treat yo'self!

the universe decided to love me today.

when i woke up this morning i had an email with the following subject line: "treat yourself [insert other unimportant words here.]"

of course i immediately thought of donna and tom (parks and recreation).  in one of the episodes they take a whole day (once a year) to treat themselves -- to whatever they want, just for the heck of it! they call it, "treat yo'self".  best thing ever right?

anyway, i figured i'd had an abed (community) moment where my real life collided with television: donna and tom had sent me that e-mail so that i would treat myself today. because, let's be honest -- after completing my last (and hardest) midterm of the semester, that kind of action needed to be taken.

i didn't go crazy like tom and donna, but i did 'treat myself' to a pumpkin smash smoothie from jamba juice.  something i'd been craving all season. but, it didn't stop there.  jamba decided to treat me too with a free chocolate chip cookie (after taking a 30 second survey)!

so if, like me, you've already had a super stressful week (and it's only wednesday), take it from me -- treat yo'self!

homemade apple pie

let's get one thing straight: i love pie.  like seriously love it.  and for a long time now i've wanted to make a pie.  so i started small.  over the summer i made a blueberry pie using pre-made pie dough -- just to get my feet wet.  more recently i've wanted to make a pie all-completely-totally from scratch.

naturally, i recruited danny into this little project of mine.  and because he's the bee's knees, he became just as excited as i was, immediately writing his grandma for her famous "perfect pie crust" recipe.

soon the plans of one pie turned into three.  we decided we would make an apple pie, a pumpkin pie, and a cherry pie (my absolute favorite), all from scratch by the end of the year.

over the weekend, we made our first one: apple pie.

using danny's grandma's perfectly flakey pie crust, paula deen's apple pie filling, and my grandma's apples, we made quite a delicious pie!  so much so that we'll probably make another one (along with pumpkin) for thanksgiving. :)

dressing up

for halloween this year we had a little family party at my parents' house.  it was so much fun - i love celebrating any sort of holiday! all of us (the kids, that is) dressed up, too!

danny and i dressed up like chuck bass and blair waldorf from gossip girl. and just so everyone knows, danny was just as into it as i was. let us not forget how much he loves gossip girl. 

allie's family dressed up as cowboys and indians. it was adorable. and hannah and jake were baseball players. do i know which ones? of course not. #iknownothingaboutbaseball

the night included: pizza, halloween candy, sparkling cider, pumpkin pie, and "it's the great pumpkin, charlie brown" ... you could say the night was a major success. :)