A cheerful to-do board

I like LOVE lists!  I have a marker board on the wall in the hall that's a collage of lists.  I use a different color marker for one and they each start in their own little corner.  House projects, craft projects, groceries, errands, wish list, things to look up later... you name it and I've probably got a list for it.  I was inspired to combine my love for lists with my perpetual desire for a healthier and more organized life and made this totally cute to-do board.

Last year, a friend and I were talking about making permanent habits out of things we'd like to do (and should be doing) everyday... things like taking vitamins, flossing teeth (which has been a daily habit of mine for over 3 years now!), exercising, eating vegetables, etc...  basic things that a normal healthy productive adult should do anyways.

Some of us like to have lists to help accomplish goals, and so recently I decided to put a life tasks list on the wall too.  I chose a mildly embarrassing assortment of healthy habits and chores (I don't really plan on cleaning the bathroom and vacuuming every single day), and some like no tv and being in bed by midnight are just hopeful goals I rarely check off.

I spray painted a frame glossy white, placed some cute scrapbook paper inside, and drew an analog excel spreadsheet on it with a sharpie and a ruler.  Dry erase markers work on glass, and when you erase (gently) the sharpie stays behind.

I used 1" painters tape to edge the glass insert, freehanded straight(ish) lines with a sharpie and a cardstock home store coupon (quicker than finding a ruler), then wrote out a list

The painter's tape left a perfect little border

Now, when I do something as simple as walking the dog, I get to put a little check in a box.  Yippee!   I'm all set to improve my life with one checkbox at a time!

Checking in on the gardening

I took these photos in August and September to check on the progress of my flowers and little garden.  I was gone for a lot of the summer, so I am giving equal credit to our friend Luke who housesat and generously took care of the plants as well.

Now that we're settled into autumn, the flowers are winding down.  I do still have a lot of happy zinnia, cosmos, and marigolds.  The butterfly bushes have some flowers left but definitely aren't in full glory anymore.  My mom and I bought some perennials at my local nursery's fall sale and they're settling into the ground now.  A few are looking a little shocked, so I'll wait a bit and put pictures up once they perk up.

proof that butterflies loved my butterfly bush!

flowers from the yard... cosmos, zinnia, butterfly bush, marigold

butterfly bush, canna lilies, zinnias

some of my little sungold tomatoes

The pumpkin vine really rocked it out this year, making the shed look even better!

morning glory growing up onto the shed

a pepper!

my finest batch of pumpkins ever (the only one really)

slightly overgrown zucchini

my cute little bell peppers

Crafting in Boston

I used to envision getting loads of things done on my trips but eventually gave up on that, realizing that I'm much happier to spend my time walking around a city figuring out what makes it tick and how it got to be the way it is today than I am to sit around the hotel room working on crafts waiting for my husband to get off work.

I spent a whole month in Boston this summer and when I was packing, I thought I ought to try bringing along a couple of projects in the hopes that I'd get something productive accomplished, being away from the distractions of home.  I decided to work on a smocked dress for my friend's new baby girl and went off to my local heirloom sewing type fabric store to get a few fabric options pleated.

The first week of Boston, I found Grey's Fabrics, a cute local store that was a short bus ride (or a long walk) away down in the South End.  Grey's specializes in cottons with really interesting and unique prints.  There were some neat retro designs and a lot of feed sack cloth reproduction prints.

I decided to sign up for a couple of classes for the camaraderie and fun of doing a project that someone else comes up (I did feel a little silly paying for easy sewing classes when I'm sort of a professional seamstress).  I picked the dog leash class and the tie class, easy projects with instant gratification!  Even though they weren't groundbreaking projects, I had a blast and got a little of my years long sewing burn-out worn off.

I like the soft aqua pattern of the outside and I like the orange reproduction feed sack fabric lining even more!

Another great reproduction feed sack fabric!  It's so pretty I hate to use the leash and dirty it!

I also learned that she rents time at the machines for a few bucks an hour and was excited to be able to come in and work on my little dress.  Even better is that I learned they had sewing evenings every Wednesday where people would come and drink wine and work on their own projects.  I was able to finish my two little dresses during the sewing evenings I attended and had a great time doing it.  I'd love to start something like that with my friends at home!

 One of the adorable vintage machines in the sewing area.  I used Beatrix most of the times I came in to sew.

