This is Halloween

Maybe I don't get into Halloween like other people do because we don't need a holiday as an excuse to dress up. Be that as it may, we do enjoy using Halloween as one of those excuses. I mostly just enjoyed getting to wear my Jane Austen dress again!






Happy Halloween!

Peer pressure decorating

Okay, I have to admit it: I don't love Halloween. I mean, I definitely enjoy it and I don't mind how much other people love it, it's just not my favorite holiday. But lately, I've been feeling a little remiss in my lack of holiday decorating. We went over to my friend Natalie's house and they have the best decorations up and it inspired me to decorate, if not for Halloween, for the autumn season. I'm not above caving to peer pressure.

Aren't the baby pumpkins cute?

Fall: Take 2

The warmer weather returned long enough for us to get some more dazzling fall colors. The brilliant reds and yellows on the mountains has drained into the valley trees and the sidewalks are starting to host piles of crunchy leaves. Even the trees still tenaciously hanging on to their green are edged with gold when the afternoon light starts to slant.


I am once again homesick for Pittsburgh and the beautiful "back East" that I know is experiencing all the glories of our fall, times a thousand. But I am grateful for what we have here, however brief it may be. I love watching the progression of the season - the way the leaves turn one at a time, then all at once, the way you can see every stage of autumn in a row of trees from summer green to almost bare. and I love the beautiful shade of blue against the bright reds and yellows. Sometimes I really think that color must have been invented during the fall.

Falling straight into winter

In true Utah fashion, our fall season seems to have ended already. When September started, there was a sudden though undramatic drop in temperatures: instead of being in the 90s every day, temperatures stayed in the 70s and 80s through the entire month. It was lovely, and only just cool enough for the leaves in the higher altitudes (aka on the mountains) to start turning beautiful colors. Every day brought a little more red and orange and gold to the horizon.

Then, three days into October, we had a much more dramatic weather shift (because clearly, the weather follows the calendar). We dropped to temperature highs in the 50s and several days of rain and snow (!!). It supposed to be a little less wet and a little warmer this week, but I think winter is on its way in.

That didn't stop us from going up the canyon for a picnic though!





Thanks everyone for coming! I had fun, even if I was very very cold by the end of the night. We shall see what the next few weeks of "fall" have in store...

Word(s) of the Day, Part 5

Sometimes my favorite part of words is where they come from. And of course, how they sound and what they mean! See exhibits 1 through 9:

milquetoast \MILK-tohst\, noun:
A very timid, unassertive, spineless person, especially one who is easily dominated or intimidated.
Milquetoast is after Caspar Milquetoast, a character in The Timid Soul, a comic strip by H. T. Webster (1885-1952), American cartoonist.

weltschmerz \VELT-shmerts\, noun:
Sentimental pessimism; sorrow that one feels and accepts as one's necessary portion in life.
Weltschmerz comes from German welt, "world" and schmerz, "pain." The term was coined by Jean Paul Richter in 1810.

gadabout \GAD-uh-bout\, noun:
Someone who roams about in search of amusement or social activity.
Gadabout is formed from the verb gad, "to rove or go about without purpose or restlessly" (from Middle English gadden, "to hurry") + about.

bellwether \BEL-weth-uhr\, noun:
A leader of a movement or activity; also, a leading indicator of future trends.
Bellwether is a compound of bell and wether, "a male sheep, usually castrated"; from the practice of hanging a bell from the neck of the leader of the flock.

chichi \SHEE-shee\, adjective:
Affectedly trendy.
From the French word that literally means "curl of false hair"; used figuratively in the phrases faire des chichis, "to have affected manners, to make a fuss"; and gens à chichis, "affected, snobbish people." Sometimes spelled "chi-chi."

holus-bolus \HOH-luhs-BOH-luhs\, verb:
To cleanse.
Holus-bolus comes from a mock-Latin rhyming compound based on the phrase "whole bolus."

pecksniffian \pek-SNIF-ee-uhn\, adjective:
Hypocritically and smugly affecting benevolence or high moral principles.
Pecksniffian is named after Seth Pecksniff, a character in "Martin Chuzzlewit, a novel" (1843), by Charles Dickens.

And sometimes there is just this:

willowwacks \WIL-oh-waks\, noun:
A wooded, uninhabited area.
Willowwacks is of uncertain origin.

Love it.

I've never slept so well

We finally have a real bed again! Not long after we got married, we bought a king-size foam mattress (Best. Decision. Ever.) but we didn't have a bed frame for it. Tim being the ingenious man that he is, designed a bed frame for us. He planned it out, calculated the measurements, bought the wood from the lumber yard he used to work for in California, spent a day cutting it with his brothers, and bit by bit, Tim put it together with lots of help from his brother Rob. They ran into all kinds of hitches, mainly a lack of tools and work space, but it's finally and beautifully done!

The final putting-together process:





And here's the finished product! (Ignore the mess on the dressers.)



I am so incredibly proud of Tim. He worked so hard and it paid off so much more incredibly than I imagined it would. (He's definitely the visionary in our family.) He calculated and re-calculated to make sure that the corners would fit exactly (and they did!) and even made plans to add drawers under the frame eventually. I love that he used a clear varnish so we could enjoy the beautiful natural maple wood.

And I'm so grateful for Paul and Rob for taking a whole day to help him cut all the wood, and especially grateful to Rob for seeing the job through to the end. Rob bought or helped buy most of the tools and was pretty much indispensable. We are so lucky to have such awesome brothers!