July is for Lovers

On Saturday, July 31st, my little brother married his sweetheart, Courtney, at Grace Reformed Church in Fond du Lac, WI. It was a lovely wedding ceremony. The reception was at Camelot golf course and country club. I played at the ceremony with my mom which was special and I had a good time hanging out with Courtney and her other bridesmaids at the salon (that was a LOT of makeup in one place!). Family that i only see a few times a year were there, plus church friends that i hadn't talked to much since i graduated from college. It rained a little in the morning, but then the sun came out and we were able to get lovely outdoor pictures. They're currently in Cozumel enjoying the honeymoon suite at an all-inclusive resort. I hope they're having a wonderful time!

The happy couple at the rehearsal.

Me with my escort, the dashing Jim Walsh.

Walking into the sunset.

A true Wisconsin cake!

Siblings forever. Aren't we cute? :)

I have no idea where I learned this kind of behavior!

My new sister.

Lovebirds.

Amazing Race: Madison Style

Adam and I were all set to go camping at Governor Dodge State Park in June when Hannah emailed me saying she had a coupon to get a half price registration for the Great Urban Race. Naturally, since Adam and I are huge fans of the Amazing Race, we sold our camping reservation and signed up for the race that same day! We had talked about applying for the Amazing Race but somehow never got around to making a video. Fortunately, the Great Urban Race requires nothing but your race fee. Once we knew we were racing, we developed our game plan: buy an all-day bus pass, wear comfortable running clothes, and carry as little as possible besides a camelback, bus map, camera, and SmartPhone. On the day of the race we arrived at The Essen Haus which is where the race started. There were about 300 teams of two. The race encourages coordinated costumes, but we decided that was too much work and would potentially hold us back so we settled for wearing green shirts and calling ourselves the Salad Spinners (plus we'd been eating a LOT of lettuce from our garden so salad was on our minds anyway).

At precisely noon, the race officials passed out clue envelopes and the race was on. The race consisted of 12 clues that you could complete in any order. We plotted out the location of each clue on our bus map and planned our route. Our initial plan was to take the bus down to Wingra Boats, but the bus did not appear so we ran down to State Street first.

Adam tossed some pizza dough at Ian's, we watched a video clip at Sconnie Nation, and finished up that area by juggling with a circus troupe on Library Mall. Then we headed to Wando's where we climbed to the third floor and had to throw a pingpong ball into a fish bowl. Fortunately, I threw things into bowls/baskets/eggcartons every birthday from about 8 years on so I got it on the first throw. After that we once again tried to catch a bus, but we would have had to wait a long time so we decided to hoof it down to Wingra Boats. Our only transportation options were bus or foot and we have since learned how infrequently buses run in Madison on Saturdays! Thus, we ran all the way down to Wingra Boats where we paddled around a buoy. Then we were about to eat a cheesecake eggroll at Bluephies when we saw the elusive bus! We jettisoned the Bluephies plan (we were allowed to skip 1 clue) and caught the bus which took us all the way to Atwood St. Adam had to eat a jalapeno pepper (including seeds!) at Tex Tubbs and we donated some dog treats at a pet store.

Then we trotted over to Tenney park where we did improv comedy and ran bases. That was our last clue. We jogged back to The Essen Haus and the finish line. Total time: just over 3 hours. Place: 35th out of around 300. Total estimated run: 6.5 miles. All in all not a bad showing. It was a very hot day and we downed water like there was no tomorrow at the finish line. We're already planning our strategy for next year which includes training in order to be able to run 8 miles if needed - Adam's idea, not necessarily mine :)

Hardwood Floors - Exposed!

We knew there were red oak floors beneath the living room and hallway carpet when we bought the house, but we were waiting to pull out the carpet until we finished the kitchen project. Well, we finally did that, so it was time to start the project. Plus, when Adam and I say we're going to do something, we generally do it. Here's the living room with the carpet.

Here's the living room with the carpet half rolled up.

If you've ever watched Flip That House, you know that uncovering hardwood floors is a gamble. You could fine mold, water damage, termites, or other problems. Fortunately, our living room floor was as good as we could have hoped for. We pulled out about 1,000 staples and a bunch of nails. Some of those were due to the fact that this was not the first carpet that had been over the wood and whoever put in the latest carpet just pounded down old staples and nails. That was quite a lot of physical labor to get those out, but Adam finished it yesterday and today we cleaned the floors and put a layer of polish on.

Here's the pre-polish floor (yes, the dining room table is currently in the kitchen and the couch is in the front hallway - we've been doing some gymnastics to get around today).

