For several years, we have used the Merlin Bird ID app to identify different birds while on our walks. This morning, I heard a different bird (from our usual robins and house sparrows), and it said it was a red-bellied woodpecker. I stepped out on the porch and quickly found the little guy on a tree in our front yard!
Days off together are uncommon and special, so Donald and I like to make the most of them when we can. This Thanksgiving day, Donald woke up before me and put on the America’s Thanksgiving Parade (from Detroit). I had mentioned that watching the parade(s) in the morning was a childhood tradition (and to this day, Mom still loves to watch the parade as she gets the Thanksgiving meal started).
We were running low on groceries (I need to grocery shop more routinely), but Donald was still able to make us coffee and a cheese omelet for breakfast.
We had a slow, peaceful morning watching the parade. It was fairly bright outside with some blue skies peeking through, so we opened the door to be able to enjoy the view from the couch. Even just our storm door was pretty good at keeping the cold out, which we were thankful for since it was in the upper 30s for a high today.
We got ready and headed over to Mom & Dad’s for Thanksgiving dinner. We got to nibble on crackers and cheese spread as an appetizer — I really love the Chicken in a Biscuit crackers with the sharp cheddar spread! While we were hanging out, we upgraded Dad to YouTube Premium, so he wouldn’t have to deal with ads any more. I think it was the best present we could have gotten him!
Dinner was ready just after 4 pm. It was a pretty typical Thanksgiving meal for us: roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole (although this year, the topping was a bit different – a pecan praline), low-carb Hawaiian rolls, asparagus, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, and stuffing.
After dinner, Mom washed the dishes and then read a book in the living room, Dad and Donald watched some YouTube videos of people playing guitar. A bit later, Clint, Donald and I played a round of Marvelous Heroes.
We left after midnight to head home, having filled our bellies and hearts with goodness. We are thankful for a lot of things, to be sure, but we are most thankful for the people in our lives. We hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving with friends and family as well!
Love, Jenn & Donald
The view we have all been waiting for! Our finished street view! We painted our house yellow earlier in the summer/fall and on Thursday the security door was installed. It’s a quite sturdy steel door, painted blue on the exterior and white on the interior. We also installed a new storm door with full view glass (so you can see the pretty deep blue color of the door more), and a built-in retractable screen. On those rare perfect spring/fall days where it’s warm out, but not hot enough to have the AC running, we would like to be able to open the house up to a nice cross breeze and some fresh air.
I think…. this means that we are finally ready for winter?! Pretty close to it! Donald is still feeling a bit under the weather, so once he has recovered from his cold, I’ll ask him to bring in the Christmas decorations from the garage and we will start decorating the house for the holidays!
How early do you start decorating? What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?
Love, Jenn & Donald
We had our first snow of the season today! It wasn’t too much, and it didn’t last very long, but I’m quite surprised that it waited until the third week in November! We’ve had a very mild autumn so far. This is what it looked like – just a dusting on top of the car.
Today, we had our front security door installed! It was a little bit chilly outside to have a gaping hole in the house, but we stayed in our offices and worked while Phil installed the door, and the rooms stayed fairly warm.
At this point, the door was held in place with these temporary pieces of wood, but it was starting to give us an idea of what the finished door would look like – so exciting!
And… HERE IT IS! There’s still some finishing touches left to be done (trimming off the foam that you can see on the bottom after it has set a bit), but it looks great! We’re very happy with the lever and lockset that we have selected as well! I didn’t think that the door would make that much of a difference to the feel of the living room, but I think that it looks like a whole new space! Donald is already thinking about other things we can do to update and decorate the room! (New ceiling fan? Crown moulding?)
It was a bit too dark outside once everything was finished (Grrr, Daylight Savings Time changes!), so I’ll take photos once it’s light outside again. Let us know what you think of the new door!
Love, Jenn & Donald!
We have had this plan for the front yard planting bed for quite a few months. However, with Michigan weather, you have to wait until sometime in May before the risk of overnight freezing goes away. Our plan was to do this as soon as we returned from our vacation out west, but we unfortunately fell sick and that derailed us just a bit as we rested and recovered.
Thankfully, Mom was bored in the house and in the house bored on Sunday, so she called us looking for something to do while Dad watched his races at home. We invited her over and the three of us headed to Telly’s Greenhouse – a local plant shop that we like.
We had a hard time sticking to just plants for the planting bed, as there were so many pretty and interesting plants, but I think we did a good job with our selections! We wanted to have plants of varying heights, and ended up with some grasses and dahlias for the back, cosmos for the middle layer, and some feathery plants and the little colorful ones (I’d have to look at the tags to see what they were) for the short layer up front.
Donald and my mom go to work weeding out the planting bed and getting the dirt ready. There were some existing plants: a couple hostas and my azalea bush. There were a few baby mums, but we transferred these to some pots and will re-home them to the back yard. They had me come out periodically to help determine plant placement. When they didn’t need me, I was inside playing Animal Crossing. My island had been neglected.
