Halloween 2014

Try as I might, every year I fail miserably at trying to recreate Halloween ideas from Pinterest.  There was the baby-in-a-pumpkin photo shoot gone horribly wrong, and the time I nearly severed my thumb making homemade butterfingers.

This year, I was determined not to fail.  This year, I was going to show Pinterest what’s up.

David and I started planning early, and by mid-September had made quite a few decoration purchases.  We started asking around to see if people were interested in having a costume party, and found that our friends were thrilled for any excuse to dress up in ridiculous outfits and throw a house party!

Thank you, Allison, for giving us the clever invitation idea

I started pinning Halloween party ideas like crazy on Pinterest, and before I knew it, October 31st was here!  We decided to throw the party on Saturday, November 1st instead, so friends with kids could go trick-or-treating (and we’d have a bit more time to get the house ready, plus we couldn’t mess with our own tradition of passing out candy and watching Hocus Pocus).

These pumpkins greeted the kids as they came to our door.  David made the skeleton and I made the haunted house and scary tree.  One kid was so terrified of David's pumpkin, he refused to come to the door to get his candy!

The party was a huge success!  We had a ton of people show up, and everyone’s costumes were awesome!    

We started off by scaring our guests with this creepy doll we found at Halloween Express.

When they entered the house, they were greeted by this friendly piano man.

For those that didn't want to play a duet, they could play with the Ouji board in the living room.  

We found an original game board online and the instructions on the back could not have been funnier - Ask the board a question and wait 1-5 minutes for an answer.  Some examples of questions are, 'Will I ever be tall enough to slam dunk?  Does Timmy know I like him?  Who told him?!'

Jill was thrilled to help out with the party, and set up a photo booth in the dining room to get shots of everyone in their costumes.  

Mary Poppins was put to work at our house!

Katie and Dave were sweet enough to come in from Houston the day before and help out with the set-up and the fun finger-foods, while the Simons and Watsons each let us borrow about half their house!

Yoda helped too

Katie and I were in the kitchen most of the day while the guys decorated the yard and cleared out the garage to put up tables for beer pong.

We hollowed out a pumpkin and filled it with ice to create a festive cooler for non-alcoholic drinks

We mixed together wine, caramel syrup, and apple cider to create an apple pie sangria

We baked a couple dozen gooey monster eyeball cookies

… and some chewy scarecrow treats

David carved an upset-looking pumpkin for the guacamole / puke

… and Katie made a spicy cheeseball hungry mice couldn't resist!

We even had a costume contest complete with prizes.  The winner was (drum-roll…) 

Elvis!

Noah came in 2nd place!  My heart swelled with pride when Jill’s husband showed up as a woolly mammoth.  It was his first-ever Halloween costume, and he went all out for the party!

David freaked everyone out with his Beetlejuice costume. No matter what David is each year, he always finds a way to make it super-creepy...

His Big Bad Wolf mask was mounted on the wall

and his Jigsaw mask was peeking out at people from the media room window upstairs (that is the strangest window to have in a house – we call it the Romeo & Juliet window)

Jordan came to the party in total character as Richard Simmons (yep, that's our Financial Advisor!), and Allison fit in perfectly as the spunky 80's pop star 

Kim and Patrick cracked us all up as a couple of big birds

Jordan has so much energy and enthusiasm, 

that costume was perfect for him!

Jeff is taking after David with the creepiness, and wielded his ax all night as Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.  His girlfriend, Jacque, was a quiet kitten. Amy (Zombie) chased Ross (Shaun from Shaun of the Dead) around all night, while I tried to shoot people with my bow and arrow as a huntress

Elizabeth literally wrapped herself in cling wrap to play one of Dexter’s victims.  Do you know how long it takes to wrap someone in Saran wrap?  A long time… she showed true dedication to her couple’s costume.

Brad can never run for office now that this picture is on the internet

The Great Gatsby made an appearance,

as did Carmen Sandiego and a few people she picked up on her travels through Mexico and Germany

Sarah and Jason went all out and had their faces professionally painted to scare the s*** out of us 

We had a man from the CDC who hopefully didn't spread any diseases around, some Ghostbusters that LOVED their job, John Snow and Khaleesi hooked up, Obi-Wan and Darth Vader seemed to be getting along pretty well, and Jen and Chris had awesome steampunk costumes

I think it’s safe to say the days of Halloween Pinterest fails are behind us!

Greenwich

By now, I hope everyone has recovered from ‘falling back’ during the recent daylight savings time change.  The weather in Austin has also recently changed – going from warm to below freezing.  Between the cold and dark, David and I keep finding ourselves curled up on the couch with the fire going, ready to fall asleep… at 8:00.

