Good bye June

My goodness, where the heck has June gone? After the house painting project wrapped up on Saturday, it was off to The Cloud for me (work for Mikey). I had a fun night of partying at a shower/bacherlorette party for Nikki. Here's the clan:


We've been enjoying the veggies we're getting every week from Northern Harvest Farm. The past 2 weeks we've received some napa cabbage, bok choi, & green onions so Mikey made a Thai salad with pork and a yummy Asian dressing. Delish! And so fresh.


I've had a bit of a weakness this past week:

I've really been getting in to reading a bunch of blogs about healthy eating (which is kinda funny after my addiction to the Mint Oreos last week). There is a "smoothie" called a Green Monster that is all the rave. The one I made had:
- 3 cups of spinach
-1 cup of unsweetened Almond Milk
-1 frozen banana
-1 scoop of peanut butter
There is also suppose to be a 1/2 c. frozen blueberries and a scoop of Amazing Meal. Unfortunately, I didn't have either of those so I made due with what I had. Here is my attempt at my first GM:

You can't even taste the spinach and it is oh so good for you. People have even dumped their coffee addiction because this smoothie has been so energizing for them. I'll be surprised if that's the case for me. My primary motivation for trying this was that it was a great way to get some green Superfoods in a really yummy way. It's suppose to be really good for your skin complexion too. Unsweetened almond milk is super low in calories and the p.b. gives you some protein and yummy flavor. I've never been a gal that is in to "wonder" powders, supplements, etc. but the Amazing Meal looks like good stuff. It's "a blend of Green SuperFoods, plant based protein, phytonutrient rich fruits & vegetables, digestive enzymes and probiotics." Yes please!

I'll end this post with perhaps the cutest photo ever. It's taken through the front screen door hence the blurriness but neither of them knew I was taking the photo. So precious!

House Repairs: Days 3-8

The reinforcements (a.k.a. Manda's family) arrived this past weekend and we got to work quickly. Between Friday and Saturday we managed to finish scraping 3 sides of the house, primed the tan siding & white trim, caulked around all the windows, doors and any seam/gap, and put the final coat of tan and white on! Let me tell ya, my family is the hardest working group of people I've ever worked with! The whip was cracked at 7am everyday and we didn't rest until almost sunset (enter: yawn).
Here's the final product:
The front:

The back & 1 side below (there are a couple areas along the bottom and one spot on top by the window that have since been reattached, patched, primed & painted) :

On Sunday, we worked on scraping this side of the house (below). It's a tight squeeze because there's only about 10 feet of space between our house and the neighbor's. So, everything has to be done with extension ladders. The top third is the part that we weren't able to reach with our extension ladders. The middle part is primed and the lower part has been primed and painted. This is still a work in progress but the rain has hampered our ability to finish this up yet. Plus, we'll need to rent an even longer extension ladder (~40') to get the top part. On Sunday night, my mom and brother went home but my dad stayed and I've managed to keep him quite busy.

It poured and poured all day on Monday. But never fear... there are indoor projects that have been patiently waiting. Enter the infamous basement. Here's a before shot:

Here's the after shot of the project we worked on all day Monday:


And the new shelf loaded with room to spare!!
This brings us to Tuesday. The rain had passed but now we had to let the siding dry out. So, we shifted gears and repaired the rotting siding on the upper level of the front of the house where the porch roof meets the siding. OMG! What a project!! We spent from 8am-7pm taking off the old siding, replacing the vapor barrier, installing new siding (all with angle cuts!) & caulking the seams. I learned a ton! My dad is seriously so amazing, patient and brilliant with this stuff! I kept him well hydrated, caffinated and organized:)
Here's the one side:


And the other side:

6 tubes of caulk should ensure a tight seal:
So, that brings us to today- Wednesday. I'm back at work and Mike and my dad are working on replacing the trim on the back porch that had also rotted. This job would have been super easy with a compound miter saw but alas, we don't have such a thing. So, once again my dad is making due with the saws that he brought up. Oye vey, that kind of cutting and 3 dimensional visualization is beyond me. My dad will be in Duluth until Saturday at a football camp so I'm hoping we can do a couple more small things before he leaves and be able to take advantage of his height for the painting on the side of the house. I truely owe him a million! We did manage to fit in a couple fun outings. We went to the Duluth Huskies minor league baseball game Monday night and out for dinner at Mike's restaurant last night.

