I am finishing up my second week of a three-week online course for phoneography. I had never heard of phoneography before signing up, but it’s simply taking pictures with your phone. I have a fairly nice camera, but I never seem to have it in easy reach anymore. Even when I’ve got it in my purse, it’s too cumbersome to pull it out, turn it on, and set the features for the pic I want. My phone, however, is sadly always within reach. I love taking pictures, as you can see by my blog, but I feel like they’ve been missing just something.
That’s what I’ve loved about this class! I’m learning tips and guidelines for great photo-taking, not just with my phone, but especially with my phone. I’ve been learning to recognize and define what it is that I’ve always liked about certain pictures and how to prepare myself for the shot that I want.
The course is taught by Ashley at Under the Sycamore. She is fabulous and a beautiful person inside and out. I’ve been following her blog for a while now and love pretty much everything she puts out there. Not only is it great content, but the photos that accompany her entries are gorgeous! She has a whole slew of ready-models too, with their five kids and yard full of chickens. Talk about blog-envy. 🙂
So, if you are interested in an easy-peasy intro guide to good phoneography, you can sign up on her website. She also offers an online DSLR course for those with fancy shmancy cameras.
I think my favorite part of the course is the photo-sharing. This is done through Instagram. We use the hashtag #snapshopstudent and share the photos we are testing out and wanting some critique on. Not only does Ashley offer valuable advice, but the other students in the course do as well. Here are some of my photos for you (you can click on any of the images for a better look):
Shots around our backyard and neighbor’s yard.impatiens after the rain and a late blooming sunflowerI love my sunflowers! These are growing from the seeds we gave out at our wedding. I was very late in planting them.beautiful sky shots, caterpillar and our shedvintage sugar bowl, painted to fit in with our kitchen; windmill at a local park; niece’s soccer match.berries in the backyard and a blissful afternoon of 1 Peter and white chocolate pumpkin mocha from Cavu Cafe in West Chester.The Huz working on our rain barrel set-up and the wedding quilt his grandmother hand-stitched us.Yes, sunflowers again. 🙂around The House; rain barrel, porch rocker and pavers.
You can find me on Instagram at xapatotheworld. I look forward to seeing you there!
There has been a lot going on of late. I would like to expound on each thing, but for now, I’ll just give you a quick overview.
I have started going to a chiropractor. I would venture that probably half of my church back home is going to this chiropractor. I went when I was a kid and Mom worked for one, but it has been a very long time. I had some discomfort in my left shoulder that gradually got more intense and into regular pain. So, I decided to hop on the bandwagon and check them out. I’m committed for a year (call me crazy!) and hopefully will see the good results my friends and church-family have been seeing. I’ll share more on this later, definitely. For now, you can just go check out their website.
Last Thursday (two Thursdays ago, I guess, since Sunday starts a new week), friends of mine gave offered us tickets to the Cincinnati Tennis event, ATP/WTA Western and Southern Open. I loooove professional tennis. It’s a lot of fun. Matt had never been to a game so that makes it even more fun for me. We were able to get tickets for Thursday night and watched Rafael Nadal play and then Serena Williams. They both won their matches. We even had box seats since the tickets were from someone who works with Rookwood Pottery – that’s an iconic Cincinnati pottery business and they make the trophies given out at the tournament. Very fun. This was our view for the evening:
Nadal had a wedgie the entire tournament and Matt commented on it every time he picked at it…well, maybe not every time. It felt like every time because he picked out his wedgie just about every play. I’m not a huge Nadal fan anyway, so it was annoying. But he’s one of the best in tennis history, so it’s still a good watch…unless he’s picking his wedgie. Dude, get some different undies.
