Outdoor decorations

On Saturday, my mom came over for a full day of painting and decorating. (First things first: thank you for all of your help, Mom!!)

In between coats of paint in the bathroom—I'll tell you about that later—she gave me a primer on outdoor decorating for the holidays. First, we wanted to replace the summer windowbox arrangement that the previous owners had designed with a festive winter windowbox. She also pitched the idea of setting up some little pots for the front step, which I liked.

Mom tackled the windowbox while I slowly started poking pine boughs into one of the pots. She used drapey pine boughs (they smell wonderful!) with artificial red berries, and she reused the summer arrangement's sticks. (I think she arranged the whole windowbox in the time that I worked on one pot.) In the pots, we stuck a different kind of pine bough vertically (very precise language here, I know) and then added more drapey boughs, pine cones, and red berries. The weather was good for working outside: temperatures were near 30, and the sunshine was surprisingly warm.

Mom at work:



And voila!



One more view of the windowbox:




And me with the little pots!






At the start of the morning, I had no idea how to even articulate what kinds of arrangements I liked best. Mom was so helpful in walking me through the steps, patiently advising me, and presenting different options. I like this new touch of cheer.

Mileage

Over the last few months, my miles have ebbed and flowed: a few consistent weeks of training leading up to the Bear Water Run, a few quiet running weeks around our move and Twin Cities Marathon volunteering. Now that we've settled into our house, I'm feeling ready to be more consistent again, and the cooler days are actually helping with that: I balance morning runs with a few miles over the lunch hour again, which I don't do in warmer weather.

I also signed up for the Minneapolis Running 2014 holiday challenge, with different mileage levels ranging from 12 miles per week to 31 miles per week over the next few months. With no race goal or training plan right now, I really appreciate the tracking mechanism to log miles and be accountable. I'm aiming for 18 miles per week to practice consistency and maintaining a good base through the winter.

I loved today's run, which was great both when I was looking up at the clouds...

...and when I looked down and saw a discarded Halloween craft project:

I'm looking forward to more miles in the weeks ahead.

Home work

In between watching football games this weekend (two key wins on Saturday for both our alma mater and Tennessee!), Josh and I worked on a couple of house projects.

First, Josh installed a light on our back porch. There were wires involved, and he navigated them all. There was a ceiling fan on that fixture when we moved in, but now there is a light, too, so we can spend evenings out there.

Later on Saturday, I decided to assemble my latest Craigslist purchase on my own, since Josh has been putting together plenty of furniture lately and I wanted to practice that skill for myself. I bought an Ikea Expedit bookcase from a woman who was moving out of state, and she was kind of enough to break it down for me so that it could fit in my car. Putting the Expedit together turned out to be a surprisingly fun task, not unlike assembling a jigsaw puzzle.

Just getting started:

Almost done, before getting the drill out for a few bolts to stabilize the whole thing:

The Expedit's home will be in the room we're using as our office. Last week my mom turned this room from bright blue to grayish-periwinkle, a touch more muted than it looks in the above pictures, and we are so grateful for her help, painting skills and enthusiasm.

Today we bought our first ladder, and Josh used it to clear out the gutters.

Then I rented a lawnmower from the local hardware store and Josh mowed the yard, likely the last time we'll need to mow this season. (That rental gives us the chance to do our research over the winter before buying a lawnmower of our own.) You couldn't ask for better weather on the first weekend in November for this kind of project: for one stretch during the sunny afternoon, there was yardwork going on at three consecutive houses on our block. The leaves are falling, another season is on its way, and we're trying to check off most of these little projects before that colder weather arrives.

The start of September

We've spent big blocks of the last few days getting ready for our move later this month—packing, prepping, organizing and cleaning—and feel good about the progress!

Five other notes:

1) I did start the weekend with a run: On Saturday morning I ran with Molly, two of our former cross-country teammates and one of their partners. I haven't run with a group that large since I was part of the running club a few years back, and I loved it. I was only with Molly and the crew for six of the 17 miles she eventually covered, but those miles flew by as we talked both as a large group and in pairs.

2) We took a break in between errands on Sunday for lunch outside at Anchor Fish & Chips in Northeast. The view from my seat:

3) I said before that our home projects were on hold, but we wanted to do one more: recovering four chairs for our new dining room. I read several tutorials online, but the one I recommend most is a Martha Stewart video on the topic. Josh used needle-nose pliers to rip out the staples on each seating pad's previous cover while I cut fabric, fit each piece to the chair and stapled it back on. This project was easier than we thought, especially once I got past the first chair's first corner.

Before:

After:

We liked the final result!

