Totem pole on left

The left totem pole is very spunky. The bottom pumpkin has a shaved mouth so the light shines through the flesh. The middle pumpkin is a little nervous and the little topper is just fun. The porcupine pumpkin in the front would have had Christmas lights poking through, but we couldn't get the flesh thin enough. So we have a string of flashing lights inside to give an eerie strobing glow.

Totem pole on right

This totem pole of pumpkins features a large flat pumpkin being squished by the winker in the middle and the howler on top.

Cat pumpkin

I think this is our favorite. Inspired by Martha Stewart, Jeni created this cat pumpkin by carving three pumpkins and attaching them together. The eyes and whiskers are shaved thin so the light cat shine through. Isn't she cute?

All the pumpkins

Here are all the pumpkins carved and lit up. After about four hours of drawing, carving and assembling they turned out great!

Go Vols

This coming weekend, Jeni and I will go to the UT-South Carolina game here in Columbia. This will be only the second time I've gone to a game as the visiting team. It's difficult to show too much excitement, especially since this coming game we will be in really good seats given to us by our realtor. She is a booster for South Carolina and couldn't make the game so she gave us her tickets. Then next weekend we're heading up to Gatlinburg to visit my parents and we'll probably try to get tickets to the UT-LSU game. After graduating, I never thought I'd have a chance to go to two games in a row. The thing is, as fun as it is to watch the game from the stands, sometimes I just like the comfort of my couch. I think I've gotten soft...

The Dove Self-Esteem Fund

Watch this one.

"Hi, I'm a Mac" "And I'm a PC"

Do you enjoy Apple's "I'm a Mac" commercials? You can watch them online now. I like the Better Results ad. I hadn't seen that one on TV yet.

Also, get your daily dose of John Hadgman (aka PC) here and on his blog here.

New toolbar

I use Firefox for my web browsing and I had been using the A9 toolbar to accompany my web browser. I liked the bookmark, history and diary features on the toolbar because I could bookmark something at work, then pull it up at home. Or if I was on a website, I could go to my history at home and find it again with little effort. But A9 has stopped supporting the toolbar for whatever reason. So now I'm wondering if I should install another toolbar or if I even really need one since I have the search bar in Firefox with quick searches for everyone from Blingo and Google to ESPN and IMDb. I looked at the Excite Speed Bar since I use Excite for my start page, but the speed bar only works on Internet Explorer. So now I'm looking at the big three ... Yahoo! Toolbar, Ask Toolbar and Google Toolbar. Yahoo! and Ask both have bookmark and history features, which puts them ahead of Google, but again, I have to wonder if it's even necessary. Any feedback is welcome...

Google, please buy me next

It looks like the internet is for sale, and selling fast. Google bought You Tube for $1.65 billion -- BILLION! What the hell is that about? Now I just wonder if Google will waste that investment and merge You Tube into Google video? I guess I just get a little soured when the cool sites are bought up by the big boys. I don't know why. I guess I feel they lose some of the edge or creativeness or uniqueness. Not that I think You Tube is the greatest thing in the world, but I look at Publisher's Clearing House buying Blingo and Yahoo scooping up Konfabulator and Flickr and I see the internet world becoming more of a shopping mall with a bunch of big anchor stores and little in between.

Harvest Moon

The Harvest Moon is tonight -- the largest moon of the year. Read about changes you might notice under the Harvest Moon at Space Weather.

Birthday gift from Tracey

I got a birthday gift in the mail from Tracey yesterday. I think she has me pegged. This year, she got me LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy for the Playstation2. Last birthday, she got me the LEGO TIE Fighter (with the Darth Vader light-up light saber) and for Christmas Star Wars Pez Dispensers! I am very excited about playing the game. Still, the best part of the gift was how it was wrapped -- brown paper with her son Garrett's handprint on it (and Tracey's on the back from helping). Thanks Tracey!

Indulge

We have some of the finishing touches done in the kitchen. Jeni's pot rack is finally up on the wall and her pots are where they belong, and the Indulge sign Kelli bought her is up!

The deck at night

We bought a grill from Target a month ago and used Susan's SUV to get it over here, but this was before we'd moved in so we left it in Susan's garage. So it took us a while to get it to our house. But before my birthday party we took the time to assemble to grill. It just helps complete the deck. The tent and lights over the deck make it so comfortable and welcoming at night.

Upstairs bathroom, after

Here is the after shot of the bathroom with a new mirror and new fixtures. We found the paint color we wanted as a "mistint" at Lowe's for just $5 ... it pays to look at those sometimes. The new bathroom looks so much better.

Upstairs bathroom, before

We redid the upstairs bathroom in time for Nikki and Todd's visit. Honestly, we just couldn't have anyone come over and expect them to use this bathroom with the lighthouse shower curtain and border and the painted sky and clouds. It was harder to paint than we expected (there's a theme here) because they used a different paint for the clouds that originally showed through our paint. So we had to prime it twice, then paint it.