Finally... after weeks of searching we found and had delivered a new living room sofa and love seat! It's a little out of place now but it's a start. Next we'll focus on end tables (arriving soon from Mike's grandfather's estate) and pictures for the walls. Once we have those, we can choose our colors and start painting. I'm super excited to actually be starting the redecorating process =)
Thursday, October 15th -
Today we had dinner with our friends Adam, Jessica, Hannah, Maya, Kim, Phil & Natalie. We had a great time playing with the kids and just hanging out with everyone. Life is so busy it's hard to find time we're all free to get together. Plus, every time we do, the kids are usually twice as big as the last time we saw them!
Maya & Natalie
Hannah & Adam
Kim & Natalie's Arm =)
Maya
Jessica & Hannah
Adam & Hannah, Natalie & Phil, & Kim Saturday, October 17th -
I've always talked about having a Harry Potter party but I never got around to actually doing it. Finally, this year I told my friends I was having one no matter what! I didn't plan very far in advance but I invited every HP fan I knew to come. A lot of people loved the idea but the day didn't work out well for them. In the end I had about 7 people confirmed. On the day I lost 3 to sickness and 1 to an unexpected event! I had two troopers who stayed despite the low numbers - My mom and friend Melanie =)
Mom and I dressed up and I think we look great. Mom put a lot more time into her costume than I did though. Maybe next year I'll be more prepared. For the actual party the three of us tried to eat what we could but we ended up with a ton of leftovers. We watched two HP movies and then called it a day. 
Sunday, October 18th -
After my party I was pretty spent so Mike and I didn't do much this day. In the end I think we looked for some pictures for the living room and then went to our bowling league. We kicked butt in bowling this week. Last time we lost every game and this time we won every game. Mike's average went up quite a bit from all the practice he's been putting in. Mine stayed the same. I will be happy if I average 120 by the end of the league.
Tuesday, October 20th -
Melanie and I have started our Christmas baskets! Usually we're very behind but this year we're trying to get on top of things. We made our first item for the baskets - Applesauce! We're very happy how it turned out and were shocked how easy it was (after all the peeling and slicing... that took forever). We're becoming canning pros. At first we weren't so great but now we've made a few mistakes and learned from them so the canning process is going very smooth for us.
Friday, October 23rd -
Today I relaxed and watched a chick flick (Ghosts of Girlfriends Past) and had a quite night to myself while Mike and his buddies went out to the Firekeepers Casino in Battle Creek. Apparently he had a great time because he didn't get back home until about 3 a.m.! Luckily he broke even gambling so it wasn't a wash financially. I haven't heard too many people coming back as big winners from that particular casino. I think some people won early on but not anymore. Maybe someday we'll win big too =)
Saturday, October 24th -
Once Mike recovered from his night of gambling and drinking, we went to Grand Rapids to look for pictures for the living room. I'm surprised how hard it is to find places what have a lot of choices for living room photos. We didn't want anything special... maybe a nature scene or something colorful yet not too contemporary. We couldn't find anything in GR. After a day of looking at all kinds of places and finding some art gallery paintings considerably out of the budget, we were tired and grumpy. We came home kind of late and I crashed on the couch while Mike played a few hours of Rock Band. We lead such an exciting life...
Sunday, October 25th -
Today Melanie and I planned to make our second basket item: Salsa! Last year we had a pretty good batch so we were optimistic about this year. After hours of peeling, chopping, cooking, canning, etc, we ended up with an even better batch than last year salsa! We think the trick is this year we used lime juice instead of lemon and it really made a huge difference. We also made larger jars this time around. Last year we had really small jars which were more personal size than sharing size. 
In between all the cooking, Mike and I stopped by a Persian rug place in town that we made a quick stop at yesterday. The owner runs the place and is a super nice guy. We looked at several rugs yesterday and loved one particular set for our living room. We gave ourselves 24 hours to think about it but today we decided we liked them well enough to buy. I think they compliment the couches well but the walls really need some color now.
We also lucked out because the rug dealer happened to be selling some student art work in his shop. We found two real oil paintings for dirt cheap done by a New York art student. After such horrible luck yesterday, we were thrilled to find something we liked! They're not exactly what I wanted but for the price and the quality, we're very happy with what we got. Now we just need to work on the paint colors!
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