skirtember: week 4

I'm cutting it close, but I made it with a recap today, as promised. I don't have too many deep reflections about the challenge to share. I did enjoy it, as I always enjoy wearing skirts and dresses, yet it was harder than I expected to wear a skirt or dress every single day. Those items of clothing take a lot more thought than throwing on a pair of pants and a shirt, and after awhile I felt the challenge was slowing my mornings down- and I need every second I can get before work. All things considered though, I would do it again. I like challenges that force me to wear clothes that don't always see the light of day and make some new outfits while I'm at it.

I'm looking forward to my next clothing challenge, perhaps an upcoming 30x30, where the weather will be a little cooler and I will be able to do more in the accessorizing department with tights, scarves, boots etc.

Outfit 1- Sweater: H&M/ Belt: Gifted/ Skirt: Old Navy/ Shoes: Charlotte Russe

Outfit 2- Shirt: unknown (thrifted)/ Dress: Ann Taylor (thrifted)/ Belt: Burlington Coat Factory/ Shoes: thrifted

Outfit 3- Shirt: Target (thrifted)/ Skirt: TJMaxx/ Shoes: Charlotte Russe

Outfit 4- Dress: Banana Republic (thrifted)/ Shoes: Target

Outfit 1- Shirt: Banana Republic (thrifted)/ Necklace: unknown/ Skirt: Old Navy/ Shoes: Target

Outfit 2- Sweater: Banana Republic (thrifted)/ Belt: Burlington Coat Factory/ Skirt: Old Navy/ Shoes: thrifted

Outfit 3- Shirt: Banana Repubic (thrifted)/ Skirt: Target (thrifted)/ Shoes: thrifted

info here

projects

Unfortunately no skirtember post this week. I'll save the few pictures I took for next Monday and go out with a bang (a lot of pictures). 

Unfortunately I don't have a lot to tell you all, but I figured I better give some sort of update. See, we have a lot of projects going on at once now, and none are finished, but all are taking up our time. This leaves no time to blog, and nothing to tell you about.

But, just so you stay in the loop, here is what we have been working on lately:

1. Painting the exterior of the house, starting with the easiest spot, the sun porch. And no, that lovely turquoise is not the new color, if you look to the right you can get a sneak peak of it by the door frame.

 2. & 3. Mudding, caulking, sanding, scraping, and painting (probably not in that order). Both in the front hall and the laundry room door.

 4. This last one isn't too time or labor intensive anymore. But our little grasslings still need lots of water and attention to make sure they keep growing. And just so you know, in case the picture isn't obvious to you, they really are doing a fantastic job filling in the holes in the lawn.
 

Good thing I like painting, right?

finally friday

And this week I really do mean finally. It was an excruciatingly long and tiring week. I am thoroughly looking forward to the weekend, even though it holds 2 football games to work.

1. This week a few reality checks were required to keep things in perspective. I have to do that fairly often as I am wont to get stressed over the little things. But some problems are good problems to have, even if they don't always seem like it at the time. This week was full of those "good problems" (so David and my Dad were saying).

2. We have baby grasses again! We threw down some more seed and topsoil last week on a few bare spots in the lawn and we already have a decent amount of sprouts. The lack of sun had me concerned for a few days but our grass seed persevered!

 Proof!

And a pic to liven up the post (as much as a picture of grass can do that)

 3. I started out this week super ambitious to get things done around the house, riding on the coattails of a productive weekend. I think the only thing that really got finished was scraping the laundry room (closet) door. Which is progress. It's the last door/ piece of trim that needs painting on the main level and it's quite an eyesore.

4. We picked out an exterior paint color. Stage 2 of this project is officially about to begin. Remember stage 1 (scraping, sanding, powerwashing, and priming), was completed waaaay back here. Our goal is to get 2 sides painted this fall.

