Fall

The season is turning from fall to winter and I'm not ready! I just want to hang on to late September/early October weather forever.

What have you been doing this fall?  As for me, my weekends have been spent cleaning, watching football and baking.  I associate food with cooler weather.  I love to start pulling out the slow cookers for meals and soups and comfort food and I enjoy getting up on weekends and making breakfast for M when we have no place to go.

I've made pumpkin bread, pumpkin banana bread and apple cinnamon bread this season already and I can't wait to make more.  I can't eat them all myself so my coworker's are the recipients of a lot of my baked goods as well as my mom.

Soon I'll be starting to think about Christmas cookies and what will be in the lineup for this year.  To assist in my baking this year, I bought myself a new gift this week.  Taa Daaaaa!

I've wanted a Kitchenaid stand mixer for years and I finally bought one.  I found it for a pretty good deal being on sale for $100 off the price and then having an additional 30% off plus a rebate.  It's the same color as the box shows called Liquid Graphite.  If I didn't care about what it looked like in my kitchen, I would have chosen one of these colors!

My mom decided to give me a Christmas present early because of my new purchase.  She bought me these adorable mini loaf pans.  I love them!

I put apples in them for reference

Do you have a Kitchenaid mixer?  Do you love it?  Do you use it a lot?

What hobbies are you doing this fall that you enjoy?

North Shore Day One

**Boy, am I behind on blogging.  I started this post on 9/22 and I'm just finishing it now.**

The north shore trip that we had scheduled since last Spring couldn't have come at a better time.  I needed a break from reality and this was it for me.  How I wish I was still there.  Even though we weren't up there that long, I felt like we did a lot and the easiest way to blog about it is to break it up in sections so today I'll talk about day one.

We left our house on Thursday, September 13th at about 8 am and headed to Duluth.  We went to Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, hung out and watched a ship depart from Canal Park and walked around the area until the noon hour where we headed up to Two Harbors to stay in our cabin for one night. 

*Lots of pictures ahead!*

We drove around Stoney Point.

We arrived at Bob's Cabins at little after 1 pm.  We checked in, got our keys, unpacked the car and walked out to the shore.  There was a ship passing right by us...the same boat we saw leave Canal Park. 

We had never stayed at Bob's Cabins before but I knew they were old and have always been old.  They are rustic and don't have a TV and was advertised without a microwave even though there was one in the cabin. Our thoughts?  We absolutely loved this place.  It was perfect for people who want to relax and be quiet.  If you are the party crowd, this place is not for you.  We will definitely be coming back. 

Some of the beauty from our cabin/shoreline:

I haven't been to Tom's Logging Camp since I was a kid.  We drive by every year and I always want to stop and for a variety of reasons, we never do.  I was adamant about going there this time.  Nothing has really changed except the store seems so tiny.  When I was a kid, this store was huge.  I bought some sort of cedar jewelry box each year and they still have the same ones there that I remember.  We also went on the small tour around the grounds to see the animals and the museum of old machinery and different logging camp scenes and stories.

We picked up food at Gil's and brought it back to the cabin.  We relaxed listening to music and talking before heading out for the night and going to Two Harbors to watch the Packers/Bears game at the bar.  Afterwards, we had a late night fire on the beach and watched that same ship from Canal Park earlier in the day depart Two Harbors at midnight miles up the shore. 

A Big Long Post About Snow and Football

The state of Minnesota’s weather is always misconceived by people who live in other states. If you’ve never been here or lived here before, some people think that it’s cold and snowing here all year round but this weekend’s weather was exactly how other people out of state perceive Minnesota.

On Friday night, it started to snow and it didn't stop until Saturday night, but not before accumulating anywhere from 17-20 inches at my house. The media kept referring to the storm as a blizzard and I wanted to know exactly what the definition of a blizzard is so here are the two meanings I've found:

What is a blizzard?

There are two somewhat different meanings for the word "blizzard". "Blizzard conditions" technically occur when strong winds (at least 35 mph) combine with either falling snow or snow on the ground to reduce visibilities to 1/4 mile or less for at least three hours. According to this definition, blizzard conditions can occur without any falling snow -- it is just severe blowing snow. This is sometimes referred to as a "ground blizzard".

The other common meaning of "blizzard" is a strong winter cyclone event producing large snowfall accumulations, usually combined with strong winds causing blowing and drifting of snow.

STUCK BETWEEN HIGH AND LOW PRESSURE- Blizzard winds are created when a strong low pressure area is close to a strong high pressure area. The air "tries" to flow from high pressure to low pressure, but the turning of the Earth causes the air to turn to the right (in the Northern Hemisphere), and the wind ends up flowing around the low pressure area, rather than directly toward it.

And while I’m at it, here’s the definition of wind chill:

The temperature of windless air that would have the same effect on exposed human skin as a particular combination of wind speed and air temperature. As the wind blows faster, heat is lost more quickly from exposed skin, making a person feel colder even though the air temperature remains the same.

When I was a kid, I called it “windshield” because that’s what I thought people were saying. I have to stop and think before I say “wind chill” because I still want to say “windshield”.

This winter storm was the 5th largest in Minnesota history, which means I now remember 3 of the top 5....The Halloween snow storm of 1991 that dropped 28.4 inches in the Twin Cities and I vaguely remember the snowstorm in January 1982. We received something like 20 inches on January 20th and another 22 inches on January 22nd. My birthday is in between those dates and no one showed up for my 5th birthday party because of the snow. Poor me.

