This week on McGinnessClan.com...

Hey, guys! It's the episode where they go to Hawaii!

(Man, this blog has really jumped the shark.)

Movember 1st

So I've decided to join a global movement that is bringing much needed attention to cancers that affect men. I’m doing this by growing a Moustache this Movember, the month formerly known as November. (Check out my 22-hour 'stache growth at left.) My commitment is to grow a moustache all November and I am hoping that you will support my efforts by making a donation. The funds raised go to the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LIVESTRONG).

What many people don’t know is that 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime and testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men aged 18-35.

If you'd like to To make a donation, you can either:

• Click this link http://us.movember.com/mospace/135901/ and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account , or
• Write a check payable to ‘Movember Foundation’, referencing my Registration Number 135901 and mailing it to: Movember Foundation, PO Box 2726, Venice, CA 90294-2726.

All donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation will use the money raised by Movember to fund research to find better treatments and a cure for prostate cancer.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation will use the money raised by Movember to fund:

• The LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance program which has the goal of improving survival rates and quality of life for young adults with cancer between the ages of 15 and 40.
• Research initiatives to further understand the biology of adolescent and young adult cancers.

For more details on how the funds raised from previous campaigns have been used and the impact Movember is having please go to http://us.movember.com/.

Thanks!

Happy Howloween

From our Lil' Devil


& our witch


Thanks to Jaclyn and Jason for the awesome costumes as part of our pumpkin carving prizes.

Two is better than One

So another photo project that I just completed recently is taking a year of "Weekly Me" Pictures. Something that was harder than the Photo a Day surprisingly. I think this is because with the photo a day it was something I was comfortable with, being behind the camera as where the Weekly Me, I had to be in front of the camera. Well let's just say I am glad that project is over. BUT don't worry I love the concept, I just think it needs changing up a bit. So I have decided to do a Weekly Us photo project for a year. So every week Brett and I will take a picture together, not only do I feel less narcissistic doing this but we definitely don't take enough pictures together as a couple.

So here is our Weekly Us that we took yesterday.


We are in week 3 of Weekly Us so you can check out the badge on the right hand side of the blog or go here to see all the photos.

Also, if you are so inclined to look at my year of Weekly Me photos you can do that here as well.

Lazy Butts

I don't take out my big camera as much as I used to. I rely way to much on my iphone or my point and shoot (hey, I like the convenience) and if I lose or drop them its not as expensive to fix as my Nikon (okay maybe my iPhone would be). I just need to take a break every once in a while and take some pictures. So that is what I did this week and I took pictures of my favorite subjects, my pups.

This is them doing what they do best, being lazy butts.








Then they get fed up with me taking pictures and really just want me to leave them alone.


its a good thing they are so cute.

Carving it Up

The month of October really crept up on me and I just started to get used to the idea of it being October and now its merely a week before its over. So I guess that it is natural for us to start getting into the Halloween spirit. If it wasn't our friends, Jason and Jaclyn throwing a Pumpkin Carving Party yesterday we could have possibly made it through Halloween without doing anything Halloween related. It's not that we don't like Halloween because we do but this year I will be in San Francisco for work and it won't be like last year which was too much fun (I really wish we could do that again this year, maybe next year?) when the family came into town and we all hung out. I am really bummed that I will be missing out on Halloween and the Nevada Day parade.

So yesterday in preparation of the Pumpkin Carving Party we went to Target to get some carving tools and ideas. While there I found some great Halloween Cupcake items and decided that I wanted to make some cupcakes.

The cupcake mix was the Halloween mix with orange and black sprinkles out of the box but I did make the frosting from scratch and dyed it myself. Sometimes I can bring it. Believe me they are as yummy as they look.

In preparation for the Pumpkin Carving Party we were searching for ideas, we are pretty competitive and wanted to bring our A game. I happened to find a pumpking carving book at the grocery store that had very out there crazy ideas for pumpkins and well that is were we got the inspiration for our pumpkin.

First of all we decided to get the biggest pumpkin we could find, this one weighed about 30 lbs and only cost us $5.98 (at Walmart!). We put the beer there so you could see how big it is.


We ate, did a beer tasting (I think this was to handicap all the carvers) and then the carving started. It was a lot of fun with some competitiveness but overall it was just a lot of laughs.


Here is Brett working hard on our prize pumpkin

I promise I did some work as well, I promise.

So here is our completed pumpkin lit up outside.


and with all of the other pumpkins from the night.


We ended up winning "Most Original Pumpkin" for our cannibal pumpkin. Here are some pictures I took later on when we got home since I forgot to take some before we put them oustide last night.


This is the little pumpkin being eaten by the big cannibal pumpkin, the poor little pumpkin was so scared that he puked his guts out.


We had such a good time and were so glad that we were actually able to get into the Halloween spirit if only for one night.

Photo a Day

Back in October of last year I decided to do a photo a day, on a whim. Who would have known that I would have kept it up for an entire year. But I did. Tonight I took my 365th photo.



You can see all the photos here:


Or if you want to see them full size you can go to the flickr website http://www.flickr.com/photos/saramcg/sets/72157608352084618/show/

Although its not always easy to remember to take a picture I definitely enjoyed looking back on all the photos from the last year. Let's just say you can categorize my photos into pictures of dogs, food or trees. Interesting.

P.S. This was on my list of 101 things to do 1001 days. So booyah, one more thing crossed off the list.