Mil. wau. kee.

Back in June we took a fun little vacay to the land of cheese... Wisconsin. My cousin Stacey lives there and my aunt Peggy and uncle Steven were visiting from New Jersey so my family drove up from Iowa. Plus my aunt's sister, Julie, and her husband Dick, live in Milwaukee too. It was a fun, relaxing weekend. Friday night we all went out to dinner at Cafe Hollander in Tosa Village. They had delicious food plus a hundred types of beer on the menu - no joke. And for those of you who know me, beer isn't really my thing but I find a few that I really liked.

On Saturday, Matt and I tool a walk down to the Tosa Farmer's market in the morning. Then we enjoyed some pool time before heading to the Lakefront Brewery Tour at 2:30pm. 

Milwaukee has a lot of breweries that we could check out but rumor has it that the Lakefront Brewery tour is the best. And it definitely didn't disappoint! It costs a few bucks to take the tour but you get big drink samples and get to take home a pint glass at the end! Here's a few photos of us having fun that Stacey & my sisters took. 

My aunt's sister, my aunt, my mom

Geez, it was sooo sunny out!

We enjoyed dinner on the patio at a mexican restaurant. Unfortunately we didn't plan out our drinking too well since we went beer on the tour followed by margaritas at dinner... after dinner we were pretty much exhausted and called it an early night.

 

tequila shots for these 3!

The fun continued on Sunday with brunch at Julie & Dick's. Then a trip to the Milwaukee Art Festival at the Milwaukee Art Museum. There were some cool pieces of art there but only Stacey ended up purchasing anything... well, actually Peggy purchased a print for Stacey for her birthday. You can kinda tell in this pic I snapped, but it was super foggy down by the lake and we couldn't get any pics of the museum. We also did lunch dinner lupper downtown too. 

Monday morning we did breakfast at a cute little local cafe and then stopped at the lake before the drive home. 

Overall, we had a great trip! And I'm impressed that we all survived the 5.5 hr ride together. 6 adults in a suburban is a lot!

Fabulous Friday Night

I had high hopes to write a few very overdue posts about our vacations so far this summer but it obviously didn’t get done. My excuse is Pinterest (and leaving my camera cord at work). Wow is that website addicting! Not only is it fabulous to be able to “pin” images that I like from other websites, but I could did spend hours looking at others “pins” within Pinterest. It’s so easy to use and so neat to have all your favorite images organized, everyone should join. I can’t even imagine how wonderful it would have been to have had this site when I was planning our wedding. So enough about Pinterest, it’s not the only thing I did this week…and if you’re an active blog reader, I’m sure you already know all about it.

I started the weekend off with a perfect girls night on Friday. I headed to Jordan Creek Mall after work where I treated myself to a pedicure after work. I went with a coral color for my toes -- Conga-Line   (I thought about showing you my actual toes but Matt makes fun of them because they’re short and stocky (vs his long and gangly ones) and I couldn’t take a good pic that I wasn’t self-conscious about showing). But as you can see, Conga Line is a fun color. Plus the salon I went to has the massage chairs so it was fabulous.

Next was dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with Megan and Tori. I totally forgot about my camera until the very end so this is the only pic I have to show for such a fun time. If I had remembered earlier, I would have taken a close of up my Skinny Mojito – it was amazing!  And of Tori’s Skinny Sangria – also delish. Speaking of delicious, how can you go wrong with ANY of the food at Cheesecake Factory! I always get kinda overwhelmed with their menu – I never decide what I want until the very last second when I’m ordering. Sometimes this can lead me to kinda freaking out and ordering weird things (just ask Matt about the Subway story), but not on Friday. I ended up with Stuffed Mushrooms and Chicken Croquettes. So savory.                  

After passing on dessert (dinner was just too good), Megan, Tori and I headed to the theater to catch Friends with Benefits. It stars Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake and I expected it to be funny but my hopes weren’t too high since the plot didn’t sound oh so original. Luckily, I was completely surprised to discover that the movie is actually a Romantic Comedy (not just a comedy) and was so much better than I had expected. I laughed, I cried, it was fantastic!