Last Sunday, a man at Matt’s church was giving away from homegrown veggies. I grabbed up a zucchini and then sat around trying to figure out what to do with it. I also have some apples sitting around. Nice, plump, juicy apples. I got the big idea to add some apple to a zucchini bread. Sounds yummy, huh? Oh it was! But a word of warning – it might be a better idea to dry out the apple bits before adding them to your zucchini bread recipe. As it was, my recipe made either 24 muffins or 2 loaves of bread. I just have one pan for each, so I made 12 muffins and 1 loaf. Everything took probably twice as long to bake. I was up very late. I am wondering if the muffin recipe I have just makes really dense breads. I have yet to figure out how to make nice, fluffy breads. I’m guessing it is just something to learn. Regardless, they WERE very yummy! It’s almost all gone between Matt and I. Very dense. I would share the recipe with you, but I’m not really sure it worked the way it was supposed to. So, you can go to http://allrecipes.com and look up “apple zucchini” recipes. There are a bunch of things on there. I’m so glad.
Lastly, We were getting kind of low on our laundry detergent. I pinned more than a year ago this recipe for making your own. Claims to get 9 months of use out of $22+ of ingredients. That sounds fabulous! We haven’t had to buy detergent yet, so I thought it might be time to go ahead and make our own.
Here is the website with the original recipe:
It smelled so good while I was mixing it all together, and all the ingredients are supposed to be gentle for sensitive skin. I used it for my laundry last night and everything smells great! Only 1-2 tablespoons for each load. It’s just the two of us (as opposed to the blogger’s 5-member family) so I’m hoping it lasts us way longer than 9 months.
Oh and all of our ingredients cost $22.10. Woot! Matt’s mother saw my pin and made this over a year ago. She has awful water to work with at their house and this is the only stuff that seems to work and actually get their clothes looking, feeling, smelling clean. When I posted pictures of the finished product, people came out of the woodwork on Facebook commenting about how they have been making their own and love it or asking questions about how to go about doing it themselves. As you can see, we have an HE washer, but it doesn’t seem to have any problem with the detergent. I put the date on some freezer tape and stuck it to the side of the box so I can see how long this batch lasts. I’m pretty pumped.
Have a great week everyone! Hopefully, I can check in with you before another week and a half rolls by.
I had bought, a couple years ago, some photoclips handy for putting together a photo collage on the wall …or wherever…but I didn’t actually decide to use them until this week. We have a lot of empty wall space in The House, but I’ve been hesitant to put anything up until I know exactly where I want everything. It’s a catch-22, that’s for sure.
One space, though, that I did know what I want, was the wall at the end of the hallway. The space is tiny, not even 40 inches wide, but it’s tall. We only just ordered prints of all our wedding photos and I decided that I would go to town with the leftover ones that didn’t make it into the “official” photo album to show people when they visit.
Here are the deets on the photo clips:
I used Lomography Fotoclips. They are everything that I love about an item: functional, unique, creative, adaptable, and a crazy mix of nations (Japanese, Russian, and Austrian [the Japanese might be just an inference on my part, but they feel soooo very Japanese]). I was first tipped off to them by one of the many photography folks I follow on Facebook/Instagram/etc. They put together a mural on their own wall and I loved the concept, so I bought some. They have a hole in the center for a nail for the wall, if you choose to hang up the collage that way,with two wedge openings on opposite sides that grip and connect the adjacent photos.
They grip the photos really well that I wasn’t sure I needed to anchor any clips other than the top ones, but I decided to go ahead and use some ribbon to accent and to hold them all together. Um, I’m not sure how much better I’ll be at describing these things, so you should probably just go to the link above if you’re interested. I will show how I used them below, though.
So, I began by arranging some of the pictures out on the floor. Then, I realized that I should probably measure the wall space before I arranged any more. I did, and then continued to arrange more photos. It was fun. Matt just watched and then I had to leave and then he had to go to work. Here’s the mess I left on the floor.
I like the alternating columns of horizontal and vertical, but it proved difficult when I decided to hang them. I wanted the whole collage to be centered on the wall, but then the divide between the left three columns and the right three columns was not the center of the photos. There was much more measuring, and mathing, and leveling, until I finally got the columns where I wanted them. I drove a nail through one of end of the ribbon and then began to add the photos. I decided that I would use the ribbon as the anchor and every second or third clip, I stitched the ribbon through the hole of the clip to keep it from sliding down or getting too heavy.