The smocked dress I made for baby Hazel turned out beautifully.  I wish I could finish every project I start in under two weeks!  I finished it so quickly that the dress only just now fits her and she's had it since July!  The nice thing about babies is that if you make it too big, eventually they'll grow into it : )

 The smocking panel in progress (almost done actually)

All finished!  I designed the smocking plate myself, though it's hardly anything groundbreaking... there are diamonds and hearts in lots of plates!  Coming up with the design and picking floss colors are really the hardest part about smocking.

On a hanger for scale reference... it's a tiny dress!  There are matching tiny bloomers too (not pictured)

After finishing the purple dress for Hazel, I was on a roll, so for the last sewing evening at Grey's, I whipped up this one for another friend's baby with a cute fabric they had on sale.

A long but fun drive to Colorado

My sister moved out to Colorado in August and being the amazing big sister I am, I offered to drive out with her.  The only problem I saw with this trip was that she likes to listed to her ipod in the car, but had to use a FM transmitter - and we all know those are garbage.  I knew I couldn't handle that static sound for 3 days straight.  

For a weird throw back birthday/early Christmas gift, I decided to gift her with a tape deck installation in her car (her stereo has a built in option for one), so she could use a tape converter thing that plugs into ipods and we (*ahem* she) could enjoy the sound of blissfully static-free music.  I called up the Mazda dealership and inquired... luckily since it was just an optional component it wasn't too much (did you know that a whole factory stereo will cost you around $900?)  Guess what?  Now that it's 2011 and her car is from 2003, there was ONE of these tape deck inserts left in the country!  They got it shipped in from California and the rest is history.   Side note:  The button on her stereo says tape/md, which I can only assume means mini-disk was the other optional component when the car was sold - talk about a failed media form!

Before: with the blank space teasing us

After:  with tape deck insert and just for fun, Bob's old Ice-T tape playing : )  Her stereo will never again play music like this I'm sure

On to the actual road trip...  I love seeing silly roadside attractions, so I got the Roadside America app for my phone.  Most of the things we saw were planned ahead, but the pink elephant was a perfect accident.  Partway through Tennessee, I happened to do a search and saw that in one mile there would be an exit and a giant pink elephant just a couple of miles down the road.  Technology does have its benefits!

We took our sweet time and did the drive in three days that were each 8-9 hours of driving.  Day One: we stopped in Asheville for lunch, Nashville for dinner, and spent the night in Clarksville, Tennessee (it was a really great hotel room, too bad it's so out of the way!).  Day Two:  lunch in St. Louis at Rooster (planned on purpose, I love that place), afternoon running around at the City Museum, dinner at T-Rex Cafe in Kansas City, and spent the night in Topeka, KS.  Day Three:  lunch snacking on the road, dinner at Casa Bonita in Denver, and spent the night in Boulder!  Day Four:  massages and bike ride around Boulder, lunch at the tea house, and sending me off to the airport.

First stop:   Juice Shop in Winston Salem for a razzmatazz smoothie 

Knoxville, TN - A big thanks to Hungary's participation in the 1982 World's Fair for their working gigantic rubik's cube.  Unfortunately it's not plugged in so the motor wasn't moving.

Cookeville, TN

Nashville, TN:  A life size replica of the Parthenon which is also an art museum

St Louis:  Rooster Cafe, home of some of the bestest crepes ever (and gluten free!)

St Louis:  City Museum which is more of a giant playground for adults and kids with kooky structures, tunnels and slides everywhere (including a 10 story one) and a rooftop playground complete with ferris wheel.  Did I mention that they also sell alcohol?  It was a totally different place in the afternoon than my previous visit which was at night!

St Louis:  City Museum's rooftop 10 stories up.  The ferris wheel is slightly terrifying, but worth going on!

St Louis:  City Museum's 10 story slide using the old factory waste chutes!  I slid down it last time and didn't really feel a need to go again : )

St Louis:  The scene of the crime...  When I was here on tour, I followed a too skinny friend between the lamp post and post box and smashed the camera in my pocket into the lamppost.  Oops!  It turned out ok, because a couple of weeks later in Indianapolis, we went to the mall with the Sony Store to replace my camera and I ended up finding my PERFECT wedding shoes too (after ordering a dozen pair from Zappos and searching shoe stores while traveling across the country)

Kansas City, KS:  Dinner at the T-Rex Cafe!

Goodland, KS:  Gigantic Van Gogh replica in the middle of a field

Denver, CO:  Casa Bonita restaurant has to be experienced to be believed.  It's in an old strip mall department store and is HUGE.  It's decorated like a tropical village and has a two story waterfall in the center.  Every 15 minutes there's some kind of show with cliff divers or pirates or something!  It's featured in an episode of South Park, you should check out the clips on youtube.

