His friends...My Friends

So this weekend we finallly hosted a "house-warming" party at our new little rental house for "Mark's" friends. It was funny.... because I said this to my parents, and then thought about it and realized when you're married a weird thing happens. Instead of it being, my friends and his friends, things start to combine. When you have someone who you care about, and respect, you WANT to know their friends and in the process they become your friends too. So this weekend we had a party with OUR friends. I wish I had taken some pictures, I made Halloween Cupcakes (AKA vanilla cupcakes with halloween sprinkles) finally used our chip/dip tray and had a nice little grill out. Of course the boys stayed up too late... of course we were exhausted the next day but it was  great time!

Next day Mark and I came up with a fair compromise.. he wanted to go out to brunch and I had been begging to go to an apple orchard and go apple picking (a tradition that is not very common in NC! There we pick strawberries :)) Anyways, we had a lovely little brunch on a rainy Saturday afternoon in Uptown; that only cost us $140....thanks to a silly parking ticket for not having my front license plate posted. We've been meaning to do it, but the car was bought in KS where they don't have front license plates, and we've been afraid to drill into the car, but this may be the catalyst. Mark looked in his "hardware" haha... and he did not have the screws we needed. So we will be getting those soon. Luckily to cheer us up we had our precious nephew Max come over... yes we are wearing our beautiful sweats.

Luckily, the apple orchard was much more successful. We made it to a less comercialized one in Stillwater, where there was no entrance cost and $7 for 1/4 peck... not a bad price for 15-20 apples!  We made it there on their last apple picking day, and Cici ate enough apples off of the ground to pay for double what we got. I've been hoping to make something with the apples, but after making all the cupcakes this weekend (I also made some GF pumpkin cupcakes..recipe below! So good Mark ate them!) I don't feel like I should make anything else yet!

I'm looking forward to a nice three-day week up ahead. Heading to NC on Thursday :) and looking forward to a weekend of Wake Forest Football Game with some suities, seeing fall happen all over again, walks with my family, visiting relatives, potential trip to the mountains, Thanksgiving dinner and getting to see the full-grown pup! Can't wait and the only thing that would make it better would be to be bringing along the man. I guess I'll just leave him here to have fun and hang out with "his" friends.


GF Pumpkin Cupcakes:
Ingredients
For cupcakes:
1/3 cup oil
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup nondairy milk (soy, almond, or rice)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free All Purpose Baking Flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup chocolate chips
For glaze:
1/4 cup brown rice syrup or honey
1 tablespoon margarine or coconut oil, melted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch ground cinnamon (optional)
Directions

1. To make cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line muffin tin with cupcake liners.
2. Whisk together oil, sugar, nondairy milk, and vanilla. Sift in flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Gently whisk flour mixture until well combined. Fold in pumpkin, but do not overstir or the batter will become gummy. Fold in chocolate chips.
3. Fill liners two-thirds full. Bake for 24-26 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack to let cool completely.
4. To make icing: Whisk together rice syrup, margarine, vanilla extract, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Using a fork, drizzle icing atop completely cooled cupcakes.

It's 60 degrees...inside my house!

Well, I'm a Minnesotan now right? So 60 degrees is warm? I guess relative to the high of 49 it was today, as well as the 39 degrees Cici and I just went for an hour walk in ;) Cold scmold, I've been told this is nothing! My brother wants to visit this winter, which I'd love... I just don't think us North Carolinians know what we are in for.

On the bright side it is BEAUTIFUL out right now, fall colors everywhere! It reminds me of fall things, football games, pumpkin foods, trick-or-treating, jumping in leaves, bonfires. I'm excited to experience a new fall thing tomorrow, my friend Julie's WEDDING! Fall brings many great things :)

For example... Fall brings locking your keys in your house and opportunities to enjoy the weather, kind of. Thursday after being out for two days at a conference I woke up early and was excited to get to school earlier than normal to get everything back together after a sub. I was ready quickly out the door, shut it an immediately turned around and tried to open it again...I had locked my keys inside. What happened next? What do you think, I broke down in hysterical tears and called Mark, who was already 30 min away (one way) and 1.5 hours away (the other direction). After frantically running around the house, blubbering to him on the phone for 5 minutes my intelligent self kicked in and a wonderful co-worker came to pick me up. Needless to say, my first graders could have said "Sra. Aronson, act your age!" Luckily while I waited for a ride I was able to enjoy the views of fall....