To top off the fabulous evening, there was an awesome heat lightning storm to the east of DSM that I got to watch all the way home. I couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful evening!

Keens

Something very special was waiting for me when I got home from work today... my very first pair of Keens! I've been telling Matt I want a pair (he has 2) for a while now but their prices were scaring me away. $100 is a lot to spend on a pair of sandals that I wanted to walk the dog in. But last week we found the Balboa Keen in Dark Citron ON SALE online. Normally I wouldn't by shoes without trying them on, but I tried some other styles in various stores and 8.5 consistently fit. Plus they had free shipping and free returns too so I couldn't resist. 

I have to use a stock photo because my new ones are already dirty from wearing them on our walk tonight! lol! oops! I really like them already and here's why....

I didn't pay full price for them

No wet socks/shoes (like when I wore tennis shoes walking Gable through the park)

No sliding around (like when I wore flip flops so that my socks/shoes didn't get wet)

No stubbed toes

My feet can still get a little tan

I can wear them into the lake

Easy on and off in case I get rocks or sand in them from the lake

They are machine-washable

And... they are a fun color! 

If you can't tell, I'm pretty excited about my new Keens. :) 

Yes, I realize that I've been absent for awhile and this is the post I decide to come back with. But it's been busy here - Last week we were on vaca in Okoboji and this week has been hectic with work. I'll be back to post about our vacation soon!

pillow madness

Because we have fabulous new furniture upstairs, we don't hang out downstairs much. (Plus the nicer tv is upstairs too.) So I hadn't really noticed how terrible the pillows looked until I took the after pics for my post on the basement update. 

See how grungy they look?!? I don't think they looked quite as disgusting when the sofa and pillows were upstairs with a light taupe color on the walls. So I'm going to partly blame it on the new crisp white and grey walls which make the light sea green pillows look bad. 

I bought the sofa and loveseat from a friend of a friend when I graduated from college back in 2006. The family rarely used the furniture so it was in decent condition when I got it. But now we've been using it all the time and it's looking kinda worn down. I bought the pillows when I got the furniture because the pillows that came with it really made it look dated. The other pillow you can kinda see on the right matches the recliner - a hand-me-down from Matt's parents, I believe, so it's got a few more years even than the other pillows. Definitely time to replace those pillows... but what to replace them with?

Pam at BeColorful recently posted this pic when she featured skipper blue as the color of the week. It kinda reminds me of a (much) classier (and more expensive) version of our basement. I think it works because the pillows look good with the sofa AND the pillows tie back into the wall and curtain colors. Our sofa isn't as blue (it's got an 80's green and blue chevron pattern on it) but this pic is waaaay close enough to be my inspiration. So I was off to search for grey pillows with a price point of up to $25 per pillow. Here's what I brought home from Target yesterday...

All of them look leaps and bounds better than the old pillows, but I'm not really sure what I like best. I tried looking at each one on their own, and then I even considered getting 2 different ones for a little mix and match action (this is actually a stretch for my usual pillow buying style).

Hmmm... decisions... decisions... I kinda like doing the two different ones, but my concern is that most are the same size so it looks kinda funny. I also found a couple pillows on Overstock that I like too... These come in both 18in and 22 in which solves my mix and match issue. But will they coordinate with any of the ones from Target?

Help!!! What do you think would look good?

Basement Update

When we bought our house last year, this is what our basement looked like (old homeowner's furniture and all):

I knew the ugly paneling in the basement would have to go -- or at least it needed to disappear. Interestingly, Matt actually liked the wood paneling. He thought was appropriate for a man cave - made it feel rustic and cabin-like. Really? Gross. Plus the drop ceiling did not help the look at all.