5. I don't know if it's the chore chart, the lack of Twins, or a change in mindset, but the house actually looks decent this week. The bed was made, the dogs' teeth brushed, and the floor swept every day. The dishes were washed and put away nearly every day. And a few other weekly chores were thrown in. Only 2 more weeks to form this supposed habit, but I didn't think we even had a week in us.

take me out to the ballgame

Since the Twins have been doing horribly nearing the end of the regular MLB season, the crowds at Target Field have been pretty abysmal. This means they don't need the usual 100 seat vendors, thus they have been cutting back and only scheduling the top 40sh vendors in seniority for the last few games. Which does not include me and David. I suppose this is a mixed bag- on the one hand it's nice getting a few days off from work, especially this late in the season when the games are no longer fun or lucrative to be at, on the other hand we were expecting to make a little more money vending in the month of September. All things considered though, we are enjoying the unexpected nights off and taking advantage of every free evening. Last week we even went to our first game at Target Field ever, as fans.

Cheap seats waaaaaay far away in the outfield.

The bad seats didn't bother us too much, we spent most of the game spying on the vendors. 

Can you spy any neon shirts?

The vest was a proably a little premature, but man did it feel good to be wearing that many layers.

This was the fourth baseball game I have cheered at this summer which has to be some sort of record.  I'm glad we finally made it as fans to Target Field, but being a guest at a Twins game isn't something I need to do again for a few more years. Somehow having to work 81+ baseball games a year takes a little bit of the fun out of going as a paying spectator.

skirtember: week 2

Fall weather has finally arrived, which makes this challenge (and life in general) just a little more fun! I'm looking forward to the remaining weeks now that I can add a few more layers (scarves!) to my outfits and make them a titch more interesting.

Outfit 1- Sweater: unkown (thrifted)/ Button Down: H&M/ Skirt: Marshalls/ 

Shoes (not pictured): Charlotte Russe

Outfit 2- Sweater: H&M/ Shirt: Old Navy/ Belt: thrifted/ Skirt: Target/ Shoes: Franco Sarto

Outfit 3- Tshirt: Gap (thrifted)/ Skirt: Ross

Outfit 4- Jean Jacket: Gap (thrifted)/ Shirt: Gap (thirfted)/ Skirt: Old Navy/ Shoes: unkown (thrifted)

info here

accountable

This went up last night: Can you guess what the different colors mean?

Something about the end of Twins season always pushes me over the edge. I guess it's the culmination of 5 months of both of us working 2-4 jobs with 14 hour days and no time to do even the simplest of chores that does it.

This would be bothersome to most people, David excluded (the mess, clutter, and dirt always seems to go unnoticed to him). Whereas having a messy and unclean house bothers me immensely. It stresses me out. It literally makes any activity around the house less enjoyable, which of course David cannot comprehend. It makes me more unpleasant to be around (I haven't been told, but I assume...). And even worse, for the most part I enjoy cleaning.  Mostly just because I like having a clean house, but still I find picking up and sweeping the floors relaxing for the most part (except putting away clean laundry, that is the devil's work).

Even though I wish I had more time to devote to these simple tasks, when I do have the time it often still seems to go undone because at that point it is no longer a "simple," quick task, but a major project. So it waits until company comes over then it's all hands on deck. I am hoping this little chart will inspire both of us to do a little more around the house every.single.day-Twins days included- so the house is on average cleaner and more organized, when we do have company coming over we don't have to go into beast mode, and so my daily quality of life improves (seriously it affects me that much most days). 

Conventional wisdom says it takes 3 weeks to make a habit, right? So I'm going to see if I can make the bed and put the dishes away every morning and sweep the floors every night, for 3 weeks straight. It sounds so simple, but it's best to start with baby steps.

Oh, and as the title hints at, it's your job to hold me accountable (don't think you got off the hook in all this).

bat woman

So when I left off the professionals were just about to come and give us their opinion...The professional, or the bat woman as I called her (super nice lady with a Dachshund who Winston immediately took to and Franklin wasn't allowed near), from our company of choice after making a few calls, came out to do an inspection and give us a quote as expected last week. Her verdict after scoping out our bedroom, poking around the crawl space, and then climbing over the roof was that the bats are getting in at the four points where our dormer window meet the roof line- which was exactly what I would have guessed. Her solution was to install four "one-way bat doors," or screens at those points to evict the bats and then seal up the holes once they are out of there. The damage was (or would be) $600 for the "doors" including all installation and service fees, as well as an inspection one week after the installation to ensure the bats are evicted, the sealing up of the four holes, and a warranty on the four points that were sealed (with the option of spending $200 every year for an inspection and to extend the warranty). Not a small chunk of change, but considerably less than we were expecting based on our phone calls and initial googling. We happily (or as happily as possible when shelling out $600 for bats of all things) signed the papers ready to be done with this issue. Unfortunately this is the busy season for such a business (the bats just finished roosting and the babies are finally flying out) so the installation of the doors was going to take up to two weeks.

