Avant garde like that.

John Mayer, Ben Folds (then Five) and now Domo.... Let's just say I'm at the forefront. 


I knew I was onto something when I turned the corner in Borders and found an entire display of Domo stuff--  Easter Domos, Halloween leftover Domos, and just one... just one PINK Valentine Domo! It was totally adorable, and I knew that after the insane week I had, $12.99 had never made me happier. So I picked him up. The last one.


And let me tell you-- I just had a sense for this-- I bet other people want Pink Domos. So I checked Amazon. They had just 1 available, for $56!!! Then I went to Ebay... only two listed, both with bids in the $30 and $40s! 


I couldn't part with my Domo for that, but I certainly could find another one and part with it! I called another local store and they had just 1 left. Just in time for me to put it on hold, pick it up tomorrow morning, and still be in time to ship for the end of my auction.

So get on there-- bid up! 

Domo leads to way to financial freedom!!!

Christmas is in the air...

It was truly a weekend of hustle and bustle. We'd been unable to do any real Christmas shopping and this week we hit it all- head on, full force. Starting with a Friday night whirlwind trip up and down the strip, we crossed things off our list as we went.

It's so odd how these seasons come and go. Just a few weekends ago it seemed nice enough-- mid 60's, actually -- that I pulled the chaise lounge and sat out in the bright sun on the back patio. It's still sitting there- covered in snow...

And it was just a two weekends ago that I was begrudging the Christmas season, and now the house is completely decked out in garlands, stockings, two trees-- the works. I do think our house looks best decorated for Christmas.

Anyway- we're onto wrapping what we've bought and scheming about what we need to buy. This year seems like more of a cross-it-off-the-list type of year rather than a 'get creative' kind of year, which I'm kind of sad about. Truth is, with everything going on with work and otherwise, we just haven't had time to put in the effort to come up with really creative gifts. So the list-buying is a bit lackluster in the suprise department, especially when I've had to cross-reference with nearly everyone, who now also know what I'm purchasing for everyone else.

Ah well...

Looking very much foward to a short week next week, followed by a week off, and then just two full weeks until sunny Riviera Maya!

Friend Thanksgiving!

Another delicious Friend Thanksgiving under our belts... This time, we switched it up and served a Roast Beef-- this one rubbed in porcini mushrooms, olive oil and garlic. The menu also included au gratin potatoes, corn souffle, pear salad, Julia Child's cooked carrots, and apple cranberry pie for dessert. We even ichatted with our out-of-state friends with their new baby!

It was a great time... excellent food... and even better company!

giving thanks....

I am thankful for:

• a loving and perfect husband for me
• two awesome dogs-- for as much as they annoy me, I love them even more
• few, but great friends
• family. In all forms...
• a small and cozy cottage. It's warm, clean, and perfect for us
• a job. it might not be the perfect one, but it pays the bills and allows us our life
• creativity and the desire to make our own stuff-- wine, soap, etc. I like that we create
• that we live in a place where the seasons change visibly
• that I still dream. I frequently pretend we're moving and look up houses in Wisconsin, France. This week it's Ireland. It's nice to pretend that things might not be pretend...
• all the lovely trips I've been able to take. Overseas and even trips close to home. Travel and experiencing-- even living-- in different places is such a joy to me.

What are you thankful for this season?

Halloween Pics, including carrots and a sink.

Yesterday, we made Provencal Beef Stew-- which included carrots-- so I wanted to celebrate our first REAL sized carrot (photographed next to most of the other wee-ones we've been pulling all summer!) The rest of the garden, for the most part, has been zapped by the frost, but these carrots are safe in our raised beds from the cold for now... and look at how big and yummy that one was!

Secondly-- our beautiful new bathroom faucet! See how it sparkles and shines in it's brushed-nickel glory? Yep, it's no longer necessary to walk to the kitchen sink to wash your hands because the bathroom is too gross. It's glorious!

