February 2024 Reading Wrap-Up
All posts by CadyLy
Tapping That in the Great Outdoors!
Every year the Stage Nature Center in our city offers a Rent-A-Maple program, where — for a small fee — you can have a maple tree on the property tapped in your name. Last year, we just donated to the program and had our name on a tree, but didn’t sign up in time to do the tapping ourselves. This year, we put it on our calendar and signed up as soon as we were able!
Even though Donald has to work on Saturday afternoons, we figured that we could fit this into our morning. We made sure not to sleep in, had our coffee, and Donald made us eggs and toast for breakfast. Once we were fed and ready, we set out into the sunshine, blue skies, and cold weather (below freezing)!
We were met at the door by some of the Stage Nature Center docents/volunteers and quickly found our guides for the event. I was so surprised to see Sarah there! She was in training as one of the guides and happened to be assigned to Donald and me!
As we went from the main building to the staging area outside, our guide, Danielle, kept reminding us that we needed to get a bucket and a lid. Apparently, it was a common thing to forget, and they didn’t want to have to walk all the way to our tree, just to have to backtrack to pick up the bucket that our tree sap would collect in.
Donald made sure to grab them, and then commented on how he could use them to make himself some Mandalorian armor.
Once we found our tree (which already had a tag on it with our names), Danielle showed us how to use a brace hand crank drill to make a small hole in the tree, angled slightly downward, each of us taking a turn. We then used a nail to get the wood shavings out of the hole and sprayed some water in it. Donald then gently tapped the French cast iron spile into our new hole and I hung our bucket on the spile. Donald put the cover on the bucket and we were good to go!
For a quick outing, it was a lot of fun! We received a little goodie bag with some maple candies, a pint of maple syrup, candles, pancake mix, and a certificate for our “lease” of the maple tree. We grabbed a Starbucks on the way home, my parents stopped by for a visit and a surprise (more on that later!), and then it was time for Donald to start work.
We have another adventure planned for tomorrow, so keep an eye out for another post soon!
Happy Saturday from Jenn and Donald!
January 2024 Reading Wrap-Up
2024 Project 52
Several years ago, my friend, Stacy, started a Project 52 group on Facebook, where we would have a prompt a week and take a photo to fulfill the prompt. It helped us work on our photography skills and encouraged us to get out there and take more photos.
This year, I’m thinking about revitalizing this area of my interests and think that another Project 52 would be fun to do. (And just maybe I can convince Donald to join me, so I’m not doing this alone! Also, please join us!)
I will be using the prompts from 365 Project. I will try to make a graphic for the year’s prompts, but for this week it is: New.
Morning Coffee in Clawson!
These have been some beautiful days in Michigan, and this weekend looks to be more of that: temperatures in the mid to high 70s and sunny. Donald and I have been feeling like getting away, so we looked up flights and various places we could go. We *almost* booked a flight to Orlando or Denver, but eventually decided to wait until we had a 3 day weekend. We thought about going up north to the Traverse City area, but it looks like next weekend may be peak fall color, so we are tentatively earmarking next weekend for that trip.
While he worked his afternoon shift on Friday, I spent my evening dreaming up possibilities. By the end of the night, I didn’t have anything concrete in mind – with one exception. I wanted to have a leisurely early morning with Donald at a local cafe enjoying a latte and some pastries. We are always looking for a local coffee place that reminds us of Lucky Goat or Black Dog (some of our favorite coffee shops from Tallahassee). This morning, we searched and found two candidates, both in Clawson: Sabbath and Kahve.
We initially went to try Sabbath first, but there was a line out the door. Popularity is a great indicator of a place’s appeal, but we didn’t feel up to the wait or the crowd. Luckily, Kahve is less than a block away on the other side of Main St. We were able to find on-street parking quickly.
It was already a gorgeous morning. We took a moment to take in the cute downtown area. Clawson has a lot of charm for a small city.
Walking in, the cafe was really cozy with armchairs and a sofa in addition to the traditional table and chairs. It is decorated in a Mexican/South American theme with art and textiles on the walls and vases of fresh flowers scattered throughout.
Donald and I shared the cheese croissant and pumpkin muffin. I had a raspberry white mocha, and he enjoyed a cinnamon vanilla latte. After finishing our drinks, Donald wanted something cool, so we shared a mango smoothie. All of it was delicious! That mango smoothie… heaven!
Of course, I spent a majority of my time photographing the flowers, but we also looked briefly at what we might want to do today. Donald was excited to get a jump on my mom and be the first one to text “Good morning!” She noted that Clawson was having a fall festival today that she might like to go to. We just know that with the weather so beautiful, we would like to spend some time outdoors today.
I hope you have a fantastic day as well! Please let us know what adventures you find yourself in this weekend!
— Jenn & Donald
First NFL Game of the Season!
For the second year, Donald and I have joined the NFL Fantasy Football league with some of my coworkers. It makes the football season so much more enjoyable. To be fair, we probably wouldn’t watch more than a few games here and there if left to ourselves; however, I am very competitive, so the Fantasy league is just the incentive I need to get fully invested in the games. And, I’m sure, having an enthusiastic partner makes watching the games a lot more enjoyable for Donald as well!
