Pumpkin Carving

I grew up in this small country-ish town in northern San Diego that is pretty much known for its Indian casino and Nate’s Butt Farm…during October. No lie, in the 15 years that I lived in Valley Center, I probably visited the butt farm a total of maybe 3 times. To everyone who isn’t familiar…it’s not really a butt farm, the place is called Bates Nut Farm. Nate’s Butt Farm is funnier though. Pumpkin picking is something I mentioned I wanted to get done back in that "Ahh Fall" post...and now, here we are :]

Anyways…I took my cousin to pick some pumpkins at Bates. That in itself could have been a mission. The pumpkin patch opens up for business late September and is pretty much a nightmare for all the locals who live in the area. Why? Because there is one way in and one way out. When ALL of San Diego county makes a trip to this small town, traffic piles up and it takes about 2-ish hours to get through at peak hours. I made sure to avoid this and showed up right as they opened, wandered a little, tried to find a huge pumpkin but failed, so settled for the small guys. Check it.

I made the princess do some hard labor.
Sorry for the back problems you'll have later in life.

The patch of big pumpkins. All were either lopsided or ugly. Whomp.

So we settled for some small guys from the piles of pumpkins.

"HAY RIDES!"

We got out of there before it got too busy, hit up the grocery store for some tools and stencils, and then headed home to carve! Umm…carving with a stencil was muchhhh harder than expected. I gave up after like 10 minutes and decided to freehand it. Whatev.

My finished product :]

No lie…pumpkin carving was hard. I struggled for like 15 minutes before I got the hang of it. I think I was over it the second I started because I was tired from hitting up the patch in the morning. But I liked the way it turned out. Definitely worth all the work.

I got myself an extra pumpkin because I was attending a pumpkin carving party with the girls a few days later. We got together, ate some chili, drank some wine, and watched pitch perfect. Ashley had never ever seen Pitch Perfect so we were scrambling finding somebody to go get it for us. We called Marcus but he wouldn’t because he was being lame. Chelsea should have grabbed it because she lost at “nose goes” but Ashley hubs ended up doing us the favor. Poor guy was probably in hell the whole night with Chelsea and I screaming at him while he was hiding. Here’s some pictures of that memorable night!

My pumpkin! Which was another free hand because
I didn't even want to pretend like I could use the stencils.

Top Left: Marty. Top Right: Ashley.
Bottom Left: Caroline. Bottom Right: Chelsea.

It turned out to be a fun little evening, definitely good to get a break and hang out with the girls instead of doing lame-o homework. What do you think of our pumpkins?  Are you pro stencil or anti stencil?

That’s all folks :] Have a great Wednesday!

Insta-dump: February

With 6 classes and a full time-ish job…life hasn’t been very blog worthy so I was sitting here this morning wondering what I’d entertain my readers with. I recalled a while back my friend Kelley over at Team Gilster used to do insta-dumps…not sure if that’s what she called it but pretty much blogged about a few of her instagram photos. Stealing the idea!

1.    I shared this one on #throwbackthursday. I have a handful of favorite pictures from my childhood. This is one of them. It’s me doing a jog-a-thon thing where people pledge money per lap. I was in probably 1^st or 2^nd grade when this photo was taken. It kind of made me nostalgic and I definitely shed a few tears thinking about the good ol’ days when I had no worries.

2.    Another #tbt photo! Me and my cousin Jazmin chopping up some meat…looks like menudo and probably on a Saturday since I’m wearing a soccer uniform. Unless it’s Sunday [when most Mexicans cook up menudo] and I just slept in my uniform from the day before. This is kind of a mind bottling picture since my cousin and I have grown a lot since this photo! She just had her first baby girl in December…while still being a baby herself. Crazy how sometime’s we’re forced to grow up!

3.    String cheese trivia! Lol. It was for lunch the other day and reminded me of the laffy taffy’s and ice cream bars with jokes. The answer is 5. Shout-out to my black and blue/teal polka dot nails. It's not exactly from Pinterest, but Pinterest has inspired me to be a little more creative with my nails :]

4.    National Pancake Day. My favorite holiday! Ihop was giving away free short stacks with a recommended donation to Rady Children’s Hospital. Good cause!

5.    Bettis. Lime. Marty. Super Bowl Sunday with some of my favorites <3 Thank you Palomar Softball for introducing me to some of my best friends.

