happy owl-o-ween.

I can’t believe October is almost over.

I can’t believe how long it has been since I have last written.

To be honest, a lot has been going on, but I just haven’t felt like blogging about it.

I’m still not feeling too chatty, but I wanted to share a little of our Fall fun. I love this time of year too much to not talk about it at least once.

You can reread my love for October here.

If you remember, last year I bought 8 jumbo cans of pumpkin.

The last bit of it was finished this past weekend.

You see, about 4 months ago I stopped drinking coffee. I didn’t drink a lot of it, mostly just in the morning and the occasional mid-afternoon pick-me-up. However, once Fall rolled around I went to Starbucks daily to feed my Pumpkin Spice Latte fix. I have been drinking chai tea every morning since I gave up coffee and it is pretty Fall like, but it’s no Pumpkin Spice Latte.

Brandon and I went to Chicago earlier this month and we went to this amazing little cafe called Argo Tea where we had Pumpkin Chai Tea. It was incredible and I knew I had to figure out how to make it.

I’ve seen recipes for Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte all over the blog world, so I decided to use one of those to create my Pumpkin Chai.

I used the recipe from the blog Peas and Thank You and instead of adding coffee, I used my favorite chai tea mix.

My changes to the recipe:

1 cup Chai Tea

1/2 cup milk (I use Almond as well, but that’s what I have. Feel free to use the milk of your choice.)

No creamer, or garam masala

A little honey to taste

Delicious. Pumpkin Pie in a cup.

Later that night it was time for our annual Pumpkin Carving Contest.

We went to the local produce stand to pick out our pumpkins. We both already had our design in mind so it took us a little bit of time to find the perfect pumpkin canvas.

Brandon’s is the one on the left. Mine, obviously, on the right.

We also got a couple small pumpkins to use for their seeds. Mine is the smaller and lighter colored one.

We were kind of bummed because we loved using the white pumpkins last year, but this year the selection was kind of crappy so we went with the classic orange.

We like to carve pretty random, usually not related to Halloween, pictures into our pumpkins and not show each other until they are completely finished.

Removing the guts:

Hard at work:

Stencils or templates are not allowed. However, I did get a picture from Google and then drew it onto my pumpkin with a dry erase marker first. Brandon just started carving.

In the midst of the pumpkin carving extravaganza we roasted three different kinds of pumpkin seeds.

The first flavor was Pumpkin Spice.

(pre-baking)

A little bit of cinnamon, sugar, pumpkin pie spice and maple syrup.

The second flavor was The Plain-Jane

(post-baking)

Just a little sprinkling of salt.

The third flavor was Spicy Chipotle.

These looked gorgeous and were super spicy.

And now for the big reveal:

Mine-left, Brandon’s-right.

Brandon wasn’t very happy with his so he declared me the victor. And while I will gladly and oh so humbly accept, I think his is pretty awesome. It just wasn’t exactly how he wanted it.

Anyone care to cast votes?

The whole gang:

He carved the face, I did the polka dots.

We always try to get a picture with our pumpkins, however, they always turn out blurry and awkward. Oh well.

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