Life has been crazy. Christmas snuck up on us and then was gone even quicker. After Christmas I got super sick for over a week and being pregnant and sick is not fun. We didn’t do anything for NYE, I don’t think we even watched the ball drop. We are party animals can’t you tell. I haven’t blogged in a while so this is a hodge podge of photos.
Arie knows a change is coming
This is my new purse I got from Etsy. I love it, it is real leather and from Barcelona.
I made gluten free banana bread, I havne’t had it in years. It was delicious
My fall craft.
Looked great on the front porch.
our festive porch
Carl bought milk and said, you know your due date is close when it’s the date your milk expires.
I swapped the trees for christmas
Carl did the tree and I did the porch trees
Arie loved the fresh snow
Shoveling is a family activity
Carl took this picture of Arie! This is a great photo
I loved our tree this year and it had the perfect spot.
Arie stuck close to me in the last weeks of pregnancy.
Our gluten free cut out cookies
We had to have baby Jesus
Another sweet photo of Arie that Carl took.
The end of the year was good, minus being sick. The best was to come and sooner than we would have known. 🙂
My second baby shower was hosted by my best friend and we had it at my house. It was the beginning of November which in the Midwest, you will never know what weather you get. We lucked out, we had beautiful sunny, warm weather. We all sat outside on our deck, we needed sunglasses and probably sunscreen, I think a few people might have gotten sunburned. The weather was perfect with the theme of Tacos, Margaritas and Sangria. We did some prep ahead of time to make the day of easier. I was excited to have all of my favorites! My friend did an awesome job!
Here are a few photos of the day.
the delicious taco spread we had
the sangria and blue margaritas
Arie went to the groomer before the shower
It was a beautiful day
the baby shower favors
one of my aunts couldnt make it and she sent us a card. She hand makes her cards!
This year we were busy the week of my birthday- we had something planned every other day.
October 30th- Sunday, we had tickets to the Amos Lee Concert, which was amazing! There is something about his music and something even more when it’s live. I am so glad we got tickets.
a few pictures, we had good seats
October 31st- Halloween
Loved our pumpkins this year
November 1st- my birthday Carl took me too a very fancy steak house- Ruth Chris Steak House I had lobster which was amazing and Carl had steak. Carl, got me a pedicure gift certificate, pretty earrings and tickets to A Christmas Carol play! It was a great birthday and very memorable.
What a great birthday! Thanks Honey!
November 2nd- I had gotten us tickets to tour US Bank Stadium, that was an awesome tour and well worth it.
Walking out on the field
Walking through the Delta Lounge
Vikings locker room
Prince Tribute, its made up of his song lyrics
Press box view
The week was packed and it wasn’t over yet, on Friday I had to clean for our 2nd baby shower that was at our house that weekend! Needless to say, I was pooped by Sunday!
I am blessed by the memories that were had during our busy week!
Our first baby shower was hosted by my mom and I know my pa helped a little! 🙂 I have called baby wild thing because he really likes to move and wiggle. My mom took that and wanted to do the Where The Wild Things Are theme for the shower, it turned out great! She was so creative and worked hard to find the cool decorations! We decided on soup, bread, veggies, hot apple cider and sangria. The guests had a lot of fun. My mom out did herself and it was such a special day! Our peanut is loved by so many and he doesn’t know it yet! 🙂
Here are some fun photos from the shower!
the guests were greeted by the fun porch decorations
My mom had the guests sign the book
My pa picked out the flowers for the table
My cousin was awesome and made the cupcakes and the display
My mom got the picks for the cupcakes
the balloons had Where the Wild Things Are stickers on them
I made sangria
My MIL made the veggie tray and made it into a train! So cute for a boy baby shower
Our food of choice was soup! My mom nailed the soups, corn chowder, wild rice and broccoli and cheese
These were the cute favors we put together for the guests
Thank You Mom and Pa for throwing us a fun baby shower!
We had a September cookout with our families. That is when we decided to do our gender reveal of our little peanut and we used cupcakes with the colored buttercream filling. I connected with a local girl who bakes cupcakes and cakes and was fabulous.
We had a fun afternoon, we did a cookout with our parents and siblings. We used the cupcakes as our “dessert”! It was so much fun to be able to share this moment with our families and have them be apart of it! My sister did a great job of keeping the secret. She worked with the baker to have the cupcakes made. This was rather emotional for me, because before, I had baby BUT know I am learning that it is a boy or girl that I have to raise, that’s a tall order! We had my little sister video tape the reveal so we could message it to family who couldn’t be there with us.
Here are a few photos that were snapped by family.
We used our chalkboard to take tallies
My sister made me cry before the reveal.
The cupcakes were amazing!
Loved the colors!!!!
This was actually really emotional for me. Arie had to be apart of it.
A few weekends ago, we went to a local food truck festival. It was free to get in, there was live music, beer and food of course.
