Pumpkin Fun

A day after the Trunker treat I was looking at our Jack-o-Lantern realizing their was no place for me to display our master pieces and it was just going to start rotting on my table if I didn't do anything with it. So I told Chris I wanted to make a pumpkin pie.  So he helped me cut it in half and we baked it and made pumpkin pie and pumpkin custard. 

Being manly cutting it in half

face side

back side

made Chris take this picture

Yep that is the man I married 

barf! I thought it was a funny picture

And I did the pumpkin face picture do

I don't know why I was looking at it, but Chris took a picture

baked back of the pumpkin

backed face and then I saw the steam and then I went crazy trying to take pictures. 

favorite

MOUTH

EYE

inside

scraped out face

the  pan left cooked pumpkin juices (?)

Long face!

deflated

raw view

going into the oven

That is his pie face

Finished product

It  tasted really good but had a...organic texture

There was a lot more  pumpkin stuff  than what went into the pumpkin pie so we made custard with the rest. We tried to blend it but it still had a...organic texture.

Trunker Treat and costuming

We were going to our trunker treat so we wanted to dress up and have a pumpkin to show the  kids when they came to get candy. However we arrived 15 minutes late and all the kids were gone inside to play activities and I had to chase them down to share my candy. These are the pictures I took getting ready, being their and coming home. 

This is the pumpkin we bought from the Subway Parking lot, but our co-worker Brishelle picked it up for us because we had clock in and she just clocked off. 

This is Christopher's expert carving job with our dull steak knife

Here Jack-o-Lantern is lite up

We couldn't find candles so we used a flash light 

Christopher's costume when we couldn't decide what he was

Then he was carrying the pumpkin  and I told him he was the headless horseman 

He is too cool

I am a black kitty!

This is the outfit with out the jacket

I made these cat ears the day of which is why we were late

I used my *cough*underwire to form the frame of ears and then crochet between to fill it in  

I used my old brown hairband and wrapped it in black yarn

The pumpkin is playing the recorder. 

Nailed it!

Delicious looking right? 

On Facebook there has  been a new trend to share recipes with pictures. Recently the one that caught my eye was Refrigerator brownies (who could not want a bit of that picture?).  Any who I decided that I was going to have some of that and so I set out to get the ingredients in Missy friendly style. That meant Betty Crockers Gluten free brownies and making my own pudding from "My Favorite Lemon Pudding" Modified to be chocolate and Vanilla. That way I didn't have to worry about the modified food starch killing me and besides it is so much more fun!...well that is if you let the pudding set up all the way. Recommendation for anyone making chocolate pudding : Stir in the coco with the corn starch and sugar other wise it will just get clumpy. Also remember patients is the virtue which will make beautiful pudding rather than inpatients which gets you soupy chocolate with little lumpiness. Then if you are making a recipe with layers don't think "I will put down the liquidy one to hid it from the rest" because all you get is this: The Bog of Unfathomable Sweetness!

from the top

 who else is having flash backs to the labyrinth?

three out of  five isn't bad is it?

It  isn't beautify but it does make a good treat to share

Intentionality

          I am an excellent worrier. I can worry myself in to a dark whole where they only light I see is that of a odd TV show which I am trying to use to not to worry because the thing I am professional at is avoiding. My friend Jennie categorized it as being an emotional caner. I take what is bothering me put  it in a bottle and set it aside. Either it stops bothering me or it explodes and I have to deal with it. The exploding has had mixed results in my life. The most memorable is when I ruined mine and other peoples friendships, but most have just made a lot of noise and then been solved or recaned. This is my unconformable truth about being non-confrontational.
          However I have been learning about this revolutionary thought: I can do things with intention to better understand my worry. This isn't me trying to be the heroine and solve everyone problems. This is me verifying if there even is a problem. It is the idea that I am going to actually talk to people.  If I understand the situation I can see where I actually can help or where I just need to pray for the best to work out, but the main point is that I am not avoiding people but building my relationships with them.
          I am a face person, when i am with your face you are the only person, but out of sight out of my ability to be social. I am not the kind of person just to call you up, I feel like I should have a purpose. And it is alright if I still have that purpose, but I want to be able to do it just because as well.  That is what I am going to try to do . Not be stuck in the close system of me where I fester and rot away with worry, but to see the possibilities in life by talking to the people I love. So be prepared for awkward phone calls ^_^ ( or email, or texts or Facebook messages or whatever other social networking I get on) while I intentionally practice being social.

I am not that smart, but Heavenly Father is that good

I went up to the temple today to seek out some clarification and to take those steps which will help me become a more spiritual person rather than just saying that is what I want to be. I didn't actually go inside because the fancy to go didn't hit me until after we talked about temple attendances and how much we go there in my D&C class as well as what are our driving motivators for living in my Personality class. I wasn't a fan of either of my answers so I went up to do something about it. I started off with a prayer where I was trying to just ask blessings for others when I realized what I actually asking to be the heroine in a miraculous "fixed it" kind of story. Which is for acknowledgment, not genuine concern for the person. So my prayer more tuned into asking to be more like Naaman who would do something without fanfare, repetitive and mundane for the Lord than Gehazi who wanted gain from helping others. After I did some scripture study I started to write in my journal about what was on my mind.  

It started off with my lack of personal scripture reading and prayers. I thought about the reasons that I don't do them and  was hit by a revelation that was quite shocking to me. I don't do good things in front of other people because I don't want to look like a goodie-two-shoes because if I were I wouldn't be a relatable person who you could talk to or who could help you and I am above all else a helpful person. It is a crazy notion once written down, but really is how I have though for a long time without being conscious of it.  It sounds like the kind of confusion satan would cause, but the explanation isn't as important as the option that makes it so I can stop listening to what "they" think and do things that are actually good for me.

This idea of finding something so important about myself made me want to dig a little more. I have always seen myself as a generous person (aka kind and forgiving), but really I am not easily offend. A person I have been offended by is my ex-stepmother. Have I forgiven her? I would like to say yes, but my story telling would say otherwise. That is in explaining the differences between my ex-stepmother/family and my new stepmother/family I have searched my memory for examples of how horrible she has been to convince people of how terrible she is and why we had to get away. These are acquaintances in my life who don't know her and won’t meet her.  Why was I making an enemy out of her? Even if she is an enemy I am still supposed to love her? Would you speak ill of those you love? These were the hard questions coming to my mind and I do have answers for them, but they weren't the "yes you are justified" kind of answers.  The problem was that the marriage started off with “us” and “them” lines already drawn into it and because we didn't want to be intrusive we let them stay and when we reached over we got burned to many times so we stopped trying, but I can remember being "good" to be spiteful after a time. Especially after...*shake head* I was about to look for evidences again, but that isn't the point here. 

The point is that though the Lasley's and the Eliason's didn't bring out the best in one another I can't hold on to offenses real or imagined if I am going to live the way I want to. The point is that it wasn't until I talked to Heavenly Father about it that I found solutions. I have been struggling to find a way to change and in one afternoon of sincere quiet searching I was given two gifts to help me with that. The question now is : will I use them properly?