Monday the happy day came and someone sneakily came by  our house while we were at work and installed the agreed upon doors.

Remember we are in the process of painting the exterior, ignore the chipped paint.

So in theory our little bat problem should be about just about solved! All that is left is for them to let the bat doors do their magic (allow the bats to fly out of the attic at night to feed, but not get back in), come back for a follow up inspection in about a week (to ensure that all of the bats have gotten hungry and left the house), and then seal up the holes. We just have to hope in the meantime that the bats don't like our house so much they find new ways into it (this would require more screens, more $$, and worst of all, more time).

This means that we officially have to move off the pull-out (David is going to be bummed) and back into our bedroom so we can hear if there are any lone bats scratching around up there at night. I am not looking forward to it, but on the upside this drama is almost over with and as of Tuesday we were both done with our four-sessions of shots and vaccinated against rabies so if the worst should happen up there we are safe.

 

She got me good that last time- it definitely hurt the most of the 7 shots.

So there you have it. With any luck this story is essentially over with, and now you know what to expect if you wake up multiple nights with bats in your bedroom... move! Jk, jk it really wasn't all that bad.

skirtember: week one

Admittedly, this should not be too hard of a challenge for me- I've got a closet, or two, full of dresses and skirts for pretty much every occasion. I find dresses way more comfortable to wear than jeans, well pretty much all pants, any day of the week. And I've even been known to wear dresses whilst lounging/ scrubbing around the house. However, taking a picture every day is going to be a little problematic. So this week you get 4 of the 6 skirt/dress outfits I wore this week (I started a day late). I even wore a running skirt around the house on the weekend just to prove (to myself, I guess) that I am really taking this seriously.

Outfit 1- Dress: Ann Taylor (thrifted)/ Sweater: H&M/ Shoes: Nine West (thrifted)

Outfit 2- Sweater: Old Navy/ Skirt: Old Navy/ Shoes: Mossimo (thrifted) 

Outfit 3- Jean Jacket: Gap (thrifted)/ T-shirt: Old Navy/ Skirt: Old Navy/ Shoes: Thrifted

Outfit 4- Sweater: Old Navy/ Dress: unknown (Marshall's)/ Shoes: Target

 Info here

slow and steady

Remember the hallway project? No? I don't blame you, it's been almost 4 months without an update on it. Finally though, I have some good news. No, we didn't finish it. No we didn't even get all the wood up. But we did  manage to get one more wooden board attached to the wall. This might not seem like it, but it is major progress.

After getting the first few boards on the wall (which I never officially told you about) we ran into a few problems: our boards were not straight and neither were our walls. This produced some gaps that were going to be too large to caulk. Also the dude at Home Depot cut our 1 x 6 boards about a quarter inch too long which was a nearly impossibly small amount for us to saw off with our hand saw. So we abandoned the project for awhile- not wanting to shell out more money or time to go get new wood, and not having a slick saw to piece together what we already had.

Well a few weeks ago my dad came to visit and took a look at the boards and the wall and said (roughly paraphrased), "You know you can get boards that long at the store, right? There's no need to piece together two." Well no, we did not know that, the kind people at Home Depot had not bothered to mention that though we needed a 130.5" board it would be easier to get a long board and cut it short, then piece together to smaller boards... so off to the hardware store he went and came back with two giant 1x6's that were much straighter than the ones we already had. Thanks Dad!

Then finally over our lovely 3-day weekend we found the time and motivation to attach one of the boards to the wall. We had hopes to get all the pieces up, but after getting a nail stuck in one piece and then breaking a drill bit in another we decided we should call it quits before it got any worse. 

