Biggest and Best in the Upper Midwest

Over Memorial Day weekend, Justin and I ventured North to visit some family and friends in Minnesota. My best friend Heidi, who is a Minneapolitan and whom we visited last fall, is always gushing about the goods she gets at too-good-to-be-true prices from the Minneapolis farmer's market, so when the rooster crowed Sunday morning, Justin and I met up with her and her boyfriend to wander around the self proclaimed largest open air market in the upper midwest (see photo).

After touring around the place, I must agree with the sign.

There were rows and rows of vendors selling all sorts of yumminess at buy-like-there's-no-tomorrow-prices. From local vegetables, freshly plucked from gardens...

to herbs that smelled so good they could almost induce an aroma coma...

to plump fruit and berries, just begging to be eaten.

You can even find interesting oddities such as this purple basil. (Well, at least I've never seen purple basil, have you?)

The insane part is that the majority of the items for sale are grown by local folks, which turns yummy-food-smiles into pat-myself-on-the-back-for-supporting-my-neighbors-smile. Not to mention, the beautiful way some vendors spruce up their packaging. Nothing says "hello sunshine" like some pansy faces, am I right?

But of course, flanking the end of the good-for-you fruits and veggies is another row of cooked food such as hot caramel corn, pulled pork, and mini donuts (yum-o!). Heidi is particularly fond of the fresh squeezed orange juice, which I must say is probably the best darn orange juice I have ever had.

The last, but certainly not least, row capping the end of the market is what I call gourmet alley. There you can sample olives, olive oil, nuts, spreads, bread, and even homemade soap.

Unfortunately, after perusing through all the goodies, all four of us left with empty hands. Surprising, no? Well, in our defense, we had a full day ahead of us and didn't think the produce would last in a hot and humid car all afternoon. But, now that I've experienced it, when I talk to Heidi and she is slurping down an orange juice, I'll be even more jealous. In fact, it sounds delicious right now.

HOW Hiatus

I forgot to inform you that I am attending the HOW Design Conference this week in Denver, Colorado, and I won't be posting regularly. So, take this as your warning to not be disappointed if you check and not see anything. (Though, I'm not discouraging you from checking, I'm sure there are some old posts you have missed!) I'm trying to soak up all the creativity and inspiration that I can muster, to bring back to good 'ol Chi-town and amp up my work.

My coworkers and I flew out Friday night and jammed our weekend with whitewater rafting and hiking, leaving just enough energy for the opening keynote speaker, Andy Stefanovich, Sunday night.

But, let's start from the beginning with the omen we saw on our flight from Chicago to Denver, reassuring us that this was going to be a fantastic trip.

Do you see that? Our flight attendant's name was Cyann. How ironic could that be?

After landing safely and getting a good night's sleep in our hotel, we hit the road early Saturday morning  racing the clock to find the whitewater rafting company that I booked our tours with. On the way there, we enjoyed some of the most beautiful scenery I have seen in the United States, the Rocky Mountains. (This photo is a very understated example of the enormity of the Mountains. In fact, I think this is just a hill.)

Then on Sunday, we trekked out to Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater and scaled the beautiful rock forms.

After Red Rocks, we zoomed back to the hotel, changed, and zipped over to see HOW's opening keynote speaker, Andy Stefanovich.

And that's all I have for now, but I hope to share more of the conference with you at a later time. In the meantime, I must resume my consumption of inspiring designers' advice and extremely enlightening information.

Great Grad Gift

It's that time of year again, when kids will be flying their coops, as their parents watch with anticipation, fear, and pride. Although I don't personally know anyone graduating this year, hearing my coworkers excitement about attending grad parties made me think of my graduation and all the sweet gifts I got.

So, today, I am sharing with you one of my all-time greatest graduation gifts. However, I am kind of cheating when I call this a grad gift, because I didn't receive it until moving into my first off-campus apartment my sophomore year of college, but it was one of the practical things my parents bought me when I moved into my first off-campus apartment and it would have been extremely useful from day one my freshman year.

That said, I present to you the Rubbermaid Tough Tools Portable Kit.

This baby has it all: an adjustable wrench, needle-nose pliers, measuring tape, groove joint pliers, ratcheting screwdriver, level, hammer, and small selection of nails and screws. Since receiving it over five years ago, I have added a couple box cutters, a teeney-tiny level, a few allen wrenches, and some additional bits for the screw driver.

And speaking of the screwdriver, Rubbermaid really maximized the space because the end comes off, revealing a handy storage compartment for all the extra bits. There is even more storage in the divided container and is great for stashing extra screws, nails, and other odds-and-ends you collect over time.

But, the best part of all, is that you can zip it shut, around all three sides, and stow it in a small space. It's perfect for a dorm room or 400-square-foot apartment that doesn't even have a kitchen.

