Whimsical Wishes: Fun Fall Weekends

I love fall; that is no secret. But the last couple of weekends have reminded me just how fun fall can be. Last weekend, we threw my dad a 50th surprise birthday party. I was a little late in getting the invites out (thank you Columbus Day when mail doesn't run...) so I was worried people wouldn't have enough notice to make it. Thankfully, we had a ton of people that were able to come and surprise my dad. We couldn't really hide the cars, so he knew something was up when they got to our house but it was a secret until then! Those of you who know me are well aware that it is a miracle anything stayed a secret! :)
We made chili, mini peanut butter sandwiches, and included all the fixings for chili. Oh and apple cider to drink of course! I think I made a grand total of three or four trips to Kroger within 4 hours... that's a new record! My mom was in charge of the cake and got a really awesome golf cart cake. The party itself had a "fall fifty" theme, so it was really easy to find decorations- pumpkins, leaves, etc. And I cut out a lot of leaves from my Cricut that matched our invites. We also bought a new fire pit ($29.00 on clearance at Walmart- wooo!!!) and had a campfire. It was a great night to sit by a fire to keep warm. :) Here are a couple of pictures from the party...

The cake and picture table

Cooper, me and Dad

This weekend we had a little college friends reunion, which has been great. I love having a four bedroom house because we have enough room to fit everyone comfortably and it's like a big party all the time at our house. Our friends, Joel, Alie, Taylor, and Kellan came in from Ohio and Kentucky on Thursday and we've spent this weekend doing some of my most favorite fall festivities. On Friday, we ate at Real Hacienda and visited AU to see the homecoming luminaries. Then Saturday morning, I made a really good breakfast casserole and went to AU's homecoming street fair. We've had an absolutely perfect weather weekend too. It was beautiful outside!

Afterwards, we went to lunch and then to the pumpkin patch! Then I came back to start dinner- lasagna and garlic parmesean pull apart bread! It was SO good, except I made a couple of changes to the recipe. You can find the original recipe here. The changes I made were I used margarine because I forgot to buy butter :) and I used italian seasonings instead of parsley. I had made this once before and didn't love the flavor parsley gave it, so I fixed that this time around. It takes some time to make, but boy is it worth it! Here are some of my favorite pictures from this weekend...