I left the ribbons hanging until I decided just how long I wanted the collage to hang. At this point, the columns are hanging by themselves, stitched to their ribbons, but not connected to each other. The clips work great vertically as well as horizontally, and with the extra support of the ribbons, I didn’t have to clip each and every photo to the others. Once it got to a manageable height, I cut the ends of the ribbons and began connecting the columns to each other. They were a tinge off kilter, but I was able to press them down in spots and get them to hang freely close to the wall.
I love the colors and that all the photos are such fun shots. We had a blast at our wedding and I wanted the collage to reflect that and remind us every day as we leave and enter our bedroom that we were made to encourage and live joyful lives. A joyful marriage is something that is so tangible and easily felt by others, and joy is contagious. I think that’s why it’s my favorite Fruit of the Spirit.
By the way, today, Matt and I arranged some stuff for the primary wall in the living room. I’m really pleased with how it turned out.
Don’t mind the obnoxious sun glare…or the blurriness of the following photos. Evidently my photo editing abilities went on vacation today.
I got an idea to turn a basket onto the wall and hang some photos inside it. The basket is a little deeper than I probably would prefer, but I still like how it looks.
I strung some twine through the basket and the attached some Lomo Fotoclips to the horizontal lines. Then, I clipped three photos that show off our whole family: My mom and sisters on the top, Matt’s side in the middle, and my dad and fam on the bottom (with the mustaches…of course). I did add a sunflower for an accent because it just wouldn’t be something of mine without a sunflower.
The map was a gift from my mom when I got home from Japan. I love it. There are pins to tack where I’ve been, where I want to go, and where I’m going next. I don’t have anything in the “next” part, but I have pins all over the map. The plate label says, “XAPA to the world” which is the Greek work for “joy.” It’s pronounced “chara”, by the way, like car-uh.
The shelves are from Ikea, but the knickknacks are from all over. Let’s see, elephants with heart were from my dad and step-mom. I bought the small snow-globe from the airport in Dubai, the next one was from the airport in Moscow, and then an alabaster elephant from Cairo, and I believe the camel came from Israel. On the second shelf is a frame from my aunt, a snowglobe from Tokyo, a big letter M from Michael’s, and the elephants from on top of our wedding cake.
I love traveling and I miss it a lot, but I am loving my new life. These shelves show how I am bringing those two parts of my life together. The paintings on the left were done by me at a paint studio called Paint by the Glass. I’ve done a review on them before. They are so much fun. I did these all over the course of three years, perhaps, and somehow they all ended up looking very similar and matchy, so we put them up together.
I am not done, by any means. There’s a little bit of a wall between this one and the front window where I want these pictures to go:
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I feel like it’s starting to all come together and I’m very excited for it. Yay for new homes!
For the reception, we gave out favors for the adults and the kids. Adults could pick out seed packets of either tall or short sunflower varieties. I had several packs leftover, but I couldn’t decide where to put them. I picked a spot right behind my tickseed to plant some of the short varieties. I only planted them on Saturday and look!
Only 4 days old! Already at least half an inch tall. And I know these aren’t weeds. They’re looking good.
For the tall ones, I’m going to become a living parable of the sower. If you don’t know the parable, it’s found in Mark 4:3-20 in the Bible. It could also be called The Parable of the Seed or The Parable of the Soils, since it’s really about the same sower, same seed, but different types of soils. Anyway, with the tall sunflower seeds, I opted to let them run wild along the fencing between ours and our neighbor’s home. There are lots of weeds there, it can be very dry, but sunflowers were “wild” once and I’m sure can hold their own. Here’s hoping that we can get at least some flowers coming up and be braced along the fence…and that Matt doesn’t weed-whack them to oblivion.
And here are some other grand residents of our garden.
I love the resilience of plants. Rose #1 has clearly been attacked by some sort of creature (and its several brothers, sisters and third cousins twice removed) but there is new growth! She is still kickin! I hammered a fertilizer spike near the plant We’ll see how that goes.
