Busy Bee

What can I say, I'm a bad blogger. I confess that I've been busy living; busy creating memories, and getting ready for the Houghton Craft Show at the end of September.

If you've ever owned a business you know that building up inventory takes awhile.

I've had a lot of Try.Fail.Learn.Repeats lately. All good artists do.

BUT…..

School started for the girls and I'm happy to announce that we are all surviving. I'm totally thrilled that I get an extra 6 hours a week of ME time. I know that sounds selfish, but I need a little me time. Every sane parent does.

We've also had picnics in the living room when it was too wet to do it outside.

Mitch and I had a date night, the first in A LONG TIME! The Japanese Lantern Festival did not disappoint in the slightest! Seriously folks, it was AMAZING!

So as I neglect the blog, know that I"m busy doing other things like making ornaments. I confess, I'm an ornament making addict. It's bad. I could have been an elf in a past life without a problem.

Making Lego Crayons to sell takes up a lot of time, but….

in the mornings while I work on them I get visited by hummingbirds! Truck loads of them. I've got a great thing going here. I really do!

These two….heck, all three of my girls are growing up too fast before my eyes! It amazes me everyday how much they grow, change, and create themselves every single day. They make me a better person, because they stretch me out of my comfort zone with their tempers, their whining, their arguments, and the drama. One day I pray that they will grow up to love and cherish each other. Today I'm blessed if there are no tears. Being a stay at home mom is not for the faint of heart. I've learned to really appreciate what one goes thru. 

I still miss my parents everyday, but that isn't anything new. It's nice though, that they still think of me, still include me in their lives by sending me pictures of what they are doing. You can follow them too on mom's blog if you are interested. Her blog is: http://womenofcoldcomfortfarm.blogspot.com

They keep me dreaming…they keep me motivated too by showing me that even though they are retired they haven't stopped living life. Instead they get out of their comfort zones too everyday and make their world, and others a better place to be. I have aspirations of following in their footsteps one day, but one thing at a time. Now it's time to get the girls off to school. Meet you all on the flip side!

Project: Rhubarb Gin

This is how a lot of my "ideas" start. Some series of events happen, and I either am inspired, or come up with another way, that maybe just maybe, I can replicate it or have hopes of making it better. I'm a naturally creative person, I don't think I can help it. To prove my point, I recently bought a shirt that says, "I make things - I get sad if I don't." That pretty much sums up a lot of my creative personality. 

It's true. 

So on our recent trip Wisconsin we went to a restaurant, and they were out of everything we wanted to drink, so this forced me out of my comfort zone to pick something other than water. This series of events led me to order the Rhuby Can't Fail.

This was the Rhuby Can't Fail. I seriously took one sip, and was seriously amazed! It was great, it tasted fantastic even with the basil in it, and I knew we weren't going to be close to this place anytime soon so I figured out that if I wanted to ever have this drink again something had to be done about that. So I was going to attempt to make Rhubarb Gin. See how these things happen…

So I did a search on Pinterest (Good 'Ol Pinterest) and I came up with a few hits. I liked this link the best out of all of them

Rhubarb Link 

But the problem was this whole thing was in ml's and grams.  So that was fun! I've worked out the recipe for you in cups for you so that it makes your life so much easier.

Ingredients:

3 cups of grain alcohol/neutral spirit

3 cups of sugar

3 cups of water

4-5 cups of chopped rhubarb 

1 orange peel

This is what Rhubarb looks like if you are
unfamiliar with it.

So what you are going to want to do is combine the shopped rhubarb, the orange peel, and the alcohol in to a large wide mouth container. I had a Ball Jar sitting around so that's what we used. We let this sit on the counter for a little over two weeks. We shook it every day.

After two weeks it was ready to go!

So in the link it mentions using a coffee filter to separate the gin from the rhubarb and orange peel. Mitch decided on a better way…my coffee press! IT WAS GENIUS! Seriously, if you have a french press around, use it, it makes life SO much easier trying to separate the gin and fruit.

Et Viola!

So this next part is wicked easy. Put a sauce pan on your stove top, add your water and sugar. Now the recipe calls for three cups of sugar. I added two and about a quarter cups to our. I'm thinking that with the lemonade mix and all that's A LOT of sugar, but that's just me. I don't like my drinks too sweet. Go ahead and heat up your water until the sugar dissolves. After that's finished put it in a container that you will keep in the fridge. I just rinsed out that handy dandy multi purpose Ball jar. Might as well.

Use a funnel, it makes life easier.