I stripped the old paint off the metal register covers (they had last been painted in place so the bottom inch was a different color, plus carpet fibers were stuck to the paint) and they are currently sitting in the garage in between coats of primer (thanks Dad for the painting advice!). All in all, a successful project that we'll be able to wrap up this week. The only negative was some deep scratches in the hallway where they had previously had a carpet transition piece. I will say that the carpet layer was obviously not considering the fact that someone would someday remove the carpet since they did things like use a utility knife to cut the carpet pad and left deep scratches around the perimeter of the room, and pounded large nails flush with the floor so that we had to damage the floor to get them out (which we decided was less ugly than a large black nailhead).

We love our yard!

This spring has been fun because we have 1) the plants that were here when we bought the house, 2) the plants we planted last year, and 3) the things we've planted so far this year. Every day we walk around the yard to see what's now blooming (and what the bunnies have eaten). Here are some of my favorite pics from the past couple weeks:

A spiderwort flower (shortly before the bunnies chewed it off)

Our friendly tulips that bloom in profusion

One of our many large jack-in-the-pulpits

A bloodroot flower (they bloom for only about 3 days, but they are gorgous)

Some Mayapple flowers. We do realize that these will take over our yard if we're not careful, but they're so cute!

Our giant rhubarb patch. It's one large regular rhubarb plant plus 4 small red rhubarb plants.

We added a berm to our back landscaping for some interest. We also planted a cherry tree, mock orange, dwarf highbush cranberry, some coreopsis, and an aster that has been chewed to almost nothing.

And finally, this is Adam building our new raised bed gardens. They are currently full of vegetables. We had a lettuce, spinach, and swiss chard salad with homemade french dressing and 2 pea pods tonight.

Summer has arrived!

Today was a very satisfying day and a perfect indication of summer's arrival. In addition to being fabulously gorgeous weather in which to enjoy our day, we had our first meal that was composed primarily of food we grew in our yard (with a little help from the farmers market). Our lunch was so lovely that i couldn't help but take a picture.

We had a salad composed of spinach, mixed lettuce, baby swiss chard, and thyme from our garden. We also had yummy bruschetta with a farmers market tomato, green garlic, and the baby basil that i had to thin from the garden (it's oh so necessary, but so hard to do!). Adam took some of our neighbor's mint that is threatening to take over our side yard and made us some refreshing mojitos.

Carrots in the spring?

We'd heard that you could keep carrots in the ground all winter so we thought we'd try it, plus we had a really good carrot crop last year and couldn't possibly eat them all before winter.  We also bought a CSA storage share last year which gave us probably 15 additional pounds of carrots in December so we were busy eating those. We covered the carrots with a layer of fall leaves and left them. Turns out carrots winter wonderfully! I dug them up in March and got quite a bounty. There were a few bug holes at the tops of some carrots, but not a huge deal. I'm guessing I harvested at least 10 pounds.

Since we had so many carrots, i decided to make Adam's favorite cake: carrot cake. It turned out really well (don't tell Adam that carrot cake is pretty much foulproof and fairly easy!).

Kitchen Before and After

Well, it's been a long 2 months remodeling our kitchen. We had a couple sloppy contractors and changed our minds a couple times at the last minute, but for the most part it went really well. Thanks to our parents who helped us so much.

Here's what the kitchen looked like when we bought the house:

And here's what it looks like now:

We just have a few details to finish up before it's 100% finished.

Kitchen Remodel is In Progress!

I knew that remodeling a kitchen was a big project. Probably the biggest project we'll have with this house. But I don't think I fully understood how the kitchen remodel basically flows into the whole house and takes over your life! Not that I'm complaining, of course, I'm just commenting. We began the demolition a few weeks ago when the contractor from Frey came over to take out the wall (turns out taking out the whole wall costs the same as putting in a pass thru). Then Adam worked on finishing the drywall from that project. Then all of a sudden it was time for major demolition. That began on Friday night. Our neighbors across the street wanted to recycle our kitchen hardware, so they came over and helped us take stuff down. Dave actually helped a lot more than we expected him to, and he and Adam were able to get all the cabinets out that night.

Saturday morning Adam's parents came and we set to work pulling out the flooring. This turned out to be a fairly big pain, since we were taking out two layers of vinyl plus a plywood subfloor. We had to take it out so that our new bamboo floor wouldn't be significantly taller than our existing oak floors in the rest of the house. That took us the entire day.