We’ve had a couple new visitors at our seed bag at the kitchen window. We’ve had a family of goldfinches that loooooove hanging around. They have got desensitized to Matt and I standing at the window and watching them. The new guests have not, but I was finally able to snap a photo of the pretty male house finch.
Sorry they’re not more clear. My camera would not focus properly for me. But those guys are so handsome!
We also pulled in the one bookcase that’s all painted. Took a while, and there’s another matching one, but I’ve unloaded some books on to it. Ok, a lot of books. We’re talking about stringing up some Christmas lights around the inside of the sides/tops to add some light. I am very pleased with how it’s all looking. Love it!
I’m in a Bible Study/accountability group with some pretty great ladies. I have known each of them for a range of time and in a range of ways, but we all are newly married (within the last 6 years…I believe) with me being the newest married. We decided at our last meeting that we would take part in a 30 Day Challenge to read Scripture each day. The idea is that you can start a habit in 30 days and so we’ll each be challenged to set a specific time aside each day to read our Bibles. I have been across the globe working as a missionary and yet I feel like I am one of the most undisciplined people out there when it comes to Scripture reading. I tend to gravitate towards making something, playing Farmville (yes, I’m one of those), or reading a classic novel. Those aren’t bad in themselves, but they do take my attention from learning more.
I looked up 30 day reading plans and found a few that looked pretty good. I decided to make up a flash card for each day of the 30 and write the different reading plans on them. Here is what I have for Day 7. I’m only reading the top two plans of each day, but I am really enjoying it.
If you would like to find a good reading plan, here are two great websites to check out.
Either we were lulled into a false sense of security, or my presence no longer intimidates the savage creature.
It’s stealth and cunning. Ah, it is a clever little thing.
I thought that perhaps we could be the one home that it did not stalk through. But no.
Whilst we sat in the other room, unsuspecting, it was there, working its crafty ways.
Only two. Two unmatched and yet similar, unless you put them on and then glaringly obvious. The shock of discovery.
I measured the distance from the two rooms and it is minimal, scarcely any length at all. And yet, they are gone. Vanished in the blink of an eye, or rather, a 50 and 46 minute cycle. The cavern is not deep. The back is clearly visible from the opening and yet, they are not to be found.
How could this be? It is a question that has haunted wives for decades. No good answer can be found. Maybe it’s really a black hole, magically appearing during the spin cycle.
9th: Flour tin is now filled with leftover Skittles from the wedding. (they’ve been moved into the cookie jar since then. There is actually now flour in the flour tin.)
10th: Fire truck called to the bank. Darn cleaning crew!
11th: Matt widens the door on the shed. He’s so handy.
Well, we decided to go see Star Trek last Saturday for my birthday. Rather, I decided and Matt said, “Sure…it’s your birthday!” But he laughed during all the appropriate parts…sometimes during inappropriate parts too. Like, when one character is dying, and there is intense grieving on-screen, he turned to me and said, “Spock says, ‘Whaaaa??’” I did tell him that Vulcan’s don’t have much emotional expression, but I neglected to tell him how Spock is part human and therefore, capable of expressing emotions. Moot point. I shrugged it off and went back to my tears.
We stopped at Red Robin for dinner. My first time. *First times!* I got the Chili Chili Cheeseburger. Can you say yum?
All that was left. It was so tempting that I forgot to take a before photo.
We got a box of gift cards to restaurants and such at one of the wedding showers, so my birthday date night only cost us about $10 max and that was leftover cost of meal and tip. Very nice afternoon/evening.
I’ve been trying to make this place more homey and together. It’s been hard because there are still boxes about that need to be unpacked. I can’t do that until I paint the bookshelves and start getting things on the walls. It’s a mess.
But I did manage to pull out the tablecloth and napkins and iron them out. I’m just saying, tablecloths are my least favorite thing to iron.