The time change has provided the perfect excuse for us to go back and blog about our day trip to Greenwich earlier this year, as the world’s time has been measured from Greenwich since 1884. 

Greenwich is home to the prime meridian, the National Maritime Museum, and the Royal Naval College (formerly a royal palace where King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I were born).

Before we began our day, we fueled up with brunch at Fatboy’s Diner.  The diner is an authentic American diner actually built in New Jersey in the early 1940s and then transported to Trinity Buoy Wharf.

Trinity Buoy Wharf is located on East India Quay, an old shipyard for the East India Trading Company.  The wharf is home to London’s only lighthouse and a container city, residences made from recycled shipping containers.  The area provided an interesting, artistic backdrop for our brunch of hash-browns, burgers, potato skins, and chili cheese fries. 

After stuffing ourselves with greasy American food, we rode the futuristic DLR train to Greenwich and hopped off at the Cutty Sark.

The Cutty Sark was a clipper launched in 1869 from Scotland.  It was used to transport tea from China to London, and then wool from Australia to England.  As faster steamships overtook traditional clippers, the Cutty Sark was taken out of commission and docked in Greenwich.  In 1957, Queen Elizabeth opened the ship to the public as a museum. 

However, in 2007 there was a terrible fire and the museum was closed.  Five years later, the Cutty Sark was reopened to the public again by Queen Elizabeth.  We were excited to finally see the ship as it had been beautifully restored.

David actually visited the Cutty Sark as a boy during a class field trip to Greenwich, but the new museum was better than ever.  It features a glass atrium so visitors can view the entire ship from top to bottom.   We took a free tour on-deck, and then explored the cabins and tea holds below.  To round off our visit, we walked down beneath the ship and saw a huge collection of figureheads, the carved wooden sculptures that adorn the prows of ships.

All figureheads in the Cutty Sark collection were acquired by Long John Silver, a Londoner obsessed with anything and everything maritime-related.  He was not picky, and his figureheads ranged from a traditional mermaid to Abraham Lincoln!

From the Cutty Sark, we strolled through the small village of Greenwich, across the cobblestone streets, past picturesque homes and quaint bookshops.

The Royal Naval College

The Bellot obelisk overlooking the Thames River.  The obelisk commemorates Frenchman Joseph Rene Bellot, who died trying to rescue Sir John Franklin.  Franklin and his crew vanished during a voyage to discover a water route around the top of North America.  Terribly, even more men and ships perished trying to find Franklin, including Bellot, who fell through ice.

The Painted Hall, designed by Wren and painted by Sir James Thornhill, George I’s court painter.  It took 19 years to cover the dining room in art, and now it’s the centerpiece of the college.

We then walked from the campus up the hills of Greenwich Park, home to the equestrian competitions during the London Summer Olympics.  From the top of the hill, we had a great view of London.  

After taking it in, we stretched across the prime meridian and set our watches to the Greenwich Time Ball. 

Since 1833, the ball has been used by sailors to set their timepieces to exact Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Lastly, we visited the Greenwich Planetarium.  We touched the Gideon Meteorite, a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite found in the Namibian Desert.  Then we stargazed inside the 120-seater theater under a 45-tonne bronze-clad cone built directly on the prime meridian.

Overall, it was a busy, fun-filled, educational day in Greenwich.  

Austin Pizza Run

It’s that time of year again… National Pizza Month!

Much like last year, David and I will celebrate with you by going through the ATX’s favorite pizzerias.

When we first moved back to Austin at the start of summer, we spent a lot of time catching up with old friends, which meant a lot of eating out.  One weekend we had plans to meet up with our friends from Bratislava (who had also moved back to Austin), Joey and Jenn.  (You may remember them from our trip to Russia back in 2011.)

Joey and Jenn are big foodies and always providing us with great new restaurants to add to my ever-growing list.  So when Joey asked where we wanted to eat on that Friday night, I sent him my list.  After browsing through it, he suggested that instead of trying just one place, we do a pizza run (without doing any actual running) through Austin.

Nice move, Joey.

Of course David and I loved the idea!  We also loved the idea of only using public transportation for our pizza run.  Although having a car is so convenient and absolutely necessary in Texas, we’ve missed taking public transportation and walking everywhere. 

So Friday evening, we hopped on the metro rail from north Austin to downtown.  It was a quick, comfortable journey.

We met Joey on the rail and Jenn downtown.  First stop on our pizza tour was The Backspace.

