for each wind that blows: Weekend Recap: Halloween Edition

I hope your Halloween weekend was a great one - mine sure was!

On Friday, we got asked to take my niece, Natalie, trick-or-treating and we jumped at the chance. We'd already made plans to keep her on Saturday, but since her best friend was sick, she came over early. Our side of our neighborhood is always pretty slow with trick-or-treaters so it was fun to take Natalie towards the elementary school where there are tons of kids. Even Townes got in on the fun and got lots of dog treats!

Some of the decorated houses were awesome and many houses even took care of the adults with witch's blood (red wine) or cider with rum...YUM!

Sorting through the sweet loot! Natalie was over the moon with her giant Hershey bar. Her face here cracks me up! The only bummer was that it started raining on us when we were still coming back from the opposite side of the neighborhood...Townes ultimately was not a fan! We ended the night at the local Mexican restaurant to warm up and dry off. Perfect night!

The next morning, the temperature dropped significantly and the wind was really strong. We cuddled up and made homemade waffles (Natalie wanted chocolate chips in her waffles, of course). Then we headed to the park for a bit. It was awesome getting to watch the leaves fall from the trees....magical!

Once we got home, we drank cider from my favorite mugs and hung out under the covers for a bit. Then we decided to carve a pumpkin (despite being the day after Halloween...oops!) and make pumpkin seeds.

Natalie chose the cat template (shocked?) and helped a little bit. She had more fun cleaning the pumpkin seeds. Normally I just roast the seeds, but I had read that boiling the seeds makes them better. Sure enough, it did help make them more crunchy. So good! We used our favorite "magic unicorn" salt!

Natalie and I also did some finger knitting! She was a natural and it was fun to see her so excited about making a scarf.

For dinner, we decided to brave the cold and get some chinese food. We ate too much and drank a lot of hot tea. Perfect ending to our day!

The next morning, we met up with Beth, Doug, and Anna for brunch at Flying Biscuit. Their creamy grits are so good! Natalie had a huge hot chocolate!

Then we sadly had to take Natalie home before heading to north Georgia to meet J's family at the Yonah Mountain Winery. Since they were calling for more cold weather, I was really bundled up, but it actually ended up being a beautiful day (in the sunshine at least)! We stopped at a great antique mart on the way.