So after your simple syrup mixture of the water and sugar is cooled, go ahead, and put that in the fridge for when you are ready to drink up! If you'd like to give this as a gift you can pour this into nice bottles for birthdays, anniversaries, or even Christmas gifts. 

Summer Solstice Perfection in a glass!

Drink well my friends! 

Stoughton, WI and The Stoughton House Inn Bed & Breakfast

After we left The Dells we made our way south to Stoughton by way of Madison.  We decided that we were going to cheese hunt while in Wisconsin, who wouldn't, there's wonderful cheeses to be found around every corner it seemed. Mitch had done some research about a Wisconsin Cheese Trail, on the list was Formagination…the tour said that it was definitely a wonderful stop not to miss!

fromagination

This wonderful shop did NOT disappoint!

This place was not only a feast for the pallet, but also for the eyes. 

Good Lord this place was just full of beautiful goodness.

We decided that we would sit outside on that chilly day, and take in the sights of downtown Madison. 

I seriously thought this was the best marketing tool for those little bits of cheese that might be left over.

We were also sucked in to adopt a cheese orphan! Actually I think we took home two.

I took this photo for Molly! These cookies seriously looked amazing. I'm used to seeing Molly's wonderful work with sugar cookies, and these gave hers a serious run for their money!

If you'd like to see more about Molly's talents, please check out her blog:

channelyourinnerawesomeness

After we left Madison, we had a reservation at a great B&B called The Stoughton House Inn. The house was built in 1856, and offers every comfort to any traveler. This place was AMAZING! You know how old houses have a "feel" to them. Some houses have a super creepy feel, some just feel old and broken down, this beautiful old house felt AMAZING! It was a peaceful house, where if the walls could talk, they would tell such a great tale of all of the wonderfulness that happened under that roof. If you are ever in the Stoughton area this is the place to stay. I've included the link below.

stoughtonhouseinn

 We were lucky enough to be the only guests there that night, so we had the whole house, and it's grounds to ourselves to run amuck as we do. After going in town, which is just as lovely as the house by the way, we took a walk around the yard which is just beautiful in the summer with all the flowers in full bloom!  The bees buzzing, and you know how I like my bees, it was just a perfect setting!

 We went downtown Stoughton for a walk, to check out the town, and get a bite to eat. We had the best time at some of the shops about town. Some of my favorites were AmundArt Hus you can find it on Facebook here: amundart & the Nordic Nook which you can find here: nordic-nook

Also as we walked down the street, I was looking everywhere trying to soak it ALL in, and in between two buildings were a set of stairs, and a tiny sign that said Bead Shop. I looked at Mitch, told him to go get a beer at the bar we had just past, because I was going upstairs to investigate! This little detour off the beaten path DID NOT DISAPPOINT! I walked up the stairs, turned to my right into a huge room full of awesomeness! It was beautiful! It was filled to the brim with beads, gemstones, and metal bits of goodness. I walked into diakonosdesigns and was in heaven. Mitch had to come pull me out of the fray after who knows how long. He was hungry, had finished his beer, and wanted to eat. I could have stayed there for HOURS, and still not seen everything they had to offer. It was a treasure trove, and just one staircase to heaven. I've never been disappointed in bead shops I've found at the top of a stair case.

Next it was dinner time, and we had been told to go to Wendigo.

wendigostoughton

Now in all honesty, we had arrived after the 4th of July weekend, where I'm quite sure they were slammed more than normal. Both Mitch and I worked in restaurants so we get it, you run out of things. It got comical actually after every drink we ordered they had run out of…including ice tea. BUT, because they were out of my favorite wine on the list (14 Hands Cabernet Sauvignon) I had to go with something different besides water. I decided on the Rhuby Can't Fail. I have to admit, it definitely lived up to its name! So much so that I came home, and decided to make my own Rhubarb Gin so that I can have this fantastically refreshing summer drink again! The Basil in the drink really made it perfect!

This is the picture of this beautiful concoction! 

 I love this man and the sign behind him:

Love Wisconsin

Eat Cheese

the rest I can't read….

We went back to the Stoughton House Inn after dinner, and decided to do something we haven't ever done before…we found a deck of card, and decided to play Rummy. I haven't played Rummy in over 25 years or better. We had to look up the rules again. 

We loved this card deck! It was great! We would play, and read these cards aloud to each other. We learned a lot about wine history, which was great because the next day we went to a winery, which I'll share that all with you in the next post.

This is Mitch trying to explain something to me…I don't remember what it was, but it probably didn't matter because I won by a lot. If memory serves I won four hands, lost one and we tied one.

This face… ahahahahahahahaha!