Stay tuned... we've still got a few things to finish up but we are oh so close!

Days 1+2

The Painting Project has begun!! So far, it's just consisted of scraping the old paint off. I spent Saturday scraping the front porch. Then on Sunday, Mikey worked on the side of the house (on the big lift) while I scraped the back porch. It's pretty slow going. Here are some pics of our progress:

The BIG LIFT (Mikey loved it!):
After getting up close to every square inch of our siding, the 100 years of wear and tear have become quite apparent. I'm a little concerned at the quantity of rotting wood (siding, trim, etc) we have. Once our neighbor (former contractor) gets back from vacation tomorrow, I'm going to pick his brain about a game plan. The perfectionist in me has a hard time "just getting by." I want to do it right and have it done perfectly rather than notice all the blemishes every time we're outside. The one thing I'm going to have to be OK with is the crummy trim around the windows. I'm only OK with this for now since we'll hopefully be getting new windows in the next 3 years and will take care of the trim at that point. Aye, house projects! I guess this is what they call Sweat Equity!

We've really done nothing else all weekend. I've put in about 18 hours of scraping during the past 3 days. We were really on a roll on Sunday and decided to order Papa John's for dinner. Great idea at the time but horrible decision later on. Both of us got sick to our stomachs. It even kept me up at night. Not good. Must stay the course of healthier food! So tonight I had oatmeal with raspberry applesauce and a sprinkle of brown sugar and a pita with hummus. My body is much happier.

Cross your fingers for minimal rain this week and especially next weekend for the real fun- painting!

Good Eats

We've been cooking up a storm lately. Here's a re-cap:
Last Night's Dinner= Thai Chicken & Rice, Nan bread & Marietta Old Vine Zinfandel:

Manda's Contribution= Mikey's favorite Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins (shh... don't tell him they're made with 1/2 splenda 1/2 sugar). Secret ingredient: Organic Valley's low fat sour cream. YUM!


It wouldn't be summer without some grillin' and chillin': Stuffed Portabella Mushroom Caps with oven baked (yay for no deep frying!) sweet potato fries.

Lastly, I played a little trick... Mikey thought I was taking this picture to capture Anna's trick. BUT, really I was trying to capture his outfit! Workout shorts (to his credit, he just got back from walking Anna), fuzzy sweatshirt & CROCS! And yes, we went out in public like this. Just to the co-op so I s'pose it's fitting. HA!

mixin' it up

Circuit training rocks my world! I obliged to be a lab rat for my co-worker's circuit training workout yesterday and it was GREAT! Love the variety of using a med ball (holy back muscles!), hand weights, weighted bar, and Kinesis machines. I followed it up with a brisk walk (1.5 mile loop) on campus and re-hydrated at the same time. I love having more time in my day for ME! Then, I got to hang out with Mikey (first time this week) in the evening. We were conked out by 10:30pm.
A great day!

bowling is painful

Last night we went to the Incline Station for a night of bowling with Mike's co-workers. Let me tell ya, they are an energetic group. 4 hours of bowling!! Can you believe it? 4 games of bowling caused me to have a massive blister on my thumb.
6- yep SIX- games of bowling caused Mikey to pull a butt muscle. Whew, I think we outdid ourselves a bit:)

We saw some of this crew quite a bit this weekend as a handful of them came over Friday night for a bonfire- at 11:30pm. It's hard to keep up with Mikey's "rock star" lifestyle. As we were sitting outside, we were enjoying the fact that it was finally summer.

That is, until we woke up Saturday morning, and Sunday morning, and...
Here's the forecast for Duluth today:
"Winds gusting to 40 mph off Lake Superior will continue with horizontal heavy rain much of the day in the Twin Ports with temperatures struggling to reach 43 degrees for a high."- Duluth News Tribune

Mike's parents were up visiting this weekend. We had a great time wining and dining. We managed to get two walks in along the beach and Lester Park.
Anna and Timmy keeping an eye on the neighborhood:

Mikey and I start scraping the paint off our house on Friday. Wish us luck!