4) I might have also made a mini table runner modeled after the checkerboards in Tennessee's endzones to use up a leftover piece of duckcloth from last fall's table runner projects. And Josh and I were happy about many components of Tennessee's big win on Sunday night! I loved hearing how loud the crowd at Neyland when the team ran through the T and during other key moments. There were some great college football games this weekend.

5) As I sorted out my books, I discovered that I had two copies of Jerry Spinelli's book Stargirl, a pleasing realization. I hope this happened because I just bought duplicate copies of this wonderful book at different stages of my life, not because one copy belongs to someone else.

6) This guy elected to spend a lot of time lounging in his room (his crate) while we were packing and organizing this weekend, but he loved a long walk on Saturday.

Last night, Josh grilled bacon cheeseburgers on pretzel buns, I made Oreo ice cream, and we watched "The Way, Way Back," which I loved. We are ready for the first week of September.

Home updates

I've been tinkering with a couple of home projects lately, but before going on about furniture that doesn't really make sense for our current apartment, I'll explain:

Josh and I bought a house!

Well, we're in the process of buying a house, anyway. It's a Craftsman bungalow with three bedrooms and two porches in a neighborhood we love, and I can't wait to tell you all about it once we close next month. While we'd love to be settled in our new home sooner, it's good to have time to prepare for the move. For now, I'm having fun brainstorming furniture and room and garden layouts (and we're slowly starting to organize our current belongings).

Despite that enthusiasm and excitement, I'm sort of trying to hold off on purchases and projects until we actually are living in the home—and ideally settled in for awhile, to be able to see how we use each space. But there are a couple of exceptions, including a little cabinet that I bought off Craigslist that we're hoping to use as a TV stand (first idea), a buffet for our dining room (second idea) or in one of a few other places (if the others don't work). We also wanted to just figure out how to do this kind of project. We stripped the stain off—which we may or may not have needed to do—then sanded it and painted it white. (I've learned there are some strong opinions out there about painting over wood, but I like it on this one.)

Before:

After!

In search of knobs that tied the white and brass together, I bought a different set (not pictured) but Josh said those knobs looked like disco balls and then of course that's all I saw, too. Then I found some other knobs on Etsy (also not pictured) and I think those are actually going to be the winners.

I also wanted to add some comfortable chairs to our (eventual) front porch, and I was hoping to find at least a temporary option to maximize the number of evenings out on that porch this fall. Last month I (literally) ran by a garage sale and saw a pair of wicker chairs for $5 each. All they needed was a fresh coat of spray paint, so I hurried home and drove back to pick them up. I added some self-imposed urgency to the chair project when our patio furniture sold faster on Craigslist than I expected, leaving us with an empty patio for the rest of the summer (or until I finished the chair project).

Before:

Halfway through:

And after! (The true color is probably a cross between these two photos.)

Then our makeshift patio set-up needed some sort of table, so I looked in our basement for something to use as a side table and found an old Ikea Lack table that was already navy blue. It was a good size but seemed like a little too much solid navy when paired with the chairs, so I went in search of some gift wrap or fabric to Mod-Podge over the top. At Patina, I found a sheet of matte gift wrap that was a fun version of a Minnesota map (and incorporating a bit of blue color to boot!), and I decided to go with that. I adhered it to the table with Mod-Podge and then added a couple of topcoats to seal it.

We've since shifted our focus to organizing and packing, but we both learned a lot even from just these two projects—and we're excited to learn more in the months and years ahead.

Tomato party

Finally, at long last, the garden's tomatoes are ripening!

It took more of the summer than usual to get to this point, and that might be because this corner of Minnesota hasn't had those long strings of hot days that tomato plants love. (I think it has been 90 degrees or higher only once in the Twin Cities this summer, which is hard to believe!) The possible trade-off is that my purple bean plants have been producing for longer than I remember last year: never overwhelming but just a nice ongoing supply of purple beans.

Today: a pleasant overlap in harvests.

So far the cherry tomatoes (pictured above) are the stars. But I've picked a handful of grape tomatoes, and one of the first big tomatoes is only a day or two away. I love this part of the summer.

101 in 1,001 update: August 2014

Nearly a full season has passed since my last 101 in 1,001 update back in May, and I'm about six weeks away from the this project's end date. It's time for a report.

Here are some of the items I've checked off my 101 in 1,001 list this summer:

17) Participate in an adventure race/scavenger hunt in the Twin Cities.

Josh and I did this together in June! I saw a discounted race entry via Crowd Cut for the City Solve Urban Race Series event in Minneapolis, and I figured it'd be our best opportunity to try out an urban scavenger hunt.