Boulder, CO:  riding bikes along Boulder's incredible bike path

Gluten Free: Boston

I could just cry.  I had my whole post pretty much finished (a month ago) and somehow in moving to another tab and back again, hit something crazy and deleted the whole damn thing.   And the autosave function so helpfully instantly saved it as a blank page.  *sigh* starting over...  a month later

Cuchi Cuchi
795 Main Street
Cambridge, MA
Cuchi Cuchi is one of the most fun restaurants I've been to.  They have great decor and the waitstaff dresses up in a Moulin Rouge type theme.  (There is a costume room in back, we had to ask our waitress where their outfits came from!)  Rarely does a restaurant have a theme and costumed waitstaff AND fantastic food all in one, but Cuchi Cuchi does it all.  The drink menu has one fun named drink after another and since it was a girl's night out with a group of friends, I think we must have tried them all!  The menu is a variety of small plates (the menu points out that it's not tapas which are Spanish)  and there is a special gluten free menu.  I tried the seafood avocado, ceviche, gratin dauphinois, and berries with fruit kissel and cream.  Everything was amazing.

Seafood Filled Avocado at Cuchi Cuchi

Scallop Ceviche Shot at Cuchi Cuchi

Joe's American Grill
181 Newbury St
Boston, MA
I liked Joe's so much that I ate here three times!  There is a special gluten free menu so ordering was a breeze.  The gluten free pizza was really good, good enough that I got it twice : )  The third visit, I decided to roll the dice and get the lobster mac&cheese with the gluten free noodles.  The waiter told me that it might be a little soupy since they would have to leave off the breadcrumbs that usually soak up some of the sauce - I was not to be deterred and ordered it anyway.  The gluten free lobster mac&cheese was pretty good and I did enjoy it, but the waiter was definitely correct about the soupy-ness.

Gluten Free Margherita Pizza at Joe's

Gluten Free Lobster Mac&Cheese at Joe's

Jacob Wirth
31 Stuart Street
Boston, MA
You can't argue with a historic pub restaurant that offers $1 Root Beer Floats - especially when they also have a special gluten free menu.  I enjoyed the potato pancakes with roasted apples and cinnamon cream.  Jacob Wirth's is also special because it's located in one of the only remaining Victorian bow front row houses in that area of downtown.  It's been in the same location since 1878.

Potato Pancake with Roasted Apples at Jacob Wirth

Finale

1 Columbus Ave

Boston, MA

Finale is an uppity dessert bar adjacent to Boston's Park Plaza hotel off of the Commons, but has amazing desserts (most of which aren't gluten free).  But - they do offer a gluten free menu.  I enjoyed the cheesecake with berries and a flight of hot chocolates!

flight of hot chocolates at Finale

gluten free cheesecake at Finale

Nebo Italian Restaurant

90 N. Washington

Boston, MA

Nebo is a completely delicious Italian restaurant on the edge of Boston's famed North End.  They even won a throwdown with Bobby Flay - though the reason I picked it was the extensive gluten free menu.  They offer a special gluten free menu and everything we got was amazing.  There were so many appetizers on the gluten free menu, so we ordered two:  the mascarpone polenta with wild mushroom ragu and burrata with proscuitto and a balsamic fig glaze.  For dinner, I had the gluten free pasta bolognese.  There was barely room for dessert, but we managed to enjoy a couple of slices of the dessert pizza with chocolate, nutella, and hazelnuts.  We also ordered the flight of bellinis (strawberry, raspberry, mango and peach), which was completely amazing but my picture is awful (and yes, I took it before drinking the bellinis!) so I'm putting up the picture from their website because it's so beautiful.

bellini flight!!!

what survived of the gluten free dessert pizza at Nebo

Montien Thai

63 Stuart St
Boston, MA
Possibly the best Thai food I've had.  Rumor has it that visiting dignitaries from Thailand eat here when they come to Boston, and I believe it.

B.Good
locations around the greater Boston Area
Any burger place that offers gluten free hamburger buns is ok by me (especially if they have a big sign advertising it!)... and the ones at B. Good were fantastically soft and had a great texture.  The milkshake and fries were tasty as well.

Ufood Grill
locations around Boston
I liked the idea of a place serving healthy fast food, but it turns out that they didn't have a whole lot of gluten free options and what they had, I wasn't really into - though I applaud them for noting which are gluten free right on the menu (like all restaurants ought to!).

