October

October has been a good month to me. It's involved a lot of laughter and a lot of accomplishment. It's been so great so far and I'm having a difficult time processing that it's almost over.

'Tis the season of pumpkin and caramel apple flavors and soup and I decided that I was in the mood for caramel sauce and apples. My mom has this absolutely divine recipe that I just had to make and so I did. HOWEVER. . . I forgot that our micorwave in our apartment is weak-sauce and so it didn't actually end up working. The caramel sauce wasn't nearly thick enough and it was too runny to stay on the apples long enough for you to get the goodness in your mouth. So my roommates and I imporvised and cut the apples up into small pieces and dumped them in the sauce thereby creating caramel apple soup.

And it was quite satisfying.

I love that Pandora knows what season it is and it's been playing good Halloween-ish songs all month. For example, it's playing In The Hall of the Mountain King on my Dvorak station, and Thriller and Ghost Busters on my Vocal Point one. And it just makes me all kinds of happy.

My roommate Alisha is good at buying candy for stuff. She bought candy corn and those candy-corn pumpkins and put them out for everyone to partake of. Except those things are NASTY! I prefer the pumpkins to the candy corn, but I should avoid both altogether because they make me shiver. I don't think they count as candy.

I also purchased my favorite Fall candy and I am so happy I did. Those caramel-apple suckers are pretty much the greatest things ever. I've loved them for as long as I can remember and I doubt I'll change my mind about them any time soon :)

Seeing the leaves fall off the trees makes me smile to myself. I love walking across a sidewalk that hasn't been cleared off by the BYU grounds people because it's padded with dead wet leaves that smell like Fall. And the smell wafts up to you with every step you take. And it's lovely. Oh. It's also fun to step on the crunchy ones. That's also an acceptable pastime.

I went running last Friday and it was lovely to be running under the yellow leaves still on the trees and on top of the ones that had already fallen. It made the whole exercise experience worth my time. And that's always something I need to have happen.

Extreme Makeover: Kitchen Edition

"I hate the dishes in the sink

Which roommates care for less than I

And sometimes make me want to cry

But then I do them 'cause they stink."

-Written today in my English 

class as an assignment

So dishes have kind of fallen by the wayside this week in the midst of homework and, in the case of Elizabeth, boyfriend. Today was day three of the accumulation and I finally got fed up with it.

So. I decided to pull up my big-girl (aka mommy) pants and fix it. It's obviously bothering me more than my roommates so if I want it done I only know one person who'll do it and do it well enough to satisfy me. Me.

It's a good thing it's Friday--otherwise I would fall behind in my homework. It took two hours.

Long story short, my kitchen went from this

 And this

 To this

 And this

I want to say that the kitchen will never get like that again, but I know that's simply wishful thinking. But I do know that it will never get worse because my threshold won't allow it. Thank goodness I have one!