Croktoberfest and Wine Walk

Hi friends!  I hope you all had an enjoyable Halloween and weekend!  We've had an eventful couple of days so I thought I would tell you all about our 2 recent events: my company's Croktoberfest and our recent trip to Oklahoma!

We'll start with the Croktoberfest.  Every year my department hosts a chili cook-off where we invite all kinds of people from around the company to come and compete for prizes!  Those competing bring a homemade chili and give it a creative name so that voting can be anonymous.  Participants are invited to come taste each of the creative chilies with the only requirement to enter being canned goods or cash.  At the end of the day, the chilies with the most votes win prizes and all the donated money and food items are given to the North Texas Food Bank.  It's a beautiful thing people!

It makes me feel a bit old to realize that I have been a part of this chill cook-off since the "first" annual event (this year was the eighth annual).  Wow, time really flys and a lot has changed in 8 years.

Each year we try to top ourselves in theme, decorations, and monies raised.  This year, the theme was "croktoberfest".  Get it?  Crock pots and Oktoberfest?  I just love it!  Ha!  Okay, so here are a few pictures from the event.
Left: This is such a cute apron.  It was a gift from a friend of a friend but I'd love to find it for my mom to wear at our next family Oktoberfest at the lake.  
Top Middle: Every year we raise more and more money.  I think the first year we raised somewhere in the two hundred dollar range.  This year we raised more than $800!!!  That is just so amazing!  Since the food pantry can buy things in bulk with that money, this is a huge accomplishment!  This is a picture of our "alps" mountain as we "climbed" to our goal.
Top Right: This is the inspiration picture behind our theme.  At first glance it's just a guy dressed in lederhosen but if you look closely, it's actually Seth Rogen.  You can see the full hilarity HERE.
Bottom Middle: Keeping with the times, we updated our theme to include a hashtag!  You can find more pictures on Instagram if you're into that sort of thing.
Bottom Right: Not too shabby that we raised 50 lbs of food in addition to the $800.00

These are just more decorations from the Croktoberfest!  Top right is of me and my friend Nita.  She is the sweetest person you'll ever meet and generously shares her knowledge!
Middle Left: This was a picture of a voting sheet.  I have to throw this in here because of the creative names that people came up with.  "Great Bowl of Fire" "Schnappi Krok Chili" (with alligator).

We had a LOT of people come through our department but this is a picture pre and post mayhem.  Thank goodness for crock pot liners ya'll!

And that brings us to our Oklahoma trip!  Our good friends, Nathan and Mallory recently moved to Oklahoma.  When you build a strong trusting friendship with other people, it's weird when they move out of state!  Seriously, we had a level of trust where we would go into each other's houses in emergencies and stalk each other's properties just to make sure the neighborhood was safe.  It was wonderful to see them again and catch up!

We planned to visit an Oklahoma wine walk!  It was pretty low key as we walked from booth to booth and we had SO much fun!  Here are some ambiance pics.
Top Left: This is a picture of the 3 piece group playing light jazz and classical tunes.  Good friends, great weather, and good music makes for a happy Kathy.
Top Right: This is just one section of the wine walk.  It was all contained in a parking lot but was well put together.
All others: These are just various things you can get at booths.  The premise is that you buy a certain number of tasting tickets and you can pick which wines you want to spend those taste tickets on!

These are just a couple of group shots!
After the wine walk, we ended the evening with some very yummy Mexican food from Teds (surprisingly wonderful north of the TX border) and then a quick shot of the Oklahoma capital.

These are some of the wines that we purchased while at the wine walk.  Put a Cork in It - "Red Dirt Road" and Summerside's - "Blackberry"


That's about all I have for you guys tonight!  I have a hot date with Jordan and the Country Music Awards so I have to go!

I leave you with this joke that I stole from Mallory and texted to Jordan this week.  If you're a "Frozen" fan, you'll love it.

Teehee!  Makes me laugh every time.

Oh, and this is a funny picture of Abby.  Little miss persnickety is so finicky about her H2O yet she LOVES the water out of the watering can.  #Country dog.
Night!

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