My mom made the best popcorn balls when I was a little girl, but only a few times and never kept the recipe. I want those popcorn balls! In the meantime, I made these caramel popcorn balls today and they turned out so dainty with the right amount of chewiness.

My kids and husband are going to be so excited when they see them. Some day I will find the popcorn ball recipe that Mom used to make.

In the meantime, all these gorgeous colors of my favorite season with an orange, white and green medley of vegetables that I sautéed while making my friend’s tomato bisque soup for lunch today, will be dinner tonight for the gang.

Autumn is magical. It is a beautiful day and I am grateful I can be home cooking away while I have the house to myself, to distract me from laundry and everything else that I should be cleaning or organizing.

It’s immersion blender time for the soup I whipped up.

This soup absolutely makes my day.  I can’t wait to have more for dinner.

My roommate from the dorms at BYU whom I hadn’t seen since way back then came to visit last week and she brought me these white dahlias that are still going strong.  Thank you, Jackie! We had a really great lunch reminiscing and catching up.

It’s risky to open the Halloween candy too soon, but today I got it all out — the sugar rush may begin.  I’ll transfer the goodies to a festive black and orange basket while the trick-or-treaters show up and allow the candy man, Isaac, to go a little crazy. He has been asking how many days until Halloween ever since last Halloween.  Isaac was recently referring to trick-or-treaters as “Halloweeners,” and Hannah and I had a good laugh over that one.