Sure looks pretty, but I’m still not sold that it was worth the effort. Not to mention, it’s a round tablecloth! Ugh. Anyway, those are the flowers from the Huz. We’ve actually had two meals at the table now, since I put it together. That’s nice.
I’ve even been cooking. I had bought some various kinds of meat and thrown them in the freezer until we got around to doing something with them. I’ve been eyeing the tilapia that’s been in there for a while now, but I’ve never made fish before…besides fish sticks as a kid, and I have long since thrown those out of my diet. So, I went to good old Allrecipes.com and searched, “Easy tilapia.” No joke.
Ok, the fish IS in there, and it tasted yummy. I forego most things with lemon, and I went ahead and increased the amount of melted butter. It was pretty wonderful. There was so much seasoning on the fish, that I didn’t put much more than salt and pepper in the mashed potatoes…which I made from scratch. Go me! 🙂 You have no idea what an accomplishment this is for someone like me. I have never felt comfortable in a kitchen unless I was baking something, and then I’m right at home. Cooking is too ambiguous for me; there just aren’t enough rules. But I think I’ll keep trying at it. Matt certainly hopes that I will.
Speaking of kitchen, I walked into mine last night and found some tiny black ants crawling on one of the counters. Just in one little spot. You could tell they were just starting to explore. Ugh. I pulled everything off that section – they weren’t in anything yet, so it was a good catch. I stopped by Home Depot after work today and picked up some bait things and some spray.
They caught on pretty quick. I went down for a nap and when I woke up 30 mins later, they were all over the trap. And then taking it home to their queen….to MURDER her! muahahaa! I let them go back and forth between the bait and their lair for a few hours and then sprayed the perimeter. The stuff must be pretty potent because there is little to no movement in that corridor now. Maybe I’ll leave the carcasses for Huz to clean up. 🙂 That sounds great!
I mentioned that I have some bookshelves to paint before I can really start putting the house together. Well, here’s one!
This used to be my dad’s…way back in his college days. I didn’t know that until a week or so ago. This isn’t its finished state. I am just getting started. But i think it’s going to be good. It’s a short one and then I have its two big brothers to paint after it. Wish me luck! I love painting. 🙂
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Garden Update:
Not much to report, except that I was weeding the other day and came across these!
Yipes! Those things were huge! I don’t know what I’m going to do with this garden bed. There’s no telling what will come out of it. Ugh. Good news, though, my Impatiens are doing beautifully and starting to really fill in! Yay! Off to finish painting!
So, Friday was my birthday! Yippee! Last year to be in my twenties and I’m starting it out right – married! Such a different way of life than I’m used to, but I’m loving every minute of it. Except when the Huz is working 3rds and I have to sleep by myself. That part isn’t so much fun.
But back to the birthday.
A day early, my dad stopped by my work to give me a gift from him and my step-mom. It was very appropriate for me. in fact, I believe I remember seeing a similar one elsewhere, perhaps at the Cox Arboretum gift shop.
Sadly, I had to work most of the day Friday. But when Huz got home, he had brought flowers and my gifts in. They were pretty fab gifts. It’s like he knows me or something.
Yep, that’s birdseed and a bat house. I absolutely cannot wait to get the bat house and the “Space available” sign up. I love bats so much. Now, don’t go thinking that I’m crazy or anything. Bats are incredibly helpful! One North American Brown Bat can eat a pound of mosquitoes EACH night! I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand mosquitoes. That automatically puts them up on the list. Although, spiders are good for mosquito catching…but spiders don’t have sweet little, almost puppy-like faces.
You cannot tell me that that face isn’t cute 🙂
We have to find a good place for the house. They like high locations with easy access and in direct sunlight for most of the day (they like it hot in their homes…probably another reason why I like them some much). I think I’ll need to call the OSU Extension office here soon. Besides, I have to figure out what we’re going to do with our weeping cherry tree.
Saturday is a free day. Huz will be sleeping until about 3 and then we can run around and go see a movie, maybe buy me a new computer (we have leftover wedding money) – one with a number pad…and Microsoft Office. Sigh…that would be so nice. It’s my excuse for not putting together a house budget yet. Maybe I should postpone a little longer….hmm.