I specifically wanted to go because of the Tot Boss-I tired the tots at the fair when I stopped and had to have them again. His truck had a continuous line of people wanting the tots. We tried a food truck that had delicious indian food and a truck that had kickin caribbean food.
Here are a few photos I snapped.
It was a great day
There were about 23 food trucks
The lines for Tot Boss
Delicious-Loaded Tots
Hot Indian Food
There was a cupcake food truck but they didn’t have GF so we went to a local place to get GF cupcakes
This was a fun day and something to do! I will definitely be keeping my eye open for these food trucks around town.
In June this year, I bought tickets for us to go to the Duluth Tall Ships Festival, it had been a few years since the ships had been Up North, I really wanted tickets for the event in August. There were about 8 ships that came into the harbor. On Thursday, they had the Parade of Sails, where we got to see all the ships come into the harbor under the Aerial Lift Bridge with their sails open. We got down to the lift bridge around 10am and waited until about 3:00pm. It was a hot day, but towards the end, the weather was starting to change and a storm was rolling in. Some of the ships you could tour or sail on. I bought the fast pass tickets to be able to tour the ships. We got to tour 3 of the ships, one of ships was so popular that some people waited hours to see it-glad we had fast pass tickets!
Here are a handful of photos. You couldn’t get a “great” photo as there was so many people, lightening and using a iPhone played a role.
This was our spot for the Parade of Sails
The navy ship opened the parade
The worlds largest rubber duck was a big attraction
The Galeon was the popular spanish replica that everyone wanted to see.
It was a cool ship
We stayed with my friend and she took us to this place to eat. It was on Diner Drive-in’s and Dives
Waiting in line to tour the ship
Captain Jack Sparrow made an appearance
another ship we toured
The other ship we toured
A busy harbor
Rubber Duckie You’re the One! 🙂
We did get to see all the ships and everything we wanted in Thursday and Friday. So Saturday was a free day for us to explore Duluth.
Here a few recipes that we have made in the last month or so.
This was chicken and lime soup. This was good, but to give more substance to the soup, I added rice. Carl did say, next time if I make it, I have to thicken the sauce a little more. It was fresh and light tasting.
This recipe is from Budget Bytes, I love her blog, I have cooked other recipes from there before.
Last week, I found this recipe on Pinterest. Carl really likes orange chicken, this was easy, made a lot and I made it gluten free. I liked that the sauce was only 3-ingredients. I did use the whole jar of orange marmalade, I didn’t want a strong BBQ sauce taste. This is from the Blog Crafty Morning, I haven’t cooked from there before.
I had to share these photos from August when my family got together at my parents house up north! So all my sisters are amazing cooks and I love when they share that with us. 🙂 She made us homemade individual pizzas.
All of the different ingredients
She used nan bread for the small ones
the big one was a gluten free crust
They were good, she used roasted tomatoes, sausage, fresh goat and mozzarella cheese, fig spread and arugula!
The last weekend of July, Carl and I went to Duluth-North Shore to snap a few photos. I am looking for photos to hang in the basement and possibly a 3-piece canvas upstairs in the kitchen. I mentioned going to the places where we did our First Look photos on our wedding. We got to Duluth early, we weren’t prepared for what we saw. I knew a few weeks before they had a big storm with at least 100mph winds. But when we got to the park where we started our photos. large trees where down so we didn’t get some of the photos we wanted. The first photo below shows the first spot we saw each other, there is a large tree down in the spot where we stood. We worked our way around Duluth and Lake Superior for the day! We had beautiful weather!
Here are some of the cell phone photos I snapped. the good photos Carl took are on the laptop and my brother let us use his camera, which was awesome!
Lester Park- where we did our wedding first look photos, almost two years ago.
we have a photos in this spot from our wedding. But it had beautiful green moss up the stairs
Brighton Beach is another spot where we did photos on our wedding day.
I love being on the north shore.
If you look close enough you can see the Aerial Lift Bridge
The seagulls were hanging out on the rock
We had a beautiful day to hang out!
Down in Canal Park
Aerial Lift Bridge
There were lots of fishing boat charters going in and out.
They were catching huge lake trout
Love the boardwalk
Just sitting on a bench enjoying the weather, view and people watching
There were people diving into the water from the top of that building in the water
We had a blast, enjoying each others company and the weather
The big boat out in the water is the one we got married on.
Our view during lunch sitting on the patio
My delicious Mojito!
While we were eating about 5 horse and buggy’s walked by
When ever we go to the North Shore, we always meet up with our friend! 🙂
The walking bridge, we went under that on wedding day.
It was a great day for sailing
I know if you follow my Blog, I have a handful of posts from Duluth-North Shore. I love going to the North Shore, It makes me so happy, relaxed and makes me forget the fast pace of life for a short period of time. I have so many childhood memories that I will never forget and it has become a great place that Carl and I have made memories. It really does have a special place in my heart!
We are heading back to Duluth this week for the Tall Ships to sail in! Can’t wait!
Go Blondie! 