How was your Halloween?

Ours turned out to be just the evening I was hoping for – a night of drinking beer and watching Jeff play video games while we each took turns answering the door.

We had heard from a neighbor that they had over 300 kids show up last year, so I dashed to the grocery yesterday afternoon to pick up some more candy. I think we ended up having about 75 to 100 kids, and only went through half the candy I bought. It was really hard to not just eat fun size Twix for lunch today. 😉

It was really nice to feel like part of a community. Jeff and I were talking about how much we feel at home here. Even though we’re renting, it really feels like this is “our house.”

And it’s coming along nicely. We’ve made huge progress in getting things put away where they belong and setting it all up to feel comfortable. We finished clearing out the second bedroom which is being used for an exercise room and place to do our art and electronics projects. It was so filled with stuff that you couldn’t walk around in it.

second bedroom cleared out

I got my office set up how I like it…

my office

All the knick-knacks are on the bookshelves, so until we get a full size dining table, the dining room is mostly done.

dining room done

And the basement, which was pretty dirty when we moved in, is getting much more usable as we clean it out. I’ve got a laundry area set up and we’ve moved a bunch of long-term storage downstairs as well.

laundry areabasement

And we’re getting a few projects done around the house to make it more comfortable. Jeff hung the curtains in our bedroom and I spent some time crafting a drawer organizer to make the silverware fit better in the narrow drawer.

silverware drawer

And the cats are loving it too. Liam has apparently just rediscovered sunbeams (our last place was in a basement so it was kind of dim.) I can be sure to find him in a different patch of light each day.

Liam sunbeam 1Liam sunbeam 2Liam sunbeam 3

Lucas gets too hot in all the direct sunlight and has to occasionally take a break by stretching himself out languidly to diffuse the heat.

Lucas lies languidly

Handsome devil.

Today I roasted the other batch of pumpkin seeds I had from carving the jack-o-lantern. I tried to do a Japanese flavor using toasted sesame oil, soy sauce, mirin, nori kome furikake, and togarashi spice.

Japanese pumpkin seeds

They’re alright, not good enough to share the recipe though. I think the toasted sesame oil is just overpowering the other flavors.

This year is just flying by, I can’t believe that Halloween has already gone by and we’re headed straight into the winter holidays. It’ll be 2012 before I can blink.