Oh, Thursday night, I decided I wanted to bake and make the house smell yummy. I picked up some strawberries and came home to get started. The plan was to make strawberry muffins, but that quickly changed into a strawberry loaf. Same concept, just wanted to break in the new Pampered Chef stone loaf pan we got as a gift. I’m so glad I did. It turned out super yummy. Because it was muffin batter, it was a little dense (think Amish friendship bread) but it was great and when lathered with a layer of cream cheese….yum!
I had some friends request the recipe I used, so here it goes. The “putting together” part is a little tricky, but I haven’t had a bad batch using this method. I’ll put the instructions for the muffins or the loaf.
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Strawberry (or other fruit) Muffins or Loaf
Ingredients
Wet
1 cup milk
1 egg
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp vanilla (optional)
1 cup chopped fruit
Dry
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsps baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 or 1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional…but always recommended!)
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 400*F (205C) for muffins or 375*F (191C) for a loaf.
2. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners. If making a loaf, grease the inside of the pan (stone pans don’t need to be greased unless they haven’t been used often).
3. In a small bowl, combine the wet ingredients (oil, milk, egg, vanilla). Beat lightly.
4. In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, cinnamon).
5. Toss in fruit and coat with dry mixture.
6. Pour wet mixture into the dry and stir together.
7. Spoon batter into cups or pour into loaf pan.
8. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Tops should bounce back from touch. If making a loaf, bake for about 45-50 minutes. Use a toothpick to determine if the center is finished baking.
Here are a couple of variations to consider:
* For a crunchy top, sprinkle sugar over batter before baking. It’s important you do it before you bake…it just doesn’t work if it’s after. Trust me. *facepalm*
* For a sweeter top, spread raw honey over the top of muffins after baked (still warm). I haven’t done this with the loaf, but I imagine that it would taste about the same. Love that raw honey!
* Chunky Monkey Muffins – I made these in Japan and they were sooooo good! Substitute the whole cup of fruit with this mixture: 1/2 cup chopped banana and another 1/2 cup of small marshmallows, nuts (I think I used crushed walnuts), and mini chocolate chips (you’ll have a total of 1 cup fruit+extras, not a 1/2 cup for each of those items).
Enjoy!
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I’ll leave you with a couple other shots.
Isn’t she pretty? I still don’t have a name for her. I need a name people. Help a lady out here!
I think the best thing about having silverware all different colors is that when I pull them out of the dishwasher, I can easily grab all of the same kind and put them away more quickly. And…it’s pretty to look at.
Have a great rest of your weekend and, oh yeah, Happy Father’s Day!
I decided to add a new roommate to our garden. The new office I work at has a sweet little outdoor nursery behind it and I couldn’t help but stop and peruse. I have tried to limit myself to annuals this year, since we’re planning to raise the garden beds in the front and in the back (don’t really know how long that will take us, though). The rose bush was a gift, the tickseed – I couldn’t do without, and there are some bulbs that I planted but will dig up once we get the ground moving.
Clockwise from top right: 1) Coleus flowers! I forgot that they had flowers. Sorta redeems them for their large oafish greenishness. 2) Rose #2 didn’t make it, so I pulled it out and replaced it with one of the tickseed plants. As you can see, it’s thriving! 3) Newest addition – Apricot Punch. It’s some sort of petunia, a “proven winner!”, and probably is supposed to hang from a basket, but I hope it will take to being a ground cover and fill in the gaps between my impatiens. 4) Rose #1 and Week 8! It’s gonna have white flowers!! I’m so excited.
I took the remaining sunflower seed packets that we gave out as favors to our reception guests and handed them out at work. I even gave some to the customers and it was a lot of fun. I didn’t really care to have people congratulating me and asking all the questions – I’m not a huge fan of attention – but it was nice. I sure hope they grow! I’m going to plant mine soon and see how it goes. The key will be to keep them out of reach of the bunnies…challenge accepted!
