Turkey virgin

We did it! Successfully hosted our first Thanksgiving and cooked our first turkey. It turned out wonderfully! We had quite the spread with 2 turkeys (since we got it too late and couldn't find a huge one like we wanted), mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, sweet potato "cobbler", pomegranate salad, fruit soup, rolls, and pumpkin, blackberry dark chocolate, and apple pies. Amazing!
My new Crate and Barrel table cloth. I fell in love with the print, perfect for fall. They were out of the one that fit my table so I got a bigger one, cut it up and made the tablecloth to fit my table, a runner for a console table, placemats, and napkins.

The "kids" table with the adult table in the background...note the matching placemats.So full after dinner!And then of course...scoping out the sales for tomorrow! The only newspaper of the year I buy.

I am so grateful to have wonderful friends to spend the holidays with so far from home. Sorry, no real pictures of all the good food, but you're probably so full from your own meals you wouldn't want to see it anyway.

What an amazing beginning to the holiday season. I am so blessed with... an awesome husband, loving family, great friends, the chance to further my education this upcoming year, Grant in a good dental program, a car and scooter that work, hot water :), working with wonderful young women at church, a body that is healthy and can work out, and so, so, much more...I can't begin to list it all.

Christmas wrapping

Well, although I wish I had this...
For now I'm totally content with this...

It was a bit of a mess for the few hours I was working, but as of last night...all the presents in my house are wrapped! All that extra luggage that I brought home from California (that you've seen every time you've pulled up my blog for over a week since I was slacking on posting) is now in a box, with wrapping paper....AND...a bow and tag! Now because I am adamant about not decorating for Christmas until after Thanksgiving, they will have to remain upstairs until Friday, but it feels good to be caught up on that :)

Dessert Taste Night

Well since it's November, we decided to gear up for the holidays with a "favorite holiday treat" Taste night. For those of you who don't know what Taste Night is, click here.
I thought I'd share just a few pictures of some amazing creations :)

I made these... Pumpkin pecan butter dessert squares (a Williams Sonoma recipe which I also blogged about last year...recipe is HERE)Pumpkin bread

A yummy Chex mix

Turtles

Hidden cherry cookies

Thumbprint cookies

Some more good stuff...

"Sugar plums"

Apple pie caramel apple- like my FAVORITE one at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory

Mint chocolate and lemon poppyseed white chocolate balls

And the reason my husband loves me...his take-home plate :)

There were SO many amazing desserts, but somehow, I was able to get out of there without feeling totally sick. I was very proud of myself for that! I'll have all these recipes so if something looks extra tasty let me know and I'll send the recipe your way :)

I have come and gone...

This was my luggage on the way to California....
And here is what I'm coming back with...
It has been a successful trip full of awesome time with my parents, birthday dinner with a friend, lots of good Christmas shopping, California fall weather, morning walk with my mom and dog, and so much more...Here are just a few more of the highlights...

I love Davis, something quirky and new every time I go home. Amazingly we got a Target (for years they have resisted anything that mainstream and large coming in), and in the parking lot were these signs...
"Hybrid parking" in Davis is like "expectant mother parking" in Provo... applies to a quarter of the populations, but a nice thought anyway I guess :)

One night we ate dinner in Downtown Sac near my dad's building and took a little tour of his new (to me) office...really nice new building, with some unusual but kind of fun artwork.
Dollar scoop night at the Davis Creamery... I went out on a limb and tried something new...amazingly delicious. I did half pumpkin and half avocado coconut...wish I'd be there next Monday for round 2!
And, last night was Lauren's birthday and I was so excited to be in town for it. We went to sushi at Moshi Moshi and enjoyed some delicious rolls. Happy birthday Lauren :) I unfortunately didn't get any pics of the event (not even a traditional Taryn and Lauren pic) but these are the cupcakes I made and gave her!
Well I'm sitting in the Vegas airport, waiting for the final leg of my journey home. So grateful that all of the airports I have flown through have adopted the free wireless, it makes layovers so much more manageable. Hello for Las Vegas and tonight I'll be back in Kentucky! Miss you California already, but excited to be back home.

