Pickin' our Perfect Pumpkin!

The temperature is getting cooler, the leaves are slowly changing it's colors...yup, fall is finally here! Only 13 more days to Halloween! It's time to take a drive up north to the countryside to pick out our Halloween pumpkin. After some research on pumpkin farms in the Northern NJ area, we decided on Demarest Farms in Hillsdale, NJ.

It's a relatively large, with a huge main farmhouse that sells all kinds of produce fresh from the farm. It's just the tail end of the apple season and there were all kinds of different apples for sale. They also had home made apple cider (mmmm, really yummy), candy apples, chocolate coated apples, apple pies, apple cinnamon donuts, apple jams...just about anything apple you can think of! Here is Kevin with some of the apples from the orchard nearby.

To get into the Halloween mood, they had an outdoor section of Halloween decorations as well as a 'scary' corn maze for kids and grown ups who thinks that they are still kids :P

We bought our tickets ($5 per person) for the hayride that will take us to the pumpkin patch from the main farmhouse. I think we got lucky, cos there wasn't a line for the hayride. From reviews online, it seems the wait for your turn can sometimes take as long as 45mins! The hayride took us along country roads, passing various apples and raspberry orchards. I enjoyed that ride tremendously, taking in the beauty of the fall colors and cool breeze in our faces. At last we arrived at a clearing and there were hundreds of pumpkins all over the place! This marks the beginning of the search of our perfect Halloween pumpkin :D

There were just so many to choose from!! After going thru what seems like millions of pumpkins, we found the one that we liked the best. It cost $6 per pumpkin, regardless of size or weight. Here is our perfect pumpkin, do you like it?? Now we have to lug it back on the hayride to the main farmhouse (trust me, its really heavy)

No la, not that one! It's so big I wouldn't even know how to carry it up to our apt! Our perfect pumpkin is below :D

After we got back to the farmhouse, we bought some cheeseburgers, potato pancakes, apple cider and root beer for lunch. They were all freshly made at the farm. What a wonderful lunch, everything seems to much nicer out in the country. Even the root beer taste so much better, eat yer heart out Mr A&W! Below are some of the stuff we bought from the farm.

1. Our perfect pumpkin



2. A basketful of golden delicious apples



3. Home made apple cider



4. Home made sodas ( root beer, diet creme, black cherry & birch beer)

Overall, it was a good experience for me as first time pumpkin picker. We had a great time away from the smoggy city and I can't wait for Christmas, that's when we shall return to pick our Christmas tree!!

Note: You can view more photos on my Facebook profile

Let's go to the zoo

*BACKDATED POST*

It was a nice summers day in Aug when we decided to visit the Bronx Zoo. It first opened it's gates to visitors in 1899 with 22 exhibits but grew to be the largest metropolitan zoo in America, home to a lil over 4000 animals! We bought our tickets online from the zoo's website. It's cheaper to get prepaid tickets online compared to buying them at the gates (you also get to cut the long line of visitors lining up).

We started our day by riding on the Skyfari, a cable that gives you a birds eye view of the entire zoo as well as the skyline of the Bronx.

The zoo is split into different sections, I'll just let the photos do the talking...

This is the newest exhibit at the zoo - Madagascar!

Lions, zebras, gazelles...they all roam the African Plains

Get ready for some monkeying around at Congo - the Gorilla Forest

We were really excited to visit Tiger Mountain but it was a lil disappointing, we only managed to see two tigers :(

We then took a shuttle across the other side of the zoo to Wild Asia. This is where we took the Bengali Express Monorail. It's an elevated open concept monorail that takes you through the jungles of Asia, really really interesting!

This is also where we ended our visit to the Bronx Zoo. I would definitely say that it was an afternoon well spent, will recommend it to anybody who is looking for something to do on a nice summers day!

Bronx Zoo

2300 Southern Boulevard

Bronx NY, 10460

Tel: 718-367-1010

Web: http://www.bronxzoo.com/

The story begins...

Today is Friday, 17th of Oct 2008. After being a blog reader/hopper for the past 2-3 years, I have succumbed to the pressure from many to start my own blog. It's been a while since I have thought about it, but sheer laziness has stopped me from doing so. One of the main motivating factors that gave me that final push to start this blog is the need of somewhere for friends and family to go to when they want updates about what's new in my life. Again, it's the laziness on my part to repeat myself over and over again whenever people ask me what's new. Now all I need to do is post it up and I can direct everybody here to read it for themselves.

This blog is basically going to be about my life as a newly wed, living in a big city, thousands of miles away from home. Kevin & I hope that you will enjoy this journey with us as we open up lil windows in our lives, allowing you to get a glimpse of what's happening in our neck of the woods. Please feel free to comment and ask questions, we value all types of feedback :) So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

Welcome to our world...

Disclosure

DISCLOSURE

This policy is valid from 17 Oct 2008

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