We love our plants! I’m so glad that Donald loves keeping our yard looking great! It was a lot of fun to pick these out together. Disclaimer: Yes, I know the house needs painting. We are going to try and get that done this summer.
These are a few photos of the final result! The flowers will continue to grow and get established, and I’ll try to remember to post some updates later on. Of course, as it happens, it decided to rain pretty hard just an hour or so after we finished planting. We checked on the plants in the morning, and – for the most part – they looked to have survived the deluge pretty well. Just the cosmos flowers were bent over.
Donald quickly stood them back up and packed some dirt around them before we headed over to Mom and Dad’s for a Memorial Day lunch. After getting back home, he used some of the posts we had from our foray into tomato growing to bolster the cosmos a bit until they could get a little stronger.
We think it looks a lot better and the pops of color and cute flowers make us smile whenever we see them!
Love, Jenn and Donald
Since we moved away from Tallahassee, we have been searching for a local coffee shop that is comparable to our beloved Lucky Goat. We love Lucky Goat because they have great coffee and make the creamiest lattes that we’ve found anywhere. (Plus, they get some delicious pistachio muffins from a local bakery that are AMAZING, but that’s another story and another quest.) They also are the best foam artists that we’ve found, always giving us our caffeinated delights with a cute image on top.
We have found some good places, like Birmingham Roast and Kahve, but were still seeking out that elusive creaminess. When we went to Kahve, we had initially found both it and Sabbath Coffee Roasters, located quite close to each other on different corners of 14 Mile Rd and Main St. However, at the time, Sabbath had a long line out the door, so we decided to try Kahve first.
Today, after our brunch at Biscuits and Gravy, we decided to give Sabbath another try and grab a coffee to go before Donald had to start work. As soon as we pulled up, we saw a sign on the door alerting customers to continue the line outside – a clear indication that they frequently have more customers than can fit inside the store.
Upon entering, we saw that it was a very small space. You could only fit maybe 3-4 people in line in front of the counter before you hit the front door, and there was no indoor seating for you to enjoy your coffee (although, there was an alley with some outdoor seating available immediately adjacent to the shop). This area looks like it would make a really cute Instagram spot when the twinkle lights are lit at night. It appears to be part of a historical area, with a plaque on the outside of the shop’s building.
Inside, Sabbath is interestingly decorated with a variety of skeletons (including a skeleton dachshund!) and dinosaurs.
They have a small cold case in the lobby area with some Liquid Death water and their own branded Nitro Cold Brew.
We took home with us a bag of coffee beans: Liturgy, which is supposed to have notes of plum, milk chocolate, and açai berry. As for the coffee selections, Donald tried their Hot Pot of Gold and I tried a Honey Cinnamon Latte. They were as creamy as we had been hoping for! We may just have found our new favorite coffee spot! We didn’t take a look at the coffees before we traveled home with them, but even after a car ride, you can still see my heart and Donald’s leaf.
If you have any other great coffee shop recommendations, please send them our way!
— Jenn & Donald
The white building with the large chicken on the roof is a familiar sight to those who live near Clawson, MI. It has been a few different restaurants, but most recently it has been renovated into a very popular brunch destination called Biscuits and Gravy.
Given that it’s located just steps from downtown, the restaurant’s footprint is a bit small – both inside and out. The parking lot fits almost exactly the number of cars that the dining tables can accommodate, meaning that if there is a wait for a table, you may also encounter a wait for a parking space. That said, the staff does a great job of managing turnover, and we only had to wait a few minutes for a table.
While cozy, the dining area had a light and airy decor, with touches of (fake) greenery throughout. The tables were well-spaced and the seating was more comfortable than most. We were greeted by coffee served in small mugs, which was clearly a deliberate decision meant to keep our coffee fresh and hot at all times. The servers were constantly circulating to refill mugs and replenish our supplies of creamer and sugar, without us having to ask for a thing!
Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs as we ordered the Big Breakfast, Meat Lovers Omelette, and the titular Biscuits and Gravy. The plates came out of the kitchen heaping with deliciousness! The bacon was extra crispy the way we like it, the grits were yummy, and surprisingly, they even managed to elevate the toast, which was light and crispy with the perfect butter taste!
The only, super minor, quibble that I had was, unfortunately, with the biscuits and gravy. It’s one of my favorite comfort breakfast foods, so I order it a lot in various locations. This version fell a bit short in my estimation, in comparison to the robust, seasoned offerings familiar to true Southern kitchens. However, this was just my opinion. Donald, our “true Southern boy,” delighted in their version, praising the biscuits for their homemade, old-fashioned quality akin to cornbread. I have to admit, those were the largest biscuits I’ve ever seen served with an order of biscuits and gravy! For just $1 more, you get two instead of one, so you can’t go wrong with ordering the set and splitting with your table mate!
Overall, we loved our experience at Biscuits and Gravy and plan on making a lot of return visits. We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of their menu, but our bellies are already excited!
Happy Saturday!
— Jenn & Donald
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!
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
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.) 🙃📸
Paroxysm of Giggles / Critical Mass 