I am actually all about this space becoming a Man Cave. You know, one with an awesome bar, giant tv, pool table and a cozy fireplace?!?! Unfortunately, all that coolness would require a bit of cash. Plus the one thing we had going for us in the basement, our wood-burning stove, was inspected back in December and we found out it we probably should replace it. Bummer.

We knew replacing the stove wasn't something we wanted to tackle yet, so the Man Cave dream was put on hold and we moved on to plan B. So, off to Home Depot I went for some oil-based primer, a.k.a. the smelliest paint available. We had actually already tried to use some oil-based primer in the downstairs bathroom for trim but it was soooo smelly that I couldn't finish the job. (I did put a coat of white latex paint over this section though, just didn't prime and paint all the trim in that room.)

Basement bathroom

But despite the smell, I knew painting was the best option to get rid of the ugly brown wood. Taking off the paneling was ruled out because we think the house was constructed with the paneling so there might not be drywall behind it. Dry walling was not a project we wanted to tackle! So what did I do to get rid of the smell?

Onions. I researched online and a couple people mentioned placing an onion in a bowl with a little bit of water. When you leave the onion out overnight in the room that you paint, the onion soaks up all the stinky oil-based primer smell. And guess what?!?! It worked! Matt thought it made our whole house smell a bit onion-y, but i'll take that smell any day over the terrible primer smell. Thankfully we only had to put one coat of primer on.

This was definitely a team project. I kicked it off by doing a lot of the priming while Matt was working one Saturday. But since we had to prime and paint (x2) the paneling plus paint (x2) the walls, there was plenty of work left for us to do together.

We decided to go with grey for the walls. Our house is a split-level so the basement actually gets a lot of sunlight since it's only halfway underground. We thought the combo of grey and white would make the basement look more modern, fresh and clean. And the natural light would help the basement not look too dark with the grey on the walls.

One of the gross-est parts of the project was finding spider nests under the baseboards in the cracks between the panels. I didn't actually find any spiders, just their webs but ewwww. We got some super-powered bug spray so hopefully they will stay away. I didn't snap a picture of them, instead you get one of me priming and painting the baseboards in the garage.  

Good thing Matt got those saw horses for Christmas. :)

And here's the finished paint job! Doesn't it look so classy. I was extremely proud of our work when we finished.

We let the paint dry and the room air out for a couple days before we moved the furniture down. Then we waited a couple more days because we had to wanted to wait for our new living room furniture to arrive before we moved the sofa and loveseat downstairs. Here's what the basement looks like now.

I don't think the room looks as nice and classy with the furniture in it. But we weren't going to buy two new furniture sets so the basement gets the leftovers. I do think it looks way better with white and grey walls than the ugly brown paneling and white walls. And I think I'm going to go on the hunt for new pillows. Here's a view from another angle.

 Yes, getting a more appropriately sized tv for the basement is on my list of wants. And on my list of to do's is to hang up some art on the walls. We bought a set of 3 8x10 frames from Ikea that I think will look good but we just need to figure out what pictures we want to put in the frames.

And we need to return the mounted pheasant back to it's spot in the corner. For the amount that Matt paid to get that little guy mounted, we should be displaying it instead of accidentally hiding back behind the stove. 

And I need to reorganize the other items in that area too. I'm a pretty big fan of the chest - I bought it for Matt at a Pheasant Forever auction that he took me to. (If he's going to make me go to a PF banquet, then I'm going to drink. And once I've got a few drinks in me, then I might as well have a little fun by winning him his bday gift. I had no idea that you get such an adrenaline rush when bidding in an auction.)

Also, from these pics it looks like we only put up one set of the blinds. I better go double check on that, since I'm pretty sure Matt bought a set for both sets of windows. 

If you're still reading this, I'm impressed! This was a super long post (which is why it's taken me so long to actually get this written and posted) and the project took awhile to come together too. But it definitely looks 50 times better! And I've actually used this room since we made all the changes, whereas I never used the basement before the paint job. 

So a quick before, during and after....

Before

During

After