A little bit of Fall next door

Josh and I enjoy taking walks through the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary that is right next door to us. They have beautiful property and woods, so it's nice to go hiking over there. Every time we walk over there we see deer which is awesome no matter how many times we have seen deer (which is now very often because they are always outside our apartment eating from the trees). This time we saw two large salmon that must have swam up stream after laying eggs and we think they were now dying. I guess this is a normal cycle for salmon. Sad to see, but it was also interesting to see a fish that big so close up. We climbed tree trunks over the creeks and hiked through the woods in the crunching leaves. These are some of my favorite pictures from that day.

The Pickard's visit

My parents came to visit a few weeks back and it was a great weekend. They took a trip through the UP and stopped at several different locations on their way around and enjoyed spending some days and nights enjoying the beautiful scenery such as Pictured Rocks and other areas on Lake Superior. They made their stop to visit us in WI and then when they left they continued through IL, IN and back to MI around the other side of the lake. They also enjoyed stopping at the air museum in Kalamazoo.

While they were visiting us we had a chance to try out some local restaurants that after a year of living hear Josh and I have just never tried. A local diner where we ate breakfast felt like everyone knew we were not regulars there, but it was good food and a friendly environment. We also tried out a pizza place down the street.  One of the days while Josh was studying for classes my parents and I went out to give him some quiet. We ended up going down to the 7 Mile Fair south of Milwaukee which is a giant flea market. It reminded me of a flea market that we went to as kids when we lived in California. There was your typical stands from produce, clothing, crafts, junk, knock-off electronics etc. It was fun to just walk around and enjoy time with my parents. They bought Josh a cool remote control helicopter that caused much laughter and fun as dad and Josh trying flying it around the apartment. Josh's goal is to someday fly it through the slats in our entryway:)

After the flea market we went down to the Third Ward area in Milwaukee. There are a lot of unique shops, markets and restaurants. We ate lunch a really modern Chinese restaurant with great food. Walked the river walk a little bit and went to some shops. I look forward to checking out the Third Ward again since we only walked through a little portion of that popular downtown community.

It was nice to spend time with my parents and I am glad they had such a good trip traveling around Lake Michigan.

Gumdrops and pillow covers

I continue to try to enjoy time making projects, crafts and my newest endeavor...homemade candy:) These projects are things I enjoy and with winter coming up I need to stock pile some good ideas for projects. My latest homemade projects were making homemade gumdrops and sewing pillow covers for our couch pillows.  The gumdrops took a lot of time and attention. They looked fun in the end and they even tasted yummy, however, they never really crystallized to be more firm like a gumdrop so it was kind of like biting into a really small sugar coated jell-o jiggler...lol. It was fun giving it a try though. I am looking forward to giving homemade caramels a try.

The pillow covers were a simple pocket style pattern. This way I can wash them and even change them out if I wanted to very easily. We needed a little bit more color in our living room rather than the neutrals in the pillows that came with the couches. So I didn't go too crazy with the pillow covers. But I have working on crocheting us a blanket to keep out on the couch that is a really fun bright blueish green color like in the striped pillow cover. That will bring a lot of color when I am done:) This was an rather easy and quick project that I did in one two night.  Here are a few pics of the results.