Taco Pasta and Halloween Decorations



Well, folks, it's about that time! I love, love, LOVE this time of year. I love the Fall, I love that it starts off the holiday season, I love Hocus Pocus, I love White Christmas, I love stockings, I love wrapping presents and holiday shopping, I love browsing the ads in the Thanksgiving Day paper at my Grandma's house, I love the Thanksgiving Day Parade, I love Apple Hill...the list could go on and on! Needless to say, I'm very excited about this season because it's our first time experiencing these holidays at our new house! Yay!

Paul texted me tonight and asked if I could babysit PJR and Samson while he and Desi went on a bike ride. I was more than happy to have the kiddos over to help me hang up a few halloween decorations! But first, we had to make dinner! Chris and I haven't been able to enjoy a home-cooked meal together in quite some time, and he didn't have to work OT today so I was really excited to have him home for some grub! I decided to make this recipe since my man loves pasta and rarely gets it since it's one of my least favorite foods.

I browned the meat and got the pasta boiling. I actually really liked this kind of pasta, it wasn't too bready!



Once the turkey was cooked, I added some garlic (I don't measure) and a can of diced tomatoes, no salt added. The recipe says to drain these, but I don't follow directions.

I let that mixture simmer for five minutes, and in the meantime the pasta had finished cooking. I didn't reserve the half cup of water like the recipe says to since I didn't drain the tomatoes. I don't follow directions when it comes to cooking, only baking (sometimes).

Next I added the sour cream, pasta and cream cheese. I used the "light" varieties of both. Like I mentioned before, I'm not one for measuring or following directions, so I did a scoop of the sour cream and half a block of cream cheese. Oh, and I also didn't add any seasonings because I used the pre-seasoned ground turkey. Chris is obsessed with the "taco" seasoned ground turkey!

I mixed it all together and just as Chris got home, it was done! It was as if I had perfectly planned it that way, but I totally didn't.

When I served it up, I added some grated parm because one cheese in a single dish just simply isn't enough for us. Pretend that I remembered to make the garlic bread that's in the freezer (TJ's) and that I roasted some broccoli to go with it. There, a well balanced meal!

After we finished our dinner, it was time to decorate! We headed outside to stick these on the garage. Sam got to pick which garage we were going to use, and PJR got to use the stool. Or something like that.

Ah, that's more like it!

Perfect!

What in the world?

After the strange hair-grabbing picture above, I suggested we take a "normal" picture. This is what we got -- she so takes after me!

I put these up a few days ago. They're so cute!

I think we should name these!

Jack, O and Lantern. That's what Chris thinks.

The little tombstone up there was leftover from our pirate party. It blows over every day

We headed back inside to hang our pumpkin garland

It fit perfectly on our mantle

Terrible picture, but you get the idea

How much do you want to bet that Porter will ditch fans for chimneys?

Here are some other decorations that are in our house right now. We're not quite done yet, but we've got a good start.

We need to find baby pumpkins to put in that glass jar. It's actually rather large.

Meet Arthur. He came from the Dollar Store

Alright, I think that's it for now! Chris actually has ALL weekend off and we are so excited! We are trying to set some plans and knock a few things off our to-do list. You can find us at any of these places this weekend: a hardware store, a fabric store, my friend Jenni's new house and Mimi's Cafe. F-U-N!