From the event's home base at Cowboy Jack's on a rainy Saturday afternoon, more than 600 people (more than 200 teams) solved a clue that sent all of us out of the restaurant and over to a nearby intersection. From there, each team got the packets containing the clues, each directing us to a checkpoint, some of which were mandatory. We had to get to eight of them over the course of the afternoon or else risk a big penalty added to our finish time. Most checkpoints required a photo of all teammates next to the checkpoint's signage; others required completing an activity. And you figured out each checkpoint's location by solving puzzles that, through exercises like word finds and crosswords (often with local trivia), eventually point you toward an address. Then it's up to each team to figure out their strategy for getting to each of the checkpoints the fastest!

This was one of the most fun parts of the event for me. I don't watch Amazing Race but I am one of several people in my age bracket who still keeps up with Real World/Road Rules: Challenge. We mapped out our strategy (literally and figuratively) and then made our way around Minneapolis on foot and via the newly opened Green Line trains. (The rules stipulated that transportation modes were limited to walking/running or public transit.) We ended up walking several miles around the city, mostly in downtown Minneapolis and in Dinkytown by the University of Minnesota. 

The checkpoint I'll remember best, the one that still makes me laugh, is our last one. By the end, the rain was coming down harder and the wind was picking up—my baseball hat was great protection from the rain until the wind lifted it off my head and dropped it squarely in a puddle—and Josh and I got a little lost getting to the last checkpoint on our list, a Crossfit place. We'd had a great time but were both pretty tuckered out at that point. It turned out that our last stop was the only one that required serious physical activity: to be specific, one teammate had to do burpees while the other held a plank, until the team accumulated 40-50 burpees. Burpees are among my least favorite calisthenics and we were not especially fond of this stop, but after that, we were heading back to the finish line!

Even with the burpees, the whole event was a fun and novel way to explore a familiar city for the afternoon, and it was definitely outside our usual weekend routine. I'd do an urban scavenger hunt again for sure.

68) Have a progressive dinner party.

This happened last weekend! Our group met at our house for appetizers, then went to my brother's house for dinner, and then returned to my house for the homemade ice cream we had assembled earlier in the evening (vanilla with Golden Oreos, to be exact).

Here they are, in motion to show that we are indeed progressing to my brother's house:

The key to the main course at a progressive dinner is something that can be prepared in advance or without much attention from the person cooking. My brother figured out a great solution by making chicken in the crockpot, so by the time we arrived at his house, all he had to do was shred the chicken and broil it (like preparing carnitas but without pork) for tacos. Nicely done, Brother!

71) Sew a dress.

This happened in June!

73) Take a photo of the same place every month for a year.

This happened from August 2013 to July 2014, and I shared the final results last month. I want to repeat this project and am brainstorming new locations for it.

100) Read 30 minutes per day for two weeks.


I mentioned this before, during one of my unsuccessful attempts to complete this goal, that for someone who calls herself an avid reader, this project was trickier than I expected! I usually read magazines in the morning and books in the evening, and I learned that I was prone to reading for a few minutes and then falling asleep at night. But the upside is that this kind of goal is a great way to really delve into books. Sometimes I have a hard time getting drawn into a book when I'm reading it 5-10 minutes at a time. When you're reading for half an hour per stretch, getting hooked is much easier. During these two weeks, from July 25 through August 7, I read Americanah, Dixieland Delight: A Football Season on the Road in the Southeastern Conference, and The Circle.

I believe that leaves me with 74 items complete. My list's items are grouped into 11 categories, and I reached another little milestone this summer when I closed out my first category by finished all the projects in the "Creativity" section.

But I'm not done yet. Six weeks to go!

A year of monthly photos

Yesterday, all of a sudden, I realized that my monthly photo goal is complete!

#73 on my 101 in 1,001 list: Take a photo of the same place every month for a year.

Last summer I chose a spot on Summit Avenue that I run by fairly often, a place that's open enough to illustrate seasonal change. And as simple as it was, I loved this project. I loved snapping a photo once a month and seeing the changes over the course of one year.

The most consistent time period turned out to be the summer, with quite a bit of month-to-month contrast in almost every other season. One of my favorite pairs is December 2013 and January 2014, two photos I expected to look nearly identical: blue sky, bare tree branches, deep snow. I loved seeing that the footprint paths in the snow had changed over the month.

Here are my 12 photos, from August 2013 to July 2014:

August 2013

September 2013

October 2013

November 2013

December 2013

January 2014

February 2014

March 2014

April 2014

May 2014

June 2014

July 2014

I liked this project so much I think I'll keep it going for another year, in a different place.