I was able to do a little bit of organizing and get some of our decorations from the reception that I planned to use in our home too. The Huz put together a lamp with shelves below it. Here is one level.
I love our unity candle and *those birds!* Sweet little things from Michaels for less than $5. The M is from Michaels and painted with acrylic. I will be putting together a list of the Etsy vendors we used for the wedding soon. If you are desperate to know where the candle or the stand came from, feel free to ask. I’ll have to wrangle the name up.
Also, you should know about this stuff.
I love caramel. I love tea. I love bedtime tea. This stuff is amazing. The smell is glorious. The Huz says that it smells like Christmas, and I’d have to agree. Here are the ingredients.
We don’t have many pics from the wedding just yet. People were very gracious with not taking photos during the ceremony, and our hired photographer has been very busy, what with it being wedding season and all. We do have one preview from her and a few others though to share. Also, I apologize for the pics being stacked one after another; I didn’t have time to edit them into multi-images.
Isn’t that fun? I am dying to see more photos!! Honestly, pins and needles here.
We decided not to spend a great deal of money right off the bat (especially with all the money we spent on the wedding) and so we stayed put and had what we are calling, a Homeymoon. We didn’t go anywhere, get away from The House or anything, didn’t put any major time constraints on ourselves. And it was glorious! This was my first time living in The House and it was nice to get acclimated to the territory. Plus, I was exhausted. Very wiped out.
We were instructed to open our cards the very next day (well, at least one of them) and discovered a gift card to Ruth’s Chris Steak House in downtown Cincinnati, a note of a reservation made for the next night, and tickets to the Reds game! It was our first time out of The House, since I had stocked us up with food. We really didn’t need to leave just yet. We had a blast. We got an appetizer of veal-stuffed ravioli. So wonderfully good! I got lamb chops for my main course and Matt got the steak filet. It was very upper-crust and way pricier than we would ever have done ourselves. They knew we had just got married too, so they came and chatted with us quite a bit, put rose petals on the table and gave us a complimentary dessert!
The seats to the Reds game were pretty amazing too – just about 100 ft from 1st base. We only ever go if the tickets are free, or if there’s a large group of friends going and we’re sitting in the cheapo nosebleed section. They won, too! That doesn’t normally happen when I come to a game so that was a very nice treat!
We also went to Target and picked up a bunch of the bigger items we had wanted, but didn’t get in gifts. We now have a pretty good amount of storage in the bathroom and have most of our kitchen supplies and bed linens. It’s been great getting everything put together. Another great was checking out with $740 worth of stuff and only having to pay $40 above what the gift cards would pay for. We definitely made out like bandits! And Matt was excited because he had things to put together. 🙂
The only other big outing we did was to the Cincinnati Museum Center. The original plan was to go to the zoo, but it was raining cats and dogs. By the time we got downtown, we thought that was enough wildlife for the day and decided to romp around indoors. They are showing a special on the monarch butterfly at the Omnimax. It was really beautiful. They did a preview of the dinosaur show coming up, but there’s not much to report on that except for the baby in the third row’s reaction. She kept crying and saying, “Bye bye! Bye bye!” lol. Sad that the mom did leave with her right after the film started; I think she would’ve liked it once it got started, but I’m glad she wasn’t in there crying the whole time.
We also went up to Tower A where they used to control all of the many trains that went through the terminal. I love the art deco appearance of the building, but it was completely functional in its day. Now, there are still trains that come through, but not nearly the same volume. The tower has some really cool artifacts and an incredible view!
The Huz and I love learning about how things work and the more technical and mechanical, often, the better! There were some really fun vehicles that would drive over the rail cars and pick them up then rush all over the place, sometimes putting them on a truck load. The guy driving was suspended way above the ground and it was crazy how fast they could drive!
I love this city. Cincinnati breathes home to me and even though the highway system drives me nuts, I love driving into it and seeing that familiar skyline. I’m so glad that we chose to have a Homeymoon and spend time around the city and in our home.
Xapa to the World 