Our room was beautiful, we stayed in the Trulson Room. It's the middle size room out of the three rooms available. It's the happy medium size. If you want to really stay in high style go for the bedroom facing the front of the house! OMG! It's GORGEOUS!

This is a small panoramic of the backyard. 

Breakfast the next morning was fantastic, the proprietors were super sweet!

Again, seriously, this is the place to stay if you are driving thru Stoughton, and need a place to stay.

More trip posts to come…Next post will be about Trillium Farm in the heart of Amish Country Wisconsin.

Happy Traveling! <3

The Wisconsin Dells

Travel brings power and love back into your life.

I love to travel. If I had loads of money I'd travel the world, and experience so many beautiful moments I'd never be lonely when I get older. I believe that traveling is good for the soul. Those experiences you get when you are traveling are priceless! Like getting an education, it's something that no one can take away from you.

We decided that this year on our vacation we'd do it differently. In years past we'd get up at 

O'dark 30 to drive the 12 hours north to Cold Comfort Farm. Every year as we pass Madison, WI where Mitch would always comment that we should stop at The Dells to swim, and relax before crawling back into the car to drive another six hours north. I won't lie, I was reluctant. I don't like crowds, or crowded places. I just wanted to get up to the farm so that we could relax, and stopping at The Dells wasn't my idea of a good time. As I get older, and I watch my children grow, I've come to this very hard conclusion...they aren't getting any younger. With that said, my moments with them as children are getting less and less every year, plus I'm always telling them that it's not always about THEM, so I needed to take my own words into consideration, and realize it's not always about what I want either.

Loved the T-Rex!

Mitch was right, by the way, and I tell him this all the time, this WAS a good idea! I mean COME ON.

 A T-Rex?! This was a good omen to start off our trip. I'm a girl that believes in signs. THIS was my sign to relax because this was going to be GOOD! 

We made reservations with a hotel that gave us four passes to Noah's Ark Water Park plus our one night stay at their hotel for a little over $200 total. Now if you have ever been to The Dells tickets per person are in and around $40 a piece. So right there just for the four of us it would have been around $100, Claire being two she would have gotten in for free. So our hotel, if we paid full price for our tickets, was about $100 a night. That's not a bad deal for this family of five. When we decided to have a third child, I asked parents of thirds, what changes should we expect between having a second, and a third. I heard two things, you wait in line longer at restaurants, and you pay more for group activities. This has proven to be very true.

We arrived safely, checked in, and suited up! Mitch, Roo, and Soph wanted to go ride all the fun rides, so that left Little Ms. C and I chilling at the baby pool. I didn't mind too much. I must say that the people watching was FANTASTIC! The best part about this place was that NO ONE CARED what they looked like. Most of the employees were European, most of the water park goers were European too. It was a Mecca of "who gives a rats ass if you have cellulite, lets swim!"

I was digging on this place. Out of the thousands of people there I noticed ONE, yes ONE, woman who seriously cared about her body image. She didn't need to given the population that day, but Lord knows she cared. Poor Sugar, but to each their own…

Little C fitting right in at the bar.

So while Little Ms. C and I were having a grand 'ol time at the kiddy pool she spies the BAR! She's totally my kid, I can't disown her if I tried. Not that I'd want to she's so blasted cute! (She knows it too)

Sidles right up and orders herself a drink.

Poor little Sugar was too short to crawl up the bar stool, so mommy helped, but once she was up there, she was jabbering on in toddler talk to the bartender. I love this place…it seriously serves alcohol! Best water park EVER! If you are ever in The Dells you need to go to Noah's Ark!

www.noahsarkwaterpark.com

Gives Zero Fk's that she's totally underage.

What can I say she is her mother's daughter. The bartender thought she was so cute that she got her little drink for free. (Yes, it was non-alcoholic) She's two, and she's totally scoring free drinks at the bar! O.o

Mitch, and the girls finally came back for us after leaving us at the kiddy pool for almost an hour. I can tell you how much I wanted to drink after that… NOT EVEN JOKING. So we decided to walk around, see the sights, and ride some rides. This is how the conversation went:

Mitch: Lets go on some rides, I found some that Claire can go on.

Me: All of us?

Mitch: Sure. We can go over there which was the ride that took us almost an hour to stand in line, or we can do this one. *pointing upwards*

Me: O.o (in my best Penny voice) Oh, okay, what the hell.

Before we went down the slide of DEATH!

