In Which Will Be Found Dessert and Pumpkins

Sunday was full of adventures.  No Sunday would be complete without going to church, so that's where we headed first.  Except instead of going to our regular church, we went somewhere else for the sake of variety.  We went to a place where psalms are sung, descants are added to almost every hymn, and the service is almost two hours long.  It was great.

After church, we headed to have a cinnamon roll/pumpkin carving...festival? with some of our friends.   Since you can never have too many cinnamon rolls, we decided to make two different kinds.

Verdict: no two cinnamon roll recipes are the same.  However, both were fantastic and almost produced four sugar-induced comas.

To counteract the sugar, we moved on to pumpkin carving.

In order to carve the pumpkins, we needed to have pumpkins to begin with.  When you're a kid, picking out pumpkins to carve is great fun.  When you're a young adult, picking out pumpkins to carve should still be great fun.  When you're a young adult and the wind is blowing hard and the rain is falling steadily, picking out pumpkins becomes more of an adventurous chore rather than great fun.  I would have taken a picture of that particular event, but it was too blustery outside to attempt to break out the camera/phone.  Instead, I will leave you with a picture of our finished products:

(Obviously, the glowing letters are the feature of that picture.  Writing by trackpad is not my strong suit.)

And so we departed in peace, full of cinnamon, sugar, and butter and thoroughly covered in pumpkin.  Sunday well-spent.

Post Script: we briefly considered making this, but it seemed a little outside of the scope of both our abilities and our little carving tools:

How I Nearly Burned Down My House

You may have heard of a hurricane around these here parts.  If you didn't hear about it, you may either a) have no connection to the outside world, in which case you're not reading this, or b) live in a foreign country.  However, my parents living in Vermont had to stream live coverage of the hurricane from an Australian station, so my guess is that option b is out.

Moving on.

The hurricane didn't cause anything too catastrophic around here, but it did cause me to lose power at my apartment for several hours.  Which leads me the point of this post: how I almost lit my house on fire.

I quickly realized that I was going to need some light if I wanted to stay up past 6:30 last night.  At first, I lit my candles and left them in the kitchen, but quickly decided that I'd rather hang out on my bed under my blankets (no heat!) rather than at my kitchen table.  I put two votive holders on my desk and window sill, and I put a glass jar candle on my dresser.

The lighting was lovely.  It almost made me wish the power went out every night because it felt cozy.  I read for awhile, talked to my mom, and watched the flame in the glass jar get progressively higher.  Suddenly (after a good hour of candle-burning), I realized that I had left some pajamas next to the candle, and as the flame got higher it was getting closer and closer to the flammable material.  

I approached the dresser.  I touched the side of the glass.  My finger burned!  I blew out the candle.  I grabbed the pajamas and tried to pick it up...but it had fused itself to the dresser.

Thought process: This is not my dresser.  I've ruined the dresser.  It's so hot.  I need a potholder.  ::grabs potholder::  Ah!  Hand is burning through the potholder!  Must put candle in non-flammable area!  Run to the sink!  Put water on super heated glass jar!

Had I thought this through, I would have decided that putting cold water on a very hot glass object was a bad idea, but I wasn't thinking about the jar so much as I was thinking about burning the house down.  Naturally, the jar cracked as soon as it touched the water.  Awesome.  Judging from the state of the jar though, I decided it didn't matter.

The dresser, however, still had a nice ring of melting resin.  I grabbed my now-wet kitchen sponge and put it on the spot...which immediately started steaming.  For your general knowledge - seeing a solid piece of wood steam is not a comforting thing when you know all emergency vehicles are occupied with the massive hurricane and widespread power outages.

There's really nothing after that, so sorry for the anti-climactic ending.  But just so that you know it really happened, here's the candle:

Happy Tuesday.

Visiting Zeke

When people get married, the bridesmaids need dresses.  When your best friend gets married and you're her maid of honor, it turns out that you need to buy a dress.  When your best friend who is getting married lives in Rhode Island and her dresses come from there, you have to find a place to measure you, call the RI dress shop, and order a dress you've never seen in the right size over the phone.  You'd think this would be straightforward, right?

WRONG.

As it turns out, getting your measurements taken is a very complex process.  I briefly consider doing it myself, but being the untrained seamstress that I am, I might end up getting the measurements incorrect, and ordering a dress that you've never seen is not the ideal time to have incorrect measurements.  I decided to make Zeke the tailor my first resource.  Remember Zeke?  Yeah.  Zeke is the greatest Turkish tailor that you'll ever meet, but he doesn't know women's sizes and therefore can't take measurements.  At least this is what he tells me.  And because he's Turkish and awesome and since he usually makes men's tuxes instead of women's gowns, I believe him.  Plus he gives me a recommendation for another place.  That's a good tailor right there.

My next stop is French's Bridal.  I figured hey, they're a bridal shop.  They have to take measurements all the time!  Plus, at one point Meghanne and I had gone there to peruse wedding dresses.  Will they take my measurements?  No.  They "used to do that, but they messed up a few dresses for other stores and so they don't do that anymore."  What?  You sell and alter wedding dresses for your career and you messed up three DRESS measurements?  My business = lost.  

I'm beginning to think that I should just take them myself, since none of these places seem capable of measuring waist, hips, and bust.  (Ooo, I just said "bust" online.  Awkward?)  As a last resort, I head to the place that Zeke recommended.  The floor is dirty and the whole place smells like cigarettes.  Gross.  I almost walk out, but they've seen me already.  Since the place is also a dry cleaner's, I think that my chances of success are slim.  

"You don't happen to take dress measurements, do you?"

"Oh, of course we do!  Just wait over here, and Rosalie will be right with you!"

Wonder of wonders!  Miracle of miracles!  The dress measurement process has been redeemed!  After Rosalie whips out here measuring tape and wraps it around me a few times, she writes the numbers on a post-it, tells me it's no charge, and sends me on my way with a "Have a nice day!"  

Moral: if you know that Zeke the Turkish Tailor is awesome, don't try your own judgement before taking his advice.  He knows what he's doing and you most certainly do not.