Sunday Adam installed the new, thinner plywood subfloor and I painted the ceiling (I'm not sure, but my hair might still be partly white from this!) and a first coat on the walls. We also realized at this time that the fact that we had a heating vent and a cold air return directly next to each other in the floor (a product of removing the wall) was not a good thing. Something about an infinite furnace loop...? We frantically called our furnace vendor Monday morning to see if they could come out and tell us what needed to be done. Fortunately, the guy came right away and he and Adam worked out a solution (to be installed tomorrow).

Monday morning Adam's dad came back and they began installing the bamboo floor. His dad left around dinnertime when my dad arrived. Together, my dad and Adam finished the floor that night at 11:30pm. They had to get it done because the staple gun was rented from Home Depot and it had to be back by 8am the next morning.

Today my dad and Adam installed the cabinets. They finished all the wall cabinets and most of the base ones. They're installing the sink cabinet as I write this. That one was tricky because of all the existing pipes. I'm hoping they are able to start on the dishwasher installation, but given the fact that my dad said he'd be gone by the time i got home from work (30 minutes ago), i'm not hopeful.

Adam has the rest of the week off to finish as much as he can. The countertop guy is coming on Thursday to do the measurements for our Silestone. Adam's dad is coming back on Friday to take a load of construction debris to the landfill and help finish up projects. I'd say by this weekend we will have a significant portion of the work done, and from there on out it will be finishing up smaller details.
Once the project is closer to being finished, i'll post some before and after pictures.

Cooking & Kitchens

We're almost to the end of our storage share vegetables. Today i made a cabbage, carrot, potato, onion, daikon soup. I thought it was quite good. I've found i like cabbage much better cooked than raw. A few weeks ago Adam tried making radish chips. They didn't turn out well, but it was an interesting experience.

Our kitchen is coming along. The new Kenmore range was delivered yesterday and so far has baked a key lime pie, honey oatmeal bread, valentine cookies, and a pasta bake. The cooktop has cooked balsamic blueberry chicken and apple cinnamon oatmeal. I accidentally used salted cracker crumbs for the key lime pie so the crust was extra salty, but the filling was tasty. Adam mudded the edges of the wall we took out. He has a little more work to do. Here's a preview of the missing wall.

 

Amazing Soup

We went over to Hannah & Will's house for dinner a while ago and they made us the most delicious soup. Hannah graciously sent me the recipe and I made it again at home. It is so tasty, you'd never know how good for you it is. Here's the recipe the way I made it:

2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed*

1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes
1 16-oz can pumpkin puree (i used approx. half a fresh pumpkin that i cubed, steamed, and pureed)
1/2 cup red onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 tbsp olive oil
4 cups vegetable broth
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground pepper
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Place oil, red onion, garlic and seasonings into a large pot. Cook on low-medium heat until red onion and garlic brown. Puree the beans and tomatoes. Add pureed ingredients, pumpkin and broth to your pot. Puree with an immersion (stick) blender. Simmer uncovered until thick, about 40-45 minutes. Before serving, drizzle with balsamic vinegar and serve with fresh bread.

*In general when I need black beans I cook dried beans in the crockpot on high for about 3 hours. I normally add a half pound of beans and 6 cups of water. It's much cheaper than canned and you don't have to worry about rinsing off added sodium.

Madison, Eden, Neenah, Manitowoc, Milwaukee, Phoenix...

To say that this Christmas season has been busy would be an understatement. I was reflecting the other day on the fact that of the past 10 days, we'd only spent 3 of them at home and the remaining 7 had been spent in 5 cities and 2 states. That doesn't count our 3-week New Zealand trip which ended earlier in December. All that said, I feel that God has been there with me through these past few weeks. I have had a harder time each year focusing on the story of his birth at Christmas, especially right on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day since the hecticness of the Christmas Eve service and all the present opening easily consumes my concentration. And Jesus' birth seems like so distant a happening that it's not real. But I know that He is real and working in my life, despite my incredible human failings.

Cheri's wedding was beautiful. The weather was in the 60's and the bridesmaids wore knee-length black dresses. I played violin at the ceremony (the pianist and I threw in a couple extra prelude pieces for fun!) and Adam was a patient soul throughout. The reception was held at a different church and was beautifully decorated with Christmas trees and lights. Unfortunately, we lost our camera in the Milwaukee airport on the way to Phoenix so we didn't get any pictures of our own (we bought a new camera yesterday). Here's one that Lisa took for us at the reception. The way they had it set up, the spouses of the bridal party got to sit at head tables which was really nice since Adam didn't know anyone there.

Here's another one that was taken at a park near Cheri's house. The photographer was photographing our shoes which is why we're all lined up and not looking at anything in particular.