And finally, you knew I couldn't sneak in a Halloween post without mentioning Domo, the champion of Halloween. I first started liking this adorable thing last Easter, when Jed bought me this ridiculous bunny. Because you've been frequenting Seven-11 in support of their Domo .99 coffee special, I'm sure it's no news to you that they are Domo-crazy over there- stocking coffee cups, commemorative straws and slurpy holders, figurines, and stuffed animals. I figured I'd snap a few extra cups to make Halloween luminaries.

And throw in a pumpkin-carved likeness too...

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

have a spooktacular day!

Monster Mash...

Click below for some Halloween Fun!

the yellow brick road

Somehow it went from freshly mowed grass, green leaves, blue skies and sun... to Fall. The old part of town where I live is smattered in a blanket of yellow leaves blown from the old Maples that tower over the streets.

In the short moments that sun peeked out this weekend, the light through the yellow canopy was just stunning... too bad they'll all be down in a matter of days. Dismal November here we come... Where did October go?

Nothing like a pair of French cranberry-apple pies to cheer us up around here...

attack of the monster pumpkin

I saw one a few days ago being lugged through town and luckily, I had my camera on me...

Hm... kinda reminds me of this show: Lords of the Gourd, a *completely* riveting program on PBS (no... really...If you had the chance to catch their intriguing programs on Ferret Shows and Hairworld-- you know what I'm talking about...) which highlights the super dedicated mega-pumpkin growers. The methods are amazing-- milk baths, pumpkin hammocks, injections... it's CRAZY.

apples!

Inspired by my new blog header, (which I'll say, might be my favorite yet...) and a fellow Facebrook friend posted about her apple picking adventures, I hopped on pickyourown.org and found Kuipers Family Farm in Maple Park, just 20 minutes away. The crystal clear skies and gorgeous, crisp weather just BEGGED us to go apple picking. This was new for me-- I'm a veteran blueberry picker, but I'm a newbie with apples-- and here's the difference-- it takes only 20 minutes TOPS! We got a quarter peck for free (well...) with our entry fee, and we bought an additional peck on top of that ($10, 10lbs). Today, we could pick from Jonathons, Goldon Delicious, Cortland, and Empires.

You can eat as many as you can for free!

Also, apparently we weren't the only ones who thought today was perfect... And ps, I guess I didn't realize that apple orchards in the fall are HOPPING with young families toting toddlers for photo opps. It's almost like an outdoor Olan Mills or something. In front of trees, holding apples, sitting on hay... Wow.

Look at those varieties! Let's go back again, and again, and again...

Our hay-ride driver.

The last one that fit in the bag... and I squished 'em too!

Tonight, we made two French apple pies, apple/berry cobbler, and baked oven apples, with brown sugar and oat topping. OMG so yummy....

the wonders of kale.

Ok...fine. Summer's over.

I lit the Mulling Spices candle yesterday and planted the flowering kale for our window boxes. Kale is to Fall as to Geraniums were to Summer. Love it!

And a final updated house pic. I'm totally scheming of photoshopping this sucker- changing the color, putting on some different shutters (or maybe none?) All in a scheme to get hopelessly excited for a remodeling project we won't take on anyway... blah.

not doing.

We have so much to do around the house, it seems. The list grows:

-clean out the basement before winter
-take large floor rugs outside for a good slap around, and rotate
-plant fall lettuces (too late, maybe?)
-weed the west side of the house
-change out light fixtures inside... (we have them... they are just sitting, waiting)
-fix leaky faucet
-fix kitchen floor tiles
-weather seal the doors
-buy/install new kitchen windows
:::Dream::: rip out/replace godawful astroturf steps

Sigh. It's so much cheaper when you don't do things. Well, except for weeding. And cleaning. But who likes to do that?

OK. Enough of those thoughts! We've been doing zipzilch around the house, truly, because of FUN! WEEKEND! OUTINGS! Such as: Wisconsin! Camping! YAY! Summer is only so long, and we have all winter to clean, right?

Another fun (and free... for now) pastime of mine is playing "Let's find the perfect house" on realtor.com!
I've searched properties up near where we were in Wisconsin, and it makes me GAG to find places like

this
or this
or this
or this

and this with more land, more room, and gorgeous views-- all for equal or less the price we paid for our fixer-upper?...

WHY do we live in the Chicago suburbs.... why?

everything I ever wanted and more...

