Yayyyyyyyyyyyyy
Lacuna: A Novel a new book by one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver
Amazing handmade jute rug
How to make a sideboard from stock cabinets (from AT)
Hidden guest bed in the kitchen. Clever! (Better Homes & Gardens via AT)
I have always loved, loved, love this. (Jeff Dunham, via Decorno)
Booooooooooooooo/Bummer....Hawks lose to Northwestern. A bummer for sure.
A weekend of beautiful 70 degree weather, playing at the park and hanging out with Gordito totally wiped Micky out this weekend. He was so tired on Sunday night.
After my recipe post it didn't take me long to find a place to put my Pottery Barn galvanized steel rack. I hung it on the outside of the pantry door with two S hooks I already had. Done!
I also hung all my tights on a hanger.
Then I hung up any accessories laying around the house.
The rack with my belts and necklaces was here when we moved in--I think it was a tie rack. And I hung the earrings on some cheap cooling racks I bought before we got married and I got some really nice ones as a gift. Both have helped me to visualize outfits.
Yip, yip, yip! I'm happy our friend Eric is coming to town tonight--it means we're headed to the Old Crow Medicine Show at Hoyt Sherman. Man I love me some good fiddle playing.
I hear them all, I hear them all, I hear them all.
These upcyled recipe card boxes are super cute. Photo and more info here.
I don't have room on my counters for one, and truthfully I don't have too many recipes on index cards. Instead, I use a complicated and not all together effective system.
New recipes from friends, the internet, magazines, etc., go here until they have been tried. If I don't like the recipe I toss it and if I'm on the fence, I put it back in the folder.
If the recipe is a go, I file it in one of these.
Then when I'm cooking I use a super strong magnet to hold the recipe(s) on the hood of the stove.
I do have one of these from Pottery Barn (they don't sell or make them anymore), maybe it would work for keeping recipes sorted. But, I'd have to find the space to hang it--its big!
Over the last few years I have really come to love classic pajamas. Great for lounging around the house, I especially like wearing them when I'm a guest at other people's houses because I know I'm guaranteed to be warm and cozy when I get up to drink coffee in the morning or want to hang in PJs for awhile.
My pair is from the Target sale rack and I may have paid $15 to 20 for the top and bottom. I've been looking for a new pair and I can't believe how expensive they are!
All of these from Sleepyheads.com range between $50 and $140, with most in the higher range. So cute, but so spendy! Where can a girl get a pair of cute cotton classic pajamas with a nice pattern and decent price tag? No flannel, no cartoon characters, no solid colors, no ruffles or sets with a tank top and pants. No holiday prints, no fleece. If I can get a pair of cute cotton pajama pants at Old Navy for $6 on clearance, why can't I find some good jammie jams?
Skip to 4:54 for the best part of the halftime show. The quality isn't great, but you can see how much the crowd got into it.
My Friday morning routine has become coffee and 30 Rock. I've found its a good start to the day. Laughing out loud gives you a good jump on the weekend:
Tracy, reacting the news that the guy Pac-Man was modeled after had died: "I will eat a bowl of cherries and some ghost meat in his honor."
Jack: "Good god, Lemon - your breath. When did you find time to eat a dirty diaper you found on the beach?"
Jenna: "You know, I met J.J. Abrams once, and I don't know what this means, but he said, 'the island is just Hurley's dream'."
In the next few months we are likely making a westward bound trip, undoubtedly by car. For whatever reason (weddings, gatherings, etc.), most of our trips in the 5 1/2 years we've been together have been east of the Mississippi. Don't get me wrong, we both like going west of the Mississippi, but save a trip to Las Vegas, we haven't gone west young couple together.
So I've been researching cabins in Colorado (ski trip) and accommodations in SoCal (Hawk fans, I think you know where I'm going with this). And while I'm crazy excited about both opportunities, nothing can compare to my adolescent and teenage trips to Montana. I need to get out from under the idea that I will ever feel as relaxed, free, exhilarated, open and carefree as I did back then. No trip today will recapture the feeling on being nestled between the Beartooth and Absorka mountains, where a river runs through it, life smells sweeter and the stars shine brighter.
I can't recapture it because a) I can't turn back time to be that person and b) dude ranches (yes, like Hey Dude) are going by the wayside. See this article for a much more cohesive take on the matter.
The experience of going to the Boulder River Ranch belongs first and foremost to my maternal grandparents, Miles and Nancy. Back when my mother and uncle were young, their family started driving from the Twin Cities to Big Timber for summer vacations full of fly fishing, horseback riding, family style meals, happy hour with new and old friends, as well as cool nights and warm days.
For many, many years, this was their happy place.
My family was able to visit over the years, but it wasn't until I was in the 7th grade that I began spending a week there with my grandparents. It too became my happy place.
When presented with an opportunity to step outside your life (growing up in a small town in central Massachusetts) and experience something completely different (a ranch, horses, no TV, bears, a comforting sort of aloneness), you can't help but grow. Your worldview becomes automatically bigger. The possibilities of who you may become someday are increased a thousand-fold by virtue of who you meet and what you see.
Having that opportunity helped me see who I wanted to be and how to set my path to be that person. Going there helped me channel being an angsty, neurotic, always thinking about the future, stressed out adolescent/teenager (I'm sure there are other choice words my parents might have) into an introspective and aware adult (I'm sure there are some other choice words my friends may have).
Anyways, I get sad when I think about the disappearing dude ranch.
The Boulder River Ranch hasn't been operating for several years (my grandparents stopped going before it closed). I'm old enough to know that I could never recapture how I felt going there during those important formative years. But I still get sad that other people won't have the option to find their happy place at a dude ranch.
Photos from the Montana Film Office.
They send a survey and cash. I just thought it was funny to open up the envelope and find $30 tucked in with everything else.