M and I didn’t leave the whole weekend, the same as a lot of people I assume. We didn’t have or need to go anywhere because we stocked up on everything we needed on Friday night and frankly, wouldn’t even have been able to leave until yesterday afternoon when our 100 foot driveway was finished being shoveled mostly by M and a little bit by me in sub zero temperatures and wind chills. I peeked out the window at one point and saw M lying in the snow bank. I assumed he was just resting from shoveling so I thought I would take a picture of him from the window with his bundle of clothing and deer hunting garb on. I took a few pictures of him and then hung around the kitchen tidying up and looked out again later and he was still lying there. Then I started to get concerned that he had just had a heart attack from shoveling snow.  I opened up the door and jokingly but yet serious, yelled, “Are you dead?!” He popped his head up so that was a good sign. Just resting. 

Looking out from our window- Can't see the driveway at all.  Look at how much snow is on the upper left deck across the street at the apartments

"Are you dead?!"

So what did I do all weekend? Cleaned a little, did some laundry, watched a movie and some TV, baked chocolate chip cookies, made tacos and a pasta salad and watched football…football from home when we were supposed to be at the Vikings game on Sunday.

Now unless you live somewhere with no access to the media or you do not pay attention to football, the Vikings game was postponed from Sunday at noon to Monday night due to weather and the New York Giants plane diverting to Kansas City due to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport either being closed or intermittently open with only one working runway which had to be shut down about

every 30 minutes to plow the snow off of it. Oh, and then there was some concern of the safety of the Metrodome due to the massive amounts of snow on the inflatable roof.

So, around 5 am on Sunday morning, the dome’s Teflon roof collapsed and tore open in three areas.

This amazing video shows it all:

The rescheduled Monday night Vikings game to be played at the Metrodome was now rescheduled to be played in Detroit at Ford Field. Ah, nothing like a “home” game being played in another city’s house, which also happens to be in your division. The Vikings lost to the Giants 21-3, in a pathetic outing.  It was announced shortly before the game that Favre would not start, which snapped his streak for consecutive starts at 297.  I can now say that I saw Favre's last consecutive game against the Bills last week and it's possible that was the last game of his career.    

Being that M is a Vikings season ticket owner, he’ll be “refunded” the cost of the tickets for tonight's game which actually means that he’ll get a credit towards 2011’s season tickets for this game, however it is still up in the air as to where next Monday night's game will be played depending on whether the U of M's TCF Stadium can make all the accommodations as well as whether the dome can be repaired quickly enough, but the home games for me and the Vikings might be done for this year. 

Here is a picture of the Metrodome that M took today on his lunch break:

How was your commute today?  I spent just over 3 hours in the car today between my morning and evening commute.  Here's hoping for a better Tuesday drive.  I did see multiple one car accidents, involving a car and a snow bank.  I got a picture of one of them.

A Beautiful Saturday

I have had some less-than-ordinary stress in my life for the last month or so experiencing the day I had last Saturday made me forget some things temporarily.  M and I went on a motorcycle ride mid-morning and wouldn't be back for almost 8 hours.  The weather was unseasonably warm for October with the temperature in the 80's.  We didn't have a destination in mind other than maybe going north.  Follow me on the journey:


We started at Aamodt's Apple Farm in Stillwater, where it was extremely packed.  I want to say there were a thousand cars in the parking areas but I'm sure that's exaggerated.  Because we were on the bike, we didn't have room to buy anything but we bummed around and sampled some apples and honey.

We stopped in upper Stillwater to eat lunch at Acapulco. The worst service ever and we won't be back to that location.  We got on the bike and headed through downtown Stillwater, which was packed.  We weren't sure what was going there but we knew it wasn't just because the weather was so beautiful.  After finally getting through downtown, we headed north up 95 and went to visit Jackson Meadow, which wasn't scary at all this time and then headed to St. Croix Chocolate Company for a treat.  We each had two pieces of chocolate.  This chocolate is the best I've ever had.  

We headed further north to Osceola Landing.  This is the same picnic area that we usually pull into and have our lunch when we are on our annual canoe trip.  Because of a busy summer, we weren't able to go on this trip for the first time in five years.  We'll be going next year for sure.  The day was somewhat hazy so it's reflected in the pictures.  The fall leaves and colors were past their peak but the foliage was still colorful as we crossed into Osceola, Wisconsin and rode around on back roads. 

 

   

When Michael was in his early teens-20's at his job at the time, he "dipped" (put the plastic coating on) this bench. We sat and had some ice cream at the park behind Coffee Connection. 

We headed back south on the Wisconsin side through Somerset where we stopped in on my Aunt Terri and Uncle Ken at their house.  Do you remember that cat that both M and I agonized about taking?  Instead of them taking the cat to the Humane Society, they ended up keeping her, which made me happy. 

We stopped at an old drive-in movie theatre, which we found out is a place where they have outdoor church from May to September.  I've driven by this so many times but have never driven in until now.

Finally, we headed back into Minnesota through Stillwater where the traffic was still bad.  After talking with Ken and Terri, they said there was a pumpkin contest going on in Stillwater and the largest pumpkin weighed in at over 1800 lbs so we decided to check them out.

 

 

The St. Croix River is very high and is flooding areas of walkways by the river. With the setting sun shining on the trees along the river, the colors were much more vibrant. 

On our way home, we stopped by the cemetery to say hi to Cherrie and Rainy just as it was starting to get dark. 

The day was perfect.  Just M, me, the motorcycle and the day's experiences.