We keep ours in our coat closet on the first floor and it is the first thing we grab when needing a tool for a fix. Some people have a drawer where they keep a couple tools handy, but this works just fine for us. The final kicker (if I haven't sold you on it yet) is that it can be purchased for about $35 and in our opinion, is worth every penny. I highly recommend it as a gift for a fresh graduate, but also for anyone moving out on their own.

Just a Couple Tree Huggers

Even though this story is a month old to us, it's never too late to hug er, plant a couple trees right? Well, that's exactly what Justin and I did the weekend after Earth Day this year (yes, I know about a month ago). I could say we planted them in celebration of Mother Earth, but that wouldn't be accurate because we planted them for purely selfish reasons: we want large lush trees in our backyard one day and I had a Home Depot Garden Club coupon to use (of course). And this coupon wasn't any old $10 off a $50 purchase—which we have scored many times in the past—oh no no no, this was a buy one tree get one tree free coupon. Yes, you read correctly, 2 trees for the price of one, who could go wrong with that? Not us! So, while out and about one day, we stopped at good 'ol HD and snatched up two of their largest trees in stock, one maple and one birch tree for (drum roll please) 100 smack-o-las. As we danced to our good fortune in the car on the way home, we talked strategy about where these big-daddies were going to go.

Unlike most other projects I tackle, I did not mock up the location of these guys, because moving them around the yard was a much faster way to get a sense of the space. We ended up choosing to plant them about 6 feet in from the back of our property, aligning them with the sides of our house and across from each other. We think they frame the yard nicely and dream of planting more friends around them in the fall. After determining the best spot for each tree, we were ready to start digging.

But before we started the actual tree-planting-process, the most important part of this project was making sure we did not hit any gas or electric lines when digging. To ensure we didn't, we called up the Illinois JULIE hotline (8-1-1) and submitted our request. JULIE is an extremely convenient resource for anyone planning any digging in their yard (trees, decks, additions, etc.). The hotline takes your information and contacts each utility company for you. Within three days later, our backyard was tagged and flagged. (JULIE was new to me for this project and when Justin told me he had to call Julie before we could plant the trees, I got all huffy and said, "Who's Julie!?" Now I know.)

Any who, back to the action. When planting a tree, the hole should be twice as wide as the ball and just as deep as the height of the ball.

Another important step (almost as important as JULIE), is straightening out the roots. As you can see, the roots of our tree molded to the container it had been sitting in for who knows how long and we needed to loosen these up so that they didn't continue to grow in a circle, but stretched out into the earth like arms, allowing the roots to grow out and suck up the nutrients in the native soil.

It's a little hard to see the ball here, but this is how it looked after we broke it up and shook the roots out a bit.

Next, we started filling the hole back up. To provide additional nutrients to our new babies, we mixed a bag of Miracle-Gro garden soil for trees and shrubs with the dirt we dug up. It is important to mix some sort of tree soil with the native soil so that the roots are fed and the transplanted tree isn't shocked by the new dirt environment.

We started by filling the hole only half full because we had to make sure the tree was straight from all directions. I won't stand for crooked trees in my yard!

Then, we stomped the dirt down, compressing it as much as we could to hold the tree in place...

...and topped it off with the rest of the dirt.

Once safely in the ground and straight up-and-down, we gave them a good dose of H2O and continued to water them every day for the next couple weeks. Trees soak up water at a slow rate, so no need to blast them with buckets of water, a slow stream will do the trick.

Since then, we've sat back and admired our work, secretly wishing we could fast forward five years and see how much bigger they'll be in the future.

Did anyone else tackle a planting project around Earth Day? There's no better time to give back to the earth than the present!

Bringing the isles to Illinois

Prior to going on our Hawaiian vacation earlier this year, which you can start reading about here, I daydreamed about the souvenirs I was going to bring home. Like the photos I took while we were in Italy on our honeymoon that are now matted, framed, and hanging in our family room, I wanted items I could scatter around our house as daily reminders of this trip. So, as we soaked up the sun, shopped, and did other vacation-related activities, I picked up some inexpensive (and free) curios to bring the island-flavor back to Illinois.

These $2-a-piece dried starfish were the first things I snagged from a nearby shop. I love their white, simple shapes, and every time I spritz myself with my chosen fragrance of the day, I admire their beautiful forms.

Oh, you saw that I threw in the word free did you? Well, that's no mistake. As we visited beaches around the islands, I gathered some large and small pieces of dried corral that had washed ashore and stowed them in my luggage. They didn't make my suitcase smell so hot, but once home, I rinsed the salt water and sand off and distributed them around our house.

Our souvenirs aren't large (like a carved wood mask that many vendors were peddling), but when I catch a glimpse of them, they make me smile and remind me of the wonderful time we had on the beautiful isles of Hawaii.