6.    Commencement details! Graduation. Graduation. GRADUATION! Finally.

7.    Ultimate Baseball Roadtrip. A late Christmas present, but probably my most favorite <3 My baseball road trip is next summer and I can’t wait. My OCD self LOVES this so I’m not aimlessly wandering cities I’ve never been to! Reading this has to take a back seat to school right now, but I can’t wait to crack it open! Shout-out to my purple and pink ombre nails! 

8.    Alicia Keys tickets :] I can’t wait for this concert. Miguel & Alicia Keys. Although I love Country music, I can enjoy some hip-hop and R&B. Alicia Keys happens to be one of my favorites! Her skills on the piano are brilliant! I’ve actually never been to a real R&B/Hip Hop concert. I usually stick to country shows which is pretty much an alllll day event. It’s going to be weird not tailgating all day and being plastered before it even starts…that’s a good thing though, I don’t want to miss this show. Haha.

9.    My not so fitted sheet. It’s making me crazy. It comes undone every.single.night for like the last 3 months. Ugggh.  

10.  I’ve been craving chocolate covered strawberries for like the last 2 months. I missed out at work one day because I was at school. It was all I could think about when I found out. I had strawberries in my lunch so I improvised. I walked to the market next door, grabbed a dark chocolate dove bar, microwaved it and dipped my strawberries. Not the best, but still pretty good!

Busy Weekend!

What a fun filled weekend! This was my first free weekend of the year that I wasn't either sick or working! 

Friday I went out for dinner and drinks with one of the CLAMS. It was the first time since NYE since I’ve has booze, so of course we had to share a pitcher of margarita! Haha.

Saturday I went to see my cousin’s 3 week old baby girl <3 I would have made a point to see her at the hospital but I was deathly ill around the time of her birth so that would not have been a good idea! That was then followed by a trip to the softball fields with Caroline to check out a couple of our friends playing while we waited for Keri to be off work, and then that was followed by a baby shower out on the coast which the 3 of us went to!

Sunday I went on a 7 mile hike to Stanley’s Peak at Daley Ranch with Sara. The hike up was rough, but not too bad. We had like a 30 minute photo and chill sesh and then started the most miserable hike back ever. We were out of water, it was hot, and I was light headed because I didn’t eat anything before!

I can’t complain too much because the views were pretty freaking sick. The trails are about 45 minutes away from the beach but we were high enough to see the ocean to the right of us and all of North County San Diego all around us!

Things I learned for next time: Bring more water, bring an apple/orange/snack, eat something small before.

30 DAY CHALLENGE: DAY 12

Happy Veterans Day (observed) people! Yay for having a paid holiday! I spent the day babysitting my cousin, and she wanted to feed ducks! I tried to cheat and go to the "pond" [fountain] at City Hall/Grape Day Park but had no luck! We walked around the park for a bit and decided to pay a visit to the tile wall. 

It's a wall with tiles that kids decorated from all the different elementary schools in the city back in 1994. There's probably 1,000 tiles on the wall!

Below is my tile!

Day 12 – Something you are OCD about.

I'm OCD about EVERYTHING! I make myself crazy with my OCD. 

OCD Alert! Why is the butterfly outlined in black but the antennas (antennae?) and sun aren't?!! Anddd why are the wings two different colors?! Don't even get me started with the grass! Come on 3rd grade Marty, you should have known better!

Confession: My real name isn't Marty, It's Marisela :] But I've gone by Marty since like 4th grade.

The kid was still bugging about feeding ducks so we headed to Lake Hodges...not so much luck with the ducks, but a ton of birds flocked on over!

There were so many that it kind of got scary for a minute so we decided to chill and sit by the lake and wait for a majority to fly away.

30 DAY CHALLENGE: DAY 01

Day 01 – A recent photo of you.

I never go out of my way to dress up for halloween and usually throw something together last minute, but after seeing a few friends on facebook do the sugar skull make up last year, I decided I wanted to do it this year! My best friend had a halloween birthday party and they had a ball pit there and this is one of my favorites! 

But obviously covered in make-up, that's not a very good recent photo! So here's one from like 3 weeks ago at Disney On Ice. I love this one because after having long hair forever and then cutting it the shortest it has ever been last summer, it's finally growing back and looking long! I miss my long hair!

My most favorite recent photo is from when I went to the SYTYCD Season 9 tour, waited 3 hours to meet the cast and took an amazing photo with my favorite dancer, Cyrus!