And so, here is what our hallway currently looks like:

You can finally tell what we are going for at least! I am determined to get the rest of the boards up this weekend. Let's hope we don't run into any more small snafu's and it's another four months before you hear about this again...

farmers market and frozen treats

Labor day weekend was good. But I think all 3- day weekends are. They seriously are the perfect combination of restful and productive. Here are a few of the activities we partook in over the weekend:

Saturday we went out for a little date night- drinks and entertainment downtown at the dueling piano bar followed by late night appetizers. I think being a pianist at one of those places would be the best, most fun job ever. And it wouldn't hurt making a couple hundred in tips a night either.

Sunday we finally made it to the farmers market. We have gone in the past and enjoyed ourselves, and this year was no exception, so I don't know why it took us until September to finally go (oh wait I do know, Twins). 

We loaded up on fresh produce- getting the ingredients to make a few treats off my summer bucket list as well as a few impulse purchases.

We also snagged some mini donuts and tacos for a makeshift lunch.

Once we made it home I tackled two more items on my list: homemade popsicles and homemade ice cream sandwiches. Both were fairly easy to whip up and considerably better than the store bought versions.

Blueberry Lemonade Popsicles

I had originally wanted to do raspberry but could not find any at the farmers market and was not about to do another trip to the grocery store and blueberries were only $1 a pint at the farmers market so blue-lemonade popsicles it was.

Ingredients:
-3/4 cup sugar
-1 3/4 cup water
-1 cup fresh lemon juice (6ish lemons)
-1/2 cup pureed blueberries

Combine sugar and 3/4 cup water in saucepan. Heat and stir until sugar dissolves. Next stir in the remaining one cup of water and chill liquid in fridge or freezer. Meanwhile puree 1 pint of blueberries in food processor or blender (you could easily do a little less, and still have delicious popsicles). Combine lemon juice, chilled sugar water, and blueberry juice in bowl. Pour mixture into popscicle molds. Wait 5-6 hours and then enjoy!

The above mixture made enough to fill one 6-pack Tupperware popsicle mold as well as 3 champagne glasses. I really liked the flavor and tartness level of these popsicles and would make them again exactly as-is, David would probably have toned them down a bit. So be wary- if you don't like tart foods this recipe may not be for you.

Chocolate and Peanut butter Cookie with Banana "Ice Cream" Sandwich

I've wanted to make homemade ice cream sandwiches for awhile but since I don't have an ice cream maker it seemed impossible if I wanted to truly deem them "home made" (although I think David would be just as happy with half-home made sandwiches). But then I ran across banana "ice cream" (frozen banana puree essentially) repeatedly on pinterest and decided it was worth a try.

I started off with making these cookies, just omitting the chocolate chips. I've made them before and enjoyed them so I knew they would both taste good and be a good base to my sandwich. I made them slightly larger than I would have if I were just going to eat them as cookies and before baking them I rolled them out and flattened them slightly on the sheet. I then proceed to follow the baking instructions. These ended up having the perfect sturdy on the bottom, yet chewy in the middle texture for ice cream sandwiches, imo.

Then for the ice cream I cut up 5 bananas into pieces on a plate and put them in the freezer for a few hours. Once they were frozen through, I tossed them in the food processor for a few minutes and let the Cuisinart do all the hard work and turn the bananas into ice cream- and really initially they do have an ice-cream-like texture. Oh, I tossed some chocolate chips in there too at some point and some peanut butter. I think some cocoa powder would have been good in there as well, unfortunately I was all out.

I then proceeded to make my sandwiches. I wish I would have frozen the cookies first because, though they were room temperature (I had made them the day before), they still caused the bananas to melt faster which gave some of the sandwiches more of a banana-puree texture rather than an ice cream texture. Otherwise assembly went smoothly and they were a hit!

David really liked the banana filling as is, which surprised me (he usually lets me know what he would do differently). And since it is 100% bananas these treats are 1/3 health food or you could just round up and say entirely a health food. I liked them just fine as they were, although I think real ice cream would have of course been better, but once I covered the sandwich in home made chocolate hardshell they really were delicious! Some variety of these will definitely be made more often.