Kickass Cupcakes
378 Highland Ave
Somerville, MA
This is one of my favorite cupcake shops and I was so glad to see that it's still around (and expanded even) since the last time I was in Boston.  The cupcakes are so nice looking that last time we were there, my husband even accidentally ordered one that was meant for dogs (don't worry, the clerk then told him he probably meant to pick a people flavor) - the dog ones are on the bottom shelf and he's pretty tall so he couldn't see the sign.

Tasti D Lite
Newbury St
Boston, MA
An import from NYC, Tasti D Lite is soft serve ice cream and pretty tasty.  The allure is mainly that they have around 100 rotating flavors and it's a different selection every day (therefore making it fun!).  We ate a fair amount of Tasti D Lite during our three weeks in New York a year ago August... but it wasn't until we were in line this time behind some savvy Boston regulars that we learned you can get them to mix up a personal batch of ANY of their flavors for you for around $1 extra.  So you can have orange creamsicle every day!

Farther Afield:


Alice's Diner
Fall River, MA
I didn't get to go here because of their hours on Monday, but I'm including it because it's quite a find.  The gluten free menu is out of this world and if everything tastes as good as it ought to, it would be worth a visit!  Gluten free offerings include:  belgian waffle, pancake, french toast, crepes, fried chicken, fried seafood, sandwiches, and onion rings.

O'Brien's Pub
Newport, RI
We took a day trip down to Newport, RI to check out the mansions (a couple of which had ballrooms as large as our entire house no joke) and found this place for dinner.  The weather was great, so we ate outside on the really large patio.  People had their dogs along for drinks/dinner and it was fun to watch them.  The dog behind us is clearly into our food!  Moments later, she jerked so hard on her leash that the owner's chair (with the lady in it) fell over sideways.  Note to self:  don't tie your large dog's leash to your plastic chair).  O'Brien's had limited gluten free offerings, but most importantly, they were labelled and in a section of their own, and I will take good menu labeling over lots of top secret gluten free options that you have to ask a waiter about any day..  The pizza was fantastic!!!

Gluten Free pizza at O'Brien's

Gluten Free: Hartford

Tracking down gluten free foods has become a real focus for me when I travel.  I have found other people's blogs so helpful that I finally decided I ought to make a record of my gluten free travel experience to share with others!

I was in Hartford for a week and found a few great gluten free places.  I forgot to take pictures of my delicious food though : (

Max Burger
124 LaSalle Rd
West Hartford, CT
I love anywhere that offers a gluten free bun because it's still a huge luxury to me.  The burger was delicious!  Max Burger has all natural burgers and a kind of upscale burger joint feel.  It's in the "Main Street" area of West Hartford and there are lots of shops and other restaurants around.  Two thumbs up!  Max Burger is one of several restaurants that are owned by the Max Restaurant Group and they all had gluten free menus.

Agave Grill
100 Allyn St
Hartford, CT
There wasn't a specific gluten free menu, but Mexican restaurants are usually pretty easy for accommodating a gluten free person.  I loved the tableside guacamole making, and my tacos were tasty.

The Market at Hartford 21
230 Asylum St
Hartford, CT
This is a wonderful little grocery store right downtown.  They've got the basics, gourmet items, and most importantly, some gluten free things!  They even had little gf frozen pizzas.

Dee's One Smart Cookie
398 Hebron Avenue
Glastonbury, CT
Absolutely worth the drive!!  Our waiter at MaxBurger told us that Dee's is where their gf hamburger buns came from.  Naturally, I had to go check it out!  She has all manner of gluten free goodies... cookies, cakes, bread, pastries, etc.   I got hamburger buns and hot dog buns to take home and freeze (and months later they're still tasty!).  This pink house is next to Dee's and is a great landmark (we drove right past Dee's shop and turned around here)

Catching Up: Chicago

My two week trip to Chicago (back at the beginning of August) was absolutely fantastic.  I really like Chicago because it's easy to get around in, both by walking and public transit.  Both times I've been, we were lucky enough to be staying in the loop area.  One of my favorite things is that there's a chocolate factory just across the river, so sometimes the city smells like chocolate - it's magical!

Over the two weeks, I did a lot of the architectural walking tours.  I love the buildings so much that I realized I needed to make a separate post about them.  We did a great riverboat cruise, ate lots of good food, and played Whirly Ball twice.  Whirly Ball is fun mix of bumper cars, basketball, and lacrosse.  We also made it out to the Frank Lloyd Wright house and studio and did the neighborhood walking tour.  

a park in Printer's Row

view from one of the many bridges

Oz Park

Oz Park

Oz Park

The Bean!  (officially named Cloud Gate)

a rare view of bird prints in concrete

Whirly Ball!  

The Aragon Ballroom is the coolest music venue ever.