As a kid, i had this recurring dream: I'd discover... just happen on... a horse that was lost, left, or magically kept (!) in my shed at home. I've played this scene out a hundred times in my dreams, and it is still vivid: I find the horse- usually at sunset- and discover that...wow!... our shed has been turned into a horse stall and OMG there are bridles and bits and brushes and everything just waiting for me, and I never knew it-- but there's not enough time-- it'll be night soon, and I only had so much time to run upstairs and put on my breeches, velvet hat and leather boots... I'd hop on and ride around (some variation here) -- my backyard, my neighborhood, or the woods behind our yard just before it got dark. The dream always ended, and the horse faded away somehow each time.

:::

When we got a short message that Jed's uncle invited us for a weekend to their little farmstead, I was skeptical. We've been running around each weekend for several weekends now, and the timing was just off, and we were busy, and it was summer, and excuses flow like water ... and...... what's that...??... You have horses that need some attention??.... When can we come?

Turns out the horses were Jackson and Ranger, a paint and pony pair who were mainly there to dress up the side of the yard. Jackson, who was purchased in 2008, did some shows and had a bit of training in his background, and they felt bad they hadn't given him the attention he deserved. So, we started slow-- lungeing-- which he picked up very quickly. We worked him through his gaits- where he exhibited a very nice trot and pretty smooth canter. I was pretty geared up to get on. I got on, and he was such a good boy-- sensitive to voice and leg/rein commands, and picked up all his gaits pretty easily. He was a bit spooky around the electric fence after (oops) my boot brushed it when we passed by, but other than that-- a good horse.

Today, when we did our morning exercise-- some more lungeing-- and then-- I stuck Jed on top to work through some of his gaits, he refused to trot. REFUSED. Walk, then this odd bucky-startoff to a canter. Hm. Jed off, me on. Same thing. Me off, more lungeing. Perfect. I was stumped. So, I got back on and decided to end on a good note-- walking figured 8 patterns with stop/starts.

Here's where I'm stumped. All the horses I've ever ridden, I've had someone around who knew MORE than me to fix the problem. I know that you can't let the horse 'win' in these situations, but I don't feel like I know enough to MAKE him do it right--- I felt too ameteur to do anything REALLY correct the problem. We were great the day before-- was it was me? the tack? the surroundings?

So I asked Carol if the person who trained him would mind coming out to give me a lesson. Hopefully she'll be available next weekend, when we go up for Labor Day.

We have the open invitiation to come up "whenever"-- and I hope we can take them up on it in a not-too-much or not-too-little kind of way. I look forward to going out, at our leisure, to work with Jackson-- the saddles, the bridles, the brushes-- all there waiting for me!

Kind of makes me want to be a little bit closer-- find a lovely place in Wisconsin with fruit trees, gardens, a stream out back, and plenty of land to.... ride...

camping in photos...

the most perfect camping weather.

ever.

geocaching.

updates on the homefront

In the meantime between rescuing baby bunnies, ironing my bedlinens, and recovering from jet lag, I thought I'd post some updates on the domestic front. Not surprisingly, we have relatively run out of steam and money for large house projects-- though multiple $1k projects loom-- windows, front steps, doors, cellar door, a fence, patio beautification... where to start? But: we chose travel, so we live with astroturf.

So, instead of pointing out my house's ugly thighs, I'm momentarily deciding to focus on it's pretty face and lovely hair.

IE: my windowboxes! and my planters! and YAY RED GERANIUMS EVERYWHERE!

I was originally skeptical of the proverbial red geranium, especially choosing to ONLY decorate in geraniums with accents of purple petunias-- afraid that it might come off too "America... Fu@k Yeah...!" But... I rather think it looks... Grand Hotel-esque, and if prancing black Friesians towing a burgundy carriage could circle by roundabout 7:15 to pick me up for work, that'd be great, thanks...

AND ALSO-- you know I spent at least a year's salary on furniture from WorldMarket, right? Well, now that I'm a card-carrying member, I (and Jed-- we opened up two cards for extra discounts) get $20 FREE DOLLARS to spend in the month of our births! So I promptly swiped up Jed's certificate and cruised for some end-of-summer savings. Look at these impossibly summery items- a tablecloth with a hole in it for the umbrella AND a pillow! Weeee! FREE!!!