It's all fun and games before the slide of DEATH! Photographic proof that we were up for the challenge. You didn't want to see the photographic proof of what I looked like afterwards. Hint: It wasn't pretty I can assure you. Poor Little Ms. C, she was SO SCARED! She now knows the word scared now AND what it means to be scared. We've probably scared her for life from big water park slides.

Lucky to be alive, she's checking out her Peter Pan shadow.

Mitch, Roo, and Soph went down in one raft leaving Little Ms. C and I to go down in a raft with a very large couple. The guy had to be 6' 6'' or 6' 7'' and his lady friend wasn't much smaller. Physics really wasn't on our side. Between the big guy, the big girl, and myself with Claire, we made a pretty crappy triangle. Good news was we made it down in one piece though, so that was good. 

My parents had agreed to drive the six hours south, and meet us at in The Dells for dinner, stay the night, then whisk the kids north to CCF the next morning, giving Mitch and I some much needed alone time. We had a hard time deciding exactly where to go to dinner, but I must admit, if you have children, or have a train enthusiast, like I do (Mitch) this is a great place to eat! 

Awesome place to eat!

It really isn't too expensive, plus it distracts the children. There is also an arcade attached which is quite helpful if the food runs long. We had a great waiter who we had to guess his age. Roo guessed he was 36, Dad guessed he was 22. The poor fella was 21. Way to go Roo! This all started because I called the waiter, "Son." Which then started the conversation about age. So in all honesty it was all my fault.

Trains!

So back to the trains! When there isn't food to be served the train rolls around with little stuffed animals, and toys to play with for the little ones. It's quite an ingenious idea really, plus the decor was FANTASTIC! I was in love with all the log cabin like features. 

Bringing precious cargo…beer!

So after dinner we decided to go visit the arcade. Seriously they had a Zoltar machine. I wanted to play it, but didn't want to get any bigger than I was feeling already. See what I did there? 

You know it's a wicked cool place when you've got this!

So Little Ms. C is like two going on 16, and all she wanted to do was drive this double decker bus! We had the grandest time jumping in, and jumping out, pretending to be her passengers. It must be awesome to be the littlest sister.

She's driving!!! EVERYBODY MOVE!

The next day my awesome parents took the girls north so that Mitch and I could have some down time where we didn't have to worry about diapers, naps, feeding schedules, Buddy's, stuffed animals, crying, fighting, or whining. It seriously was the best vacation I'd been on EVER I think! Even better than Ireland when we went in 2000.

Our first stop was The Dells Mining Company to sift for goodies! I've included the link.

www.dellsminingco.com

We ended up getting two buckets. We had a good time sifting thru the sand, putting the sifter thru the water, and just watching what gems were coming to the surface. This is like rock hound heaven for me. It was such a great way to relax!

Some of our loot!

This picture above was after the first bucket. 

The rest of our glorious haul!

This was what we ended up with, lots of Amethyst, Garnet, Rose Quartz, regular Quartz, Labradorite, Green Tourmaline, Topaz, and Citrine just to name a few. I think we might get a rock tumbler for Roo, and tumble these for her. She's a rock hound too just like her mama. 

Next we tootled around The Dells in search of goodies. We found huge candy shops, and cheese shops too! We also found chocolate, and tons of HUGE caramel apples! If you want to gain like 10lbs on a vacation this is the place to do it. I'm telling you I probably gained that on this trip...

CANDY! Chocolate Mint & Birthday Cake!

I totally should have bought some of these. Just saying!

Chocolate SHOES!

After the touristy things we decided to go exploring. Mitch noticed the Dam, and wanted to take some pictures. So we stopped, got out, and I went exploring. There was a tiny beach on both sides of the dock so off I went. I'll tell you what, my favorite beaches have pinecones on them. 

Dam…Dam Dam

Happiness is Exploring!

I'm in my element when I'm exploring. I'm at peace looking around for things that other people might miss. I like finding little treasures in the sand, under a rock, next to a bottle cap. I think I might be my happiest when I'm out in nature just being in the moment.

The better half doing what he does best.

To say "we" took a lot of pictures is probably the understatement of the year! Seriously, I'm married to a photo teacher, and after almost nine years of marriage, I've picked up a camera, and a lesson or two.

Crazy huge grove of trees!

We stayed in The Dells for two days, and hit most of the things we wanted to hit. It was a nice time, and I was wrong, I admit it, stopping in The Dells was much better than I ever expected it to be. For the record, it was a GREAT idea. One we might have to replicate in the future. 

If you are ever close to Madison, WI, and you have children, it's worth the extra drive to The Dells. 

I wasn't disappointed.

More posts to come from WI and MI!

Stay tuned.