Tuesday evening was our Draft, and we got rated a “B” in our selections. I feel pretty good about that! Jarrod reminded us 15 minutes before the rosters locked down, so I was able to switch out our kicker to make sure that we had at least one player in tonight’s game. Right before the game, Donald and I were out getting Starbucks and take-out Japanese, and barely made it back home before kickoff.
This is an exciting game for us, with Kansas City being the reigning Super Bowl champs and hosting the game, and Detroit being our home town team. We’re rooting for the underdog Lions. As I’m writing this paragraph, we have 1:47 on the clock in the 4th quarter and the Lions are up by 1: 21 to 20. My boss has already called it – Lions are going to the Super Bowl!
I wonder if we can get tickets to a home game sometime this year?
Current Kindle Unlimited Books
You can borrow quite a few Kindle books from Kindle Unlimited … BUT only 25 at a time. Or, well, 25 slots at a time (if you borrow a title and it has an audiobook component as well, it counts for two slots). Right now, I have saved/borrowed my max amount, which comes out to 22 titles.
My reading genres are all over the place! I don’t even remember any longer why I borrowed some of these titles, and to be honest, I have a zillion books in my Kindle account and on my TBR on Goodreads.
I’m hoping that by calling attention to them, I’ll be more motivated to start working my way through them. Plus, I find it helpful to see the covers somewhere. I’m very much a mood reader and seeing the covers makes it more enticing to read the novel vs. seeing a list of titles.
Of these books, the one I am reading right now is Love Lettering. In this book, a hand-letterer who makes custom journals and planners (sounds like someone from the Planners Gone Wild community!) “accidentally” puts a hidden message in a couple’s wedding announcement, indicating that the relationship won’t last. About a year later, the intended groom comes back and confronts her about the hidden message. As it turns out, he never got married. I picked this one mostly because the main character was a planner girl and did hand-lettering and that made me think about my friend, Cindy Guentert-Baldo and my other friends from PGW.
That (and, apparently 16 other books) are what I’m working through right now. As for you, do you use Kindle Unlimited? What are some titles on your TBR?
Troy Farmers Market Goodies!
In the summer, Troy hosts a small farmers market near the Civic Center on Fridays from 11 am – 3 pm.
Since this was one of Donald’s days off, we stopped by on my lunch break.
We came home with a veggie peeler and grocery bag we won from a spin-the-wheel game, pea micro greens fettuccine, sugar snap peas, fresh garlic, a basil plant, and some cookies.
(The purple cauliflower was just pretty. We didn’t take it home with us.) 🙃📸
Recipes: Week of 6/26 to 7/2
I’m at a loss as to the best way to keep track of recipes that I find and that we like. I rarely go on Pinterest, I find it difficult to remember what the recipe was like and if we enjoyed it if I just save a link to a recipe in a Google doc, sometimes recipes are online but sometimes they are in a book or magazine, and I often will make my own tweaks to recipes. How does a girl account for all of this?! (Seriously, if you have a good system, please share!)
Now that our kitchen is (mostly) complete, we are setting up some routines. Generally on Sundays, we will sit down and plan out our meals for the next week. As we go, I will add items that we need to our grocery list on the Kroger app (we found a Kroger that we like, although we still miss Publix). The app lets me see if there are deals on certain brands and clip digital coupons as I place items on my list.
We make sure to add items that we have run out of (milk, creamer, eggs – we are always running out of these!), as well as any snackies that we would like. We try to have our planners/calendars out during this time, so we can accommodate for days where we will be away from home or visiting family, etc. Next, we (lately Donald has been going with me) will go to Mass and stop by the grocery store after (it just makes sense with where things are located for us).
While making out our meal plan, I like to write it all down on a sheet I can post on the fridge. As you can see from this photo, some weeks have a lot of edits to the original plan. 😉
Below is a table of what we actually ate during the week. Probably more for our record-keeping/memories than anything, but feel free to take inspiration if something sounds yummy. 🙂
| Day | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Sausage Croissant | Sandwich, chips & salsa | Chicken Taco Voila |
| Tuesday | PB Cap’n Crunch | Soup and sandwich | Hawaiian pizza, potato chips & french onion dip |
| Wednesday | Sausage/Greens/Tomato Omelet | Sandwich | Burritos, chips & salsa |
| Thursday | IDK | IDK | Spaghetti w/meat sauce, garlic bread |
| Friday | Eggy | 1/2 sandwich | Pepperoni pizza, salad |
| Saturday | IDK | Burgers, corn, baked beans | Beef stew |
| Sunday | Pancakes | Salad | Salmon, cheddar broccoli Rice-a-Roni, broccoli |
I’ve included links to any recipes I’ve used for that meal, as well as product links, in case you are interested in what brands we used (none of these are sponsored or ads – just what we happened to buy – we don’t get any money if you click on the links).
And, of course, this wouldn’t be one of my blog posts without some gratuitous photos…
Here you go! Yes, I am one of those people who likes to take pictures of my food before eating….
10 Minute Book Meet: Mastering Sauces
Okay, this was 2 minutes with a book (Mastering Sauces by Susan Volland), and then Donald was out of class!
What I got was that it has a large array of recipes, a lot of instruction on techniques, and not nearly enough photos of food. Also, I am hungry.
Conclusion: I want to pick this up again and try some different recipes. I’d write more, but Donald is waiting and I have the car keys. See you soon!
Paroxysm of Giggles / Critical Mass 