7 Quick Takes Friday

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We are leaving for Hilton Head Island in a few weeks! I have actually never been to Atlantic Ocean, so I am particularly excited. I’ve flown over it twice (to Europe and back again), I’ve swam in the Pacific Ocean in Hawaii, and I’ve swam in the Gulf of Mexico when visiting Florida’s west coast. But I’ve never technically been to the Atlantic Ocean, and that’s been on my bucket list for a while.

While we are visiting Hilton Head Island, I am really looking forward to renting kayaks. We are planning on doing a sunset kayak tour of an estuary. As excited as I am about going to the ocean, I am not planning on kayaking in it!

And, I can’t wait to eat the food. I have been looking up Carolina lowcountry cuisine restaurants and I have a list of places I am hoping to try. On the top of that list is A Lowcountry Backyard.

--- 2 ---

But really what I am most excited about is the drive. Yes, we are driving! It’s about fifteen hours from our house. My husband and I have never been on a road trip together and it’s something I particularly enjoy. For me, roadtripping is a struggle between wanting to get where you are going as quickly as possible and my desire to shunpike it. (A “shunpiker” is someone who shuns the turnpike—highway—while driving long distances in an effort to find lots of neat places to stop along the way.)
We decided to split up the planning. I was supposed to plan the trip down, while he planned the trip back. We have been using a really cool website, Roadtrippers.com, to find fun things to do. We had a few awesome places picked out, but the indie bookstore I planned to hit up in Indianapolis has apparently closed (the customer service reviews on Yelp were pretty bad, anyway) and the Biltmore Estate is not something you can really tour and appreciate in just a few hours. So I think we’re back to square one. Maybe I can convince him to get off the interstate and see what turns up on the state routes that wind through the Smokey Mountains.

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Tomorrow officially marks 4 months since we bought our home, the Midwest Manor. It has been a nerve-wracking and expensive couple of months. I am really hoping that we have worked all the kinks out of the house now, as there was nobody living in it for a couple of years before we moved in.  I have a few more projects to finish up, but I am planning on posting a house tour as soon as possible!
Nevertheless, I am starting to fall in love with the place. Yes, starting. I really really liked the house when we first laid eyes on it, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to understand what it is like to really love where you live. It had a lot to do with 3+ feet of snow finally melting so I could see my backyard for the first time, a lot to do with seeing it grow and begin to bloom. And a lot to do with walking to Sunday mass on a bright, sunny morning because yes, we’re that close.

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My number one goal before we leave for vacation is to hang up a curtain over the picture window that looks into our backyard. Or, the window that looks into our dining room, depending on whether you’re in the house our in the yard.

Luckily our backyard is somewhat private, so I don’t worry too much about people being able to see into our house. We went on vacation one week after moving in (yeah, that was not planned well—it’s a long story!) and I taped black garbage bags to the windows because we didn’t have any curtains up over the two large picture windows in the front and the back of the house. Here we are, four months later, and we still only have one window covered. I told my husband that the ONE thing we have to do before leaving for vacation is cover that window. Like grown ups. Not like with garbage bags.

We bought the curtains ($3.99! Ikea!) and the curtain rod (that cost a lot more…) but now have to find the time to put it all together.

--- 5 ---

Anyone remember those baked potatoes I mentioned on Monday? I made them in the microwave. My brother said they were therefore oxymoron potatoes, because they were not, in fact, baked. They were surprisingly delicious!

Here is what I did:

Oxymoron Potatoes for Two

• 2 small Yukon Gold potatoes
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Anything else you like on your potatoes, to taste

1. Prick potatoes with fork.
2. Place in microwave safe bowl.
3. Sprinkle with as much salt and pepper as you like on top. Turn the potatoes and sprinkle with salt and pepper again to cover the other side.
4. Microwave for 3 to 5 minutes (depending on your microwave and the size of your potatoes). Turn potatoes over. Microwave again for 3 to 5 minutes.
5. Cut in half and dress as desired (salt, pepper, butter, sour cream, chili, whatever you want).

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I painted my step stool!

Last summer, my husband and I went to Ikea and purchased, among many things, the Bekvam Step Stool. You've probably seen one; it looks like this:

Ikea BEKVAM Step Stool

We bought it because even at 5'6, I was not tall enough to reach the cabinets in our last rental house, the 1926 house. (Our current home, the Midwest Manor, is the 1938 house. More on that someday!) When we picked it out at Ikea, adjacent to the brightly colored children's furniture, I had brief weepy visions of us putting this little piece of furniture together before we were even married and our children using it in their playroom someday, and all kinds of other misty thoughts you have when you're counting down to your wedding in weeks rather than months.

Little did I know that assembling Ikea furniture, even this little guy, was not the best idea mere weeks before our wedding! At any rate, building the little stool was a fun and valuable conflict resolution exercise.

Behr Americana

I've been meaning to paint it since the day we bought it. I was going to paint it bright yellow when we were using it in the 1926 house. When we moved, I was going to paint it apple green. We ended up buying Behr Americana, a nice colonial/cornflower blue. It was looking a lot lighter than I had hoped when I was painting it outside in the afternoon sunlight, but I think once it dries and we start using it indoors the color might appear darker. I will post photos when it's done!

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I was wondering all week if I'd make it to number 7! I am hoping to keep this seventh quick take as a space to write about what I am doing to further my faith, my spiritual life, and my interiority. I am hoping to make talking about these topics a large part of this blog, as I am also trying to make it a large part of my life.

Lately, Tim and I have been attending daily mass, or at least trying. We have not yet made it a full five days in a row (in fact, last week, it was 0 out of 5) but we have found that we really enjoy going. It creates a solid frame for the rest of the day's activities and I feel like have better days when I go rather than when I don't go.

Have a great weekend!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!