Nestled between 5^th and 6^th street on San Jacinto, The Backspace is a small trattoria that only seats about 30 people.  Because it was nearly 7:00 and the place was already full, we grabbed a few seats at the bar and ordered.

The Neapolitan-style pizza is cooked in a large, Italian brick oven.  We tried the Bianca, a white pizza made with a trio of cheeses – mozzarella, ricotta, pecorino, and topped with spicy arugula.  

After one delicious slice, it was all we could do not to order more and more and more.  I also wanted to try all of the antipasti.  From the roasted pears to house-made mozzarella to focaccia, it all sounded so good. 

Joey and Jenn were our voices of reason, though, and reminded us that we had a lot of pizza to conquer that night and we needed to pace ourselves.  So David and I finished off our second slices and then reluctantly headed to stop number two – Homeslice.

Continuing on our public transportation tour of Austin, we took a bus to South Congress. Metro Rail passes are good on all public transport throughout Austin, but it did take us a few minutes to figure out how to buy Jenn a ticket.  Once we did, the bus could finally get on its way.

Homeslice is an Austin favorite that has been around for years.  It’s a New York-style pizzeria serving patrons by the slice or entire pie.  We obviously could not finish an entire pie and continue our epic journey, so we ordered a slice each. 

Joey and I were a bit adventurous and went for the New York staple – eggplant.  The menu tells customers to imagine an eggplant parmigiana pizza.  Sounds delicious, right?  Well… not so much.

Sorry Austinites, but Homeslice did not live up to the hype.  I get that it’s probably the most delicious pizza ever for college students stumbling home drunk and hungry at 2AM.  But for four adults coming straight from a nice restaurant serving authentic Neapolitan pizza, Homeslice did not deliver.

In my opinion, it had the distinct cardboard taste of airport or mall pizza that is chosen by the slice and then reheated.  I’ve read recently that one of the best subs in Austin can be found at Homeslice.  So when a pizza joint is now being lauded for a sandwich, and the pizza is no longer the star, it’s not a good sign.

Maybe if we had sat inside at the actual restaurant instead of trying the Homeslice to-go building next door, we would’ve had a different experience.  But aint nobody got time for that during a pizza run!

Next on our list was Bufalina in East Austin.  When we arrived, it was getting close to 9:00 and the wait for Bufalina (they don’t take reservations) was still more than half an hour, which is saying something.  So instead of heading to the bar and drinking our calories, we walked to East Sixth to try out Via 313.

Via 313 (Detroit’s area code) is a food truck owned by two brothers from the Motor City that started serving Detroit-style pizza in Austin a couple of years ago.  I’d never heard of Detroit-style pizza before, but found it to be a mix of Chicago-style with the sauce on top and Sicilian, as the pizza is square instead of round.

I’m not the biggest fan of square pizza, so I didn’t have high expectations.  I also wasn’t so sure about a pizza with the sauce in one row over the top instead of evenly spread over the crust.  But I must admit, I was so, so wrong and Via 313 was hella good. 

Even though it was getting late and we’d made a horrible mistake at Homeslice by each ordering one enormous slice instead of spitting two between the four of us, we ate all of our pizza from Via 313.  It was that good.  We ordered a simple cheese to avoid getting even more filled up by unnecessary toppings.  The pizza came to us hot out of the oven, and the best part was actually the tangy red sauce.  Even on top, it was in perfect proportion to the dough and cheese.

We were full.  We were tired.  But we pushed on to our fourth and final dinner.

We walked back to Bufalina on East Cesar Chavez and found our table ready for us. Bufalina is famous for its house-made mozzarella.  We wanted so badly to try it, but we knew it would put us over the edge and we were already pretty uncomfortable.  We were on a mission to try pizza, so we saved the mozzarella for next time. 

We ordered the Napoletano pizza with tomato, sausage, garlic, black olive, chile, and basil.  Our pizza arrived and it was everything we’d imagined it would be.  The garlic was zesty, the sausage was meaty and flavorful, the basil was fresh, and the chile added just the right amount of heat.  The best part was the perfectly-cooked Neapolitan-style crust.

Somehow, we managed to finish the entire pizza.  

David loved it so much that he created a double-decker 

pizza for his last few bites.  

The funny thing is that the most miserable person out of the four 

of us was Joey, and it was his idea to do the pizza run! 

I must admit, though, the rest of us weren't feeling that great, either.  To really enjoy the pizza, it’s probably best not to try too many places in one night.  But we had a lot of fun checking restaurants and food trucks off of my list, and the run was perfect for this year’s National Pizza Month blog.