A weekend in the Black Hills

A few (okay quite a few) photographs from our Memorial Day weekend. It was spent traveling to the Black  Hills in South Dakota for the beautiful wedding of Dan & Kate. As we drove along it became more and more apparent that we had packed completely wrong for the trip. Sun. Rain. Sleet. Snow. Guess those shorts will never be making it out of my bag....

The drive was long, but it all made for a fun weekend surrounded by wonderful friends. We even picked up souvenir sweatshirts due to our poorly packed bags. So, I am now a proud owner of a black hills fleece...(you will see Ellie modeling her matching one in a picture below)

I hope you had a wonderful weekend as well.

-Britta

Gift Buying Update

Remember way back here when I said I was going to attempt to buy more gifts from small businesses?

Well here is a little update on some of the wonderful things I have found....

For one of my dear friends whose birthday was in March, I found this lovely print from the etsy shop Brookish.

It was one of those gifts that is appreciated only by those that love Pride and Prejudice, and my friend Ellie was a perfect match. This etsy shop has other items too that may end up in my household at some point in the future.

Another friend's birthday soon followed, and for her I found this headband from the shop Folding Chair Designs...I instantly thought of my friend Bekah when I saw this headband.

Another item that I happened to find is not from an etsy shop, but has it's own website. This handy little device, the "cuppow", allows for you to turn a canning jar into a travel mug. Genius? I think so. I gave one to the beautiful bride to be Hannah at her bridal shower...because sometimes iced coffee is the best relief for wedding planning stress.

Overall, I feel that shopping through smaller business has allowed me to buy more personal and unique gifts. It has also been fun spending time finding that perfect thing for the people in my life that I love.

Well I better get to bed. Hope you are having a wonderful weekend.

A Bridal Shower

This past weekend I was in the cities to help throw a bridal shower for my friend Justine. It was a brunch shower so we did most of the decorating and cooking/baking the night before. I managed to take a few photos of the day, but there were many details that I didn't get a chance to catch.

Details of the day:

Make your own paper bag and book page flowers.

Mini German Pancake Recipe with Triple Berry Sauce

Chocolate Truffles  (I added peppermint to the recipe)

Homemade Coffee Creamers (we made the peppermint mocha & the pumpkin spice)


It was a wonderful morning filled with wonderful people and delicious food.

An Early Birthday...

My lovely friend Bekah was in town so she helped us celebrate my Birthday a few days early...

complete with a nice dinner at one of my favorite restaurants. 

Next up, was a Pumpkin Bundt Cake (recipe here), Vanilla Bean Ice Cream,and Champagne.

To be perfectly honest though we were all way to full from dinner so we actually lit the candles just to take photos. (um...twice...my camera's battery was dead the first time)

We then covered the cake and promised to devour it the following afternoon. (which we did).

It was delicious. 

Oh and we also fit in some remote control helicopter flying competitions, and party edition Pass the Pigs.

I couldn't have asked for a better evening. 

Thank you friends.

You make growing old easy ;)

Home from Camping

It was a little hard to come back to reality after this weekend. We left Friday afternoon for Crow Wing State Park after shoving our hatchback with a cooler,tent,sleeping bags, and other random camping gear. What made this packing a little more interesting is that my bike also had to fit. We made it work, well Ben made it work...but off we went with a bike tire poking up between our heads in the front seats. After working up a sweat with our creative packing I convinced Ben we should probably stop at our local Starbucks to get a cool refreshment. One iced passion tea later and I was a happy traveler.

We only had to drive around 2.5 hours to get to our destination, and during this time we heard a few radio weather reports of the low being 32 degrees that night. This report seemed much more likely when we stepped out of our car to make a camping reservation and discovered we were no longer warm enough in only our t-shirts. 

The chill setting in was a great motivator in setting up our two tents. We gave the boys the smaller tent, and then claimed the larger tent for us three girls.... conveniently this was the only one big enough for an air mattress. Funny how that worked out. After the tents were set up, starting a fire became our next priority. My friend Bekah is an expert fire starter just in case you were wondering. 

Around 11pm or so we realized that the fire was no longer enough to keep us warm so we headed to our tents and sleeping bags. I think I slept in about 3 layers of clothing and a sleeping bag with another blanket on top. It took awhile to warm up but eventually the conversations dwindled and we fell asleep. Basically we left room to breathe, but other than that we were buried head to toe in blankets. 

The next morning the boys woke up around seven and had coffee ready for us by the time we crawled out of our sleeping bags. I guess it is hard to sleep in when you wake up on the cold ground....who would have guessed?

In the picture above you will see everyone smiling as Ellie pours our coffee. It looks incredibly cheesy, but I swear we truly were that happy for our hot cup of coffee. It ended up being a gorgeous day, filled with hiking for the girls and mountain biking for the guys. Thankfully the next night was a good ten degrees warmer. I love Fall camping. Okay enough words-here are more photos.

...

Do you want to know something rather interesting...?

Here I am loving Autumn and tomorrow it is supposed to hit 90 degrees. 

One last chance for shorts perhaps.