Garden update: Week 8

In the last few days, it feels like our garden plot entered pandemonium. My hunch is that it's the combination of less pouring rain and more seasonable summer temperatures, but whatever is happening, things really seemed to accelerate into action this week. So far, I have harvested purple beans (and then more purple beans), rosemary, a jalapeno pepper, and a big bunch of lettuce.

Here's the garden in mid-June:

And a month later (from the opposite viewpoint):



I haven't been using the herb garden too much yet, but that will change soon (I googled "what to do with lots of oregano" this week). The dill is still flowering, though I've been cutting off pieces to keep in a vase at home. My favorite part of this area of the garden is all the vibrant shades of green. Here's most of the wild herb garden, with the rosemary just out of the picture:



Next up: the purple beans. The main group of bean plants is producing beans right now, and there's a second, slightly smaller group that's about two weeks behind and just starting to flower.



Also visible in that picture to the right: the tomato tree. Another tomato plant got out of the gates faster, but this one is taller now - and taller than I remember last year's plants. I took the next picture on one mid-run visit not to check "selfie with a tomato plant" off my list of dream photo opportunities but to give context for the plant's height. "This plant is out of control," my mildly bewildered expression reads.



This isn't new, but one of this year's highlights continues to be the climbing and flowering beans, my first attempt at adding something to a garden layout just for decoration.



Speaking of climbing vines, this is the view across from my plot's fence. I don't know whose plot it is, but I love the morning glories.



After a slow and erratic start, the lettuce is growing fast now. This is pre-harvest. I thought it would only be a few leaves, but it filled up one of those little paper lunch bags and is growing back pretty quickly already.



Other updates: The jalapeño plant is full of peppers, but the poblano is still very quiet. I tried to transplant some more onions from a batch left at the garden, but they didn't do well. The basil is coming along slowly, but I'm hoping a few hot days this week will help speed that process up. I think there is Swiss chard coming up, too, but that could still be weeds.

In other "weeds versus not weeds" news, earlier this month as I was pulling up weeds by the purple beans, I noticed that I was ripping up plants that looked like tomatoes...and happened to smell like tomatoes, too. I'm about 80 percent sure that these plants grew from a few unpicked cherry tomatoes that sank into the ground at the end of last year's growing season. I left a couple of remaining seedlings in the ground and transplanted the two I had pulled up, so I will either have more tomatoes than anticipated later in the season - or I just transplanted some hearty weeds. Time will tell.

I'm waiting now for the summer garden's next milestone: the first ripe tomatoes, likely in the next week or two!

Lately

I promise I have been doing other things besides visiting the garden!

First: lots of Twins baseball last week for Josh and me. They were fun nights with friends and a fitting way to kick off July, which is All-Star month in Minnesota! I am so excited for next week's All-Star festivities. Also: after most of the All-Star selections were announced yesterday, I voted for Justin Morneau in the Final Vote because (besides the fact that he's having a great season) I would love to see him back at Target Field on Tuesday night.

On the Fourth of July, I began the day by volunteering with the Twin Cities in Motion committee at the organization's Red, White & Boom event. The finish line is just past the Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, and the skyline was so pretty in the early morning light. (This is before the race, and the people walking toward me are heading to the start line. The finish line atmosphere is much more exciting!)

Later in the day, Josh grilled hamburgers and we ate dinner on the patio. We stayed home that evening with Wish, who is no fan of fireworks. (But we did see a great fireworks display at Target Field the previous night!)

On Saturday morning, I stopped by the farmer's market for some flowers and then swung by the garden for a visit:

Saturday also featured a walk around Lake of the Isles with my friend Katie and her baby boy and then my visit to Sara's garden. The day concluded with dinner and a round of mini-golf with Josh and two friends at the Walker Art Center's artist-designed mini-golf course! We meant to play golf and then go out to dinner, but with the mini-golf wait time at 90 minutes, we got on the list and then went to dinner first. (Thumbs up to Lago Tacos in Uptown!)

The mini-golf course was wonderfully creative and unique, with many of the holes accompanied by little twists and obstacles, and reading the instructions for each one felt not unlike a scavenger hunt. This was the first hole, with a curling motif very appropriate to Minnesota.

Thanks to a love of astronomy since childhood, one of my favorite stops was the constellation-themed hole, with Polaris as the destination:

And on Sunday, the Twin Cities hit 90 degrees for the first time this year (almost a month later than average) and Josh and I started refinishing a small cabinet I bought on Craigslist. I am okay with not seeing the putty knife for a little while, but I am happy those first steps are done! Onward with the week (and maybe sanding!).