See that computer open? I'm on worldmarket right now... plotting the demise of my next paycheck.

Kidding... kidding...

the great outdoors

On a whim to take advantage of the oddly cool July temperatures-- and to test out our tent (which we received as a wedding gift nearly three years ago and never opened)-- we decided to go camping. The thing with camping is that I never know that I want to go, until merely minutes before we start packing, so it's always a last minute scramble to see which park is open and... crap!... do we have bugspray? and where is that 3-in-1 tool that we'll probably not need but should bring anyway...??!

...so needless to say, our history with camping has been pretty rocky-- every single time we try, we spend hours loading up the car, lists in hand, packing what normal campers would probably bring for a two-weeks' stay, just to drive all the way to the campground and find all the spots are taken.

Right. So the planning started Friday, and I picked out a local forest preserve as our best option and this private park over 1 hour away as our backup. Of course, upon driving to the forest preserve only 1 hour after the camping office opened, all the spots were filled... hmmm. So ,we turned the car around and pointed towards Earlville, which I would totally tell you all about and post a link, except there aren't any. The don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it town has more barns than people, and I think I saw a field with two donkeys, but we were driving fast.

70-ish year-old Marilyn is the owner/manager, and she's turned her wood-paneled living room, into an office. A sign out front boasts that the park opened in 1979, and I think nothing has been updated since. Upon paying our $15 per person, we hopped onto Marilyn's golfcart and whizzed through some of the 40 acres of her property-- pointing out possible spots near the creek, or maybe the big yard... There were four total campers, so it was pretty quiet. The main campground circles around an elevated spring-fed pond, which is stocked and open for fishing, if that's your thing.

(trail around the pond)

We picked a spot near the creek-- the last spot before the trails in the woods-- and it was super quiet, except for the babbling water that rushed over a cluster of rocks at the bottom-- perfect.

Not sure if I paid attention to how huge the tent was when I flippantly click-added it on to registry at Target-- the thing measures 15' x 10', and that doesn't include the little doggy den on the side-- totally adorable!

our little campsite

Poppy posing in the doggy door

the inside-- huge! this fullsize bed only took up half the tent.

Wecould have easily fit a table/chairs in there, and it was 6 feet tall,

so you could stand all the way up.

Dinner was tinfoil 'hobo packs'--steak, potatoes, garlic, onions, and peppers, and baked beans, and then we read magazines and played cards. We enjoyed the campfire and some sprinkles, and then retreated inside when the sprinkles became rain. I don't think it actually rained that hard, but when you're laying under pieces of plastic that magnify each raindrop, it sounds like it's coming down pretty hard. Around 3:30, we both woke up to a crazy animal screeching noise (freaky... but probably just a raccoon or something) and bright lights of a patroling police officer. Of course, it was nothing (dude, this is Earlville, what else do they have to do,) but my mind started churning middle-of-the-night absurdities: what if the police officer is looking for someone...? why did he drive all the way out to our tent at 3:30am? i wonder if someone is on the loose... ??

Darby chewing his bone in the doggy den. He later cuddled up with us in bed, which was good, because it helped keep us warm!

Right... so back to bed and up at 8am with the dogs. Overall, I didn't sleep WELL, but it wasn't terrible. The mattress we brought was nice and cushy, and I didn't get cold. The dogs didn't stir too much, but they are wiped out today-- which means they didn't sleep well. Breakfast was exceptional- Jed can still cook a mean omelet over woodfire, and we made coffee with the frenchpress.

Jed cooking a cheese omelet. Also, our water boiling for coffee- on a piece of wood. Yeah.

So, Camping trip #1 is under our belts. There are things we definitely learned for next time-- like, buy one of those tri-pod cauldron holder things, because wood BURNS when you put it over the fire. And buy tongs, because it's hard to retrieve a scalding-hot pot with a stick...

Until next-time... when we'll pack lighter, prep more, and have more time to enjoy it all!

I think Darby was ready to go!