Persimmon picking

Not only can you get an amazing farmer's market here, we have little bits of goodness all around the yard. I missed most of the fruit this summer but the persimmon tree was ripe and ready to pick! We got an entire laundry basket full and there is still more :)
We thought about Grandpa Layton and the fact that he would have loved the enormous crop this year, letting them sit out until they were mushy (and rotten) before eating them...but he appreciated and loved them more than anyone else. I'll think about him each time I eat a persimmon :)

I have enjoyed them throughout my stay here as I've been eating "fruit soup" (a combo of a bunch of cut up fruit in juice-amazing!) each day here. I think I get enough fruit for the year in the few days/weeks I am home each year.

America's Favorite Farmers Market

That's right...right here in Davis, California. Home of...

Here are just a few fun pictures I took yesterday. Looks like we'll have to move back to California, if for nothing else but the almost year round Farmers Markets.
My favorite picture of the day...piles of cool colored carrots!

Me and my dad :)

Mom and me with my favorite slushy apple juice...yum!

My long lost friend...hot water.

These are not the kind of before and after pictures I like to take..this was a big expense, a huge inconvenience, and the outcome adds neither increased functionality or aesthetics to our home, but it was a project that taught us another lesson in the woes of home ownership.
The back of our hot water heater blew out, and had slowly been leaking in the laundry room/bathroom and also through the wall into our bedroom. Instead of boring you with all the details, here are a few things we learned from this experience.
-I am quite allergic to mold. We found that it had been leaking for about a month (definitely enough time to build up quite the variety of molds) and I have been having serious difficulty breathing. I was glad to find out it was allergies not lung cancer or something crazy.
-Grant got to learn to solder. He is a lucky guy. Loves buying tools and gets all these legitimate reasons to buy new ones. Why can't there be a crisis that requires me to buy new shoes? :)
-A hot water heater is probably the least exciting appliance to buy. It sits deep in the back of a closet, and even though it's prettier than the old one, we hardly ever see it and it functions just the same as the old one.
-Be careful what you wish for. I was mad when Grant was commissioned into the military and I found out that we got a 10% discount on Lowe's because I thought about all the money we could have saved last summer...well this gave us an excuse to save on a big expense.
-We have the greatest friends ever! Thank you Karrie and Al for turning over your bathroom to us for 2 weeks. We will miss seeing you every morning :) And thank you to everyone else who offered up your water to us!
-Dishes take FOREVER when you have to use cold water.
-Pay attention to the church lessons you accept to teach. Grant had to given a lesson on "Trials" the Sunday after all this happened. I guess he didn't have any other good trial stories to tell, so something bad had to happen for him to have a good story to tell!
-We didn't need our water storage to drink, but rather used it to flush our toilets when the water was turned off for 2 days. Definitely not a fun situation, but glad we had the water on hand.
...I could probably go on with so many other things we learned, but this has been long enough already. Here are just a few pictures of the experience :)

On the bright side, we got to tile underneath where the water heater goes. We had to just tile up to it before and got to fully complete the project now.

Grant's amazing soldering work thanks to his new big torch and solder materials :)

The new fat water heater... although I was not excited to replace it, I am SO excited about hot showers and baths, not freezing my hands off when practicing proper hand hygiene to prevent the flu, and to be able to use the dishwasher and wash dishes again.Yeah for hot water!!! Don't take it for granted.

Keeneland

Friday was a beautiful day, in the 70s, sunny, and the perfect day to be outside. Unfortunately, we were stuck doing work around the house all day (we've had some serious water heater leaking issues-to be posted about once it's resolved :) but Saturday we treated ourselves to some fun! Saturday, although not as warm, turned out to be the perfect Keeneland day. It was the last day of the season, and we hadn't been yet this month so really wanted to go, and it just happened to be that UK students got in free this weekend (another good reason I got my student ID early!) Dave and Rashelle hadn't ever been, so they called us up to see if we wanted to go with them. We did and had so much fun!
Keeneland is the perfect place to just hang out and socialize. We all picked horses, sat around and talked, watched the horses walk around before the races (so we could see which ones looked strongest :), and enjoyed the beautiful fall colors and stone buildings. I love it.
Testing out our camera on some action shots...looks pretty awesome. Look at #4 there in the middle pulling up at the end. He ended up winning making Dave and Rashelle very happy :)
Fun day at the races! Can't wait for April when the weather is generally a little bit warmer and we can again enjoy a very cool part of Lexington.
After Keeneland we decided to go to the football game (since we have season tickets and I'd already missed quite a few games this season)...it was fun to be with people and Jenny got me free hot chocolate, but other than that it was cold, we stayed the whole game, and lost. Not cool!