautiful lush beds of plants to run along our new stone path (see pictures below of the path - not the lush plants). I've spent the last few weeks scheming, buying two peonies (I LOVE peonies), and meandering through nurseries getting ideas and learning more about what grows best where.

First, the path. Ryan did an amazing job finishing up what turned out to be a major undertaking: putting down another ton of stone and filling it all in with dirt. I started planting Irish Moss instead of my original plan of Elfin Thyme. In our climate, I think the moss will do better and spread faster. What can I say? I'm impatient.

We removed sod to make way for this new stretch of path.

We widened the front path to make the walkway more dramatic.

The wisteria that clings to our porch (left side of photo) will be cut back significantly and retrained to grow on a metal arbor. Someday...

And now for today's job: killing the grass and dumping 2.5 cubic yards of dirt to make a new planting bed.

Ryan was such a good sport. He made 3 trips to the topsoil place and unloaded all of it while I laid down lots of newspaper directly on top of the existing grass, formed the new beds, removed old plants, and put in new plants.

The start of something new!

Someone is not as excited about the new beds as I am - can you guess who?

You may remember a picture of Soma from this post in August. In the photo, Soma is laying on my lilies. Let's hope he doesn't do that in my new bed!

Stay tuned for more pictures of our project!

Oktoberfest!

For the last few years, I've been wanting to hold an Oktoberfest party but couldn't because we didn't have space to host a big group of folks. Finally, we have a house and space for lots of people to mingle and enjoy some local brew. I apologize because I didn't take many photos of the shenanigans. Ryan rocked some lederhosen and helped make "brats n' beer" as you can see:

Who wears short shorts?

We asked folks to bring their favorite German side dish and ended up with bags and bags of pretzels. Good thing hard pretzels keep for a long time, and since it's football season, we have lots of snacks for lazy Sunday afternoons on the couch. Now if only we can finish the keg that we bought...

Thanks to everyone who helped us celebrate the new digs and joined us for a great fall celebration. Hopefully this will become an annual event!

Home Improvement Hangover

You may remember our post from Labor Day weekend where we pulled up a concrete path in our garden. We've (hopefully) entered the final phase of the project. Yesterday we spent the day laying gravel underlay to level out the path and to aid drainage. The good news is that we tested the drainage of the gravel because it poured down rain all day. When it was all said and done, we were soaked to the bone but ready to lay stone.

Today we woke up, ate a hearty breakfast, and went outside to start putting the stone in place. The good news is that the path is an 100% improvement. The bad news is that we have to order another ton of stone (we've already used 2 tons), and we need to plant creeping thyme before the next bout of rain begins.

While these pictures aren't of the finished product, it should give you an idea where we are headed:

Imagine a finished path with creeping plants between stones and flowers along the side of the house.

The Scene

Stay tuned for pictures of the final product!

The Raconteurs

Darcy and I have been fortunate enough to see some great shows this year; Radiohead was amazing and The Black Keys were fantastic. Last night we went to the Wamu Theater to see The Jack White Band ... er, The Raconteurs. And, they were ok. The five members of the band sure bring a heck of a lot of energy to the show, and they are obviously extremely talented musicians. Jack White is the center of attention, but that is a good thing. He has an amazing stage presence and I felt drawn into the music. They sounded good, and the stage set was minimal which I thought fit nicely with the band (there was no need to add extra visuals).

Now for the negative. Wamu Theater is not a great place to watch a show. There is a lot of concrete and it is rather large so I felt like I was in a warehouse and not a theater. That is kind of disappointing because I think that The Raconteurs would have been much more at home in a place like the Paramount. They played a very short set - around an hour - and then an encore of about fifteen to twenty minutes. And, this is probably the thing that I disliked the most, they made the crowd wait during the "encore break" for what seemed like 15 minutes. I personally do not understand the encore. It seems like a lot of ego boosting on the part of the band. The band knows that they are coming back out (the guitar techs were retuning for crying out loud) and the crowd knows that they are going to hear more songs. At the very most, leave the stage and return quickly - especially if you had just wrapped up what I consider a short set. I like the way that the Pixies did it: they did not even leave the stage, they just took a short break to acknowledge the crowd and then continued playing. Or, Pearl Jam: they left after a long set to take a break and came back on to "play the second half of the show".

Ok, enough complaining and sorry about the punctuation / grammar/ run-ons. I am programmer not a writer.