See what a great weekend it was full of fun and good food?! Come back tomorrow to find out what the "productive" portion of our weekend was (as if crossing 3 things off my bucket list wasn't enough)!

what i wore wednesday

This is the only wiww post that will be coming this month. Instead I will be participating in Skirtember- a challenge to wear a dress or skirt every day in September. Those posts will commence next Monday, but in the meantime I thought I owed you all an outfit pic.

Outfit #1

Location: Work

Sweater: H&M/ Dress: Ann Taylor (thrifted)/

Shoes:Nine West (thrifted) 

summer 2013 bucket list in review

Here's how I did on my 2013 list:

1. Go to the drive-in. This is a standard summer activity, but I don't want to get so busy we don't make it. We only made it once, which was disappointing, but at least it was good enough to get crossed off.

2. Host a garage sale. Weather permitting this is happening tomorrow! We had 2 garage sales, and put some of our things out at a friend's sale. Total we made about $270 for the summer.

3. Run a half marathon. After successfully completing the Mississippi 10-miler, I registered for the Gopher-Badger Half on August 10th.  Check. My knees start to hurt just looking at this picture.

4. Go on a picnic/ date at the stone arch bridge. This should have been an easy one it just never happened, so I think I will add it to fall's list.

5. Go to a bag-sale or two. Maybe next year.

6. Tailgate at a Saints game. Might be tricky justifying not working it on a non- Twins night. But it's been years since I have been able to sit and enjoy a baseball game in the Twin Cities. I am stunned that this one happened- luckily my birthday fell on a Saturday this year. I also got to be a fan at baseball games in Lansing and Atlanta.

7. Play beach volleyball, anywhere. Beach, grass, whatever it still counts. Happened on our Michigan road trip.

8. Make homemade popsicles, something fancy, along the lines of this. Completed. Blueberry lemonade popsicle, info to come.

9. Go to the Farmers Market (I might make a habit of it if they allowed dogs). $12 worth of produce, or as David estimated about 10 lbs. Seems like a pretty good deal.

10. Pick strawberries/ blueberries/ apples. Got to do this in Michigan.

11. Make a rhubarb cocktail, something similar to this.I didn't make a rhubarb cocktail, but I did make a tasty grapefruit sangria for my birthday, that almost counts, right?

12. Complete a new 30x30 challenge. This is just too hard to do when it's 90* and I'm wearing the same thing every other day, I'll for sure be doing this sometime this fall again.

13. Make an ice cream sandwich from scratch. Done. Chocolate peanut butter cookies with banana chocolate chip and maybe peanut butter "ice cream." Info to come.

 

14. Try grilling fruit. What?! How did this one not happen, so easy!

15. Plant a rhubarb plant on the premises. Ok, this one was ambitious... I just really want someone to give me part of their rhubarb plant! Next year someone, please??!


**Fall list now updated to include the stragglers from this list.**

fall 2013 bucket list

Lists ensure I get stuff done. And fall is the season right before session ramps up again, so I want to make sure it is equal parts productive and enjoyable. Below are the things I wish to accomplish during the best season of the year:

1. Make a pie, with a lattice top.
2. Go wine-tasting along the St. Croix.
3. Make apple butter.
4. Paint house exterior (just a side or two would be sufficient).
5. Make wedding album, 2011 and 2012 yearbooks.
    ^insert: I should probably just stop right here as 4 and 5 are extremely ambitious, but I won't^
6. Host our annual fall party.
7. Go out to dinner at Icehouse. I've been, David hasn't, and we have been putting off                                       the date long enough!
8. Find some new favorite pumpkin recipes (drink, soup, crepes??)
9. Find a Groupon and go get a facial.
10. Clear out/ organize the attic crawl space.

*******rollovers from summer list*****
11. Grill fruit.
12. Go on a picnic/date/walk at the stone arch bridge.
13. Complete a new 30x30 challenge.

Fall means the start of sweater season for Winston and Franklin, so clearly it is their favorite season too!