Memorial Day Weekend Part 3

I can't believe I am still blogging about this almost a week later. So sorry! I took so many pictures that I wanted to share though.

Uncle Dan and Aunt Steph's cottage is one of several cottages on an old family retreat center so there is a pool, tennis court, basketball court, shuffleboard, etc. Adam being the active one he is, loved this fact.

The boys were active all day long. Here is part of their tennis match.

Adam and I got to play shuffleboard. I've never played but it has a similar concept to curling. He beat me a couple time per the usual but then I kicked his butt. 85-21! It was awesome. I gotta savor those games that I actually win because Adam is so good at everything. No exaggeration. The man can win anything even if it's a game of luck vs skill.

We then went to the dunes. On the east coast, dunes are small and you aren't allowed on them because there is always some kind of endangered animal that is nesting there. In the midwest, the dunes are a different story all together. I don't know if you can tell but this dune is huge and it is a redneck's playground. So many suburbans and jeeps were going down this thing. It was really cool.

It looked like we were in the desert. To the right of the picture were even more dunes. That is Silver Lake which is what the cottage overlooks. To the right of this picture was Lake Michigan. It was a really cool area.

I was at the top of the dune and that is Adam's cousins plus friends going down it. The girl at the bottom of the dune is Adam's cousin. It was crazy far down.

We played bocce ball and layout out for a while and then had to climb back up this dune. It was crazy hard. Interesting fact about these huge dunes is that they move a little each year due to the wind. Over the years they have "swallowed" up some houses. The current house that is closest to the dunes has to clean their garage off frequently because the dune is right next to it. I would hate to own that house. But to their defense, they used to be the fourth closest house to the dunes so who would have known.

Later that day, we headed to a neighboring town and ate some dinner. After dinner we went and looked at the "lighthouse" on the pier. It was interesting looking and red because that seems to be the theme of Michigan lighthouses.

Adam photobombing the girls' photo. (L-R) Cousins Ali and Emily and then their friends.

The next day, we decided to see the neighboring lighthouse called little Sable point lighthouse. It was my favorite one because it looked more like a traditional lighthouse.

We decided to go up in the lighthouse and learn all about it. It was very interesting and I learned way too much to blog about.

 I liked these little tags that were all around the balcony saying how far away things were.

We were so close.

 It says Chicago is only 134 miles away if you can't tell.

What a wonderful weekend and now it's the weekend again. So pumped! Happy Friday

Memorial Day Part 2

The start of the trip! 1. What I was trying to take a picture of. 2. What I actually took a picture of because I forgot to switch the view on my phone.

On Saturday, we took our time getting to the cottage because we knew Uncle Dan and Aunt Steph plus kids weren't going to be there until 5 and we were going to gain an hour travel between time zones. It was really fun. We stopped at several different lighthouses, played on the beaches/piers, stopped at antique stores, and took the scenic way all the way up.

The first stop was South Haven. We saw this cool replica of a War of 1812 Schooner out on the lake and got to watch it come all the way in. It was the highlight of my day. Also of the three lighthouses we saw that day, this one was my favorite. 

 The weather was the best here so we played on the swings too. We met this adorable little girl who decided to give us some of her rock collection. It was super random but really cute. Then we bought some lemonade from a kid who was trying to go to Disney World this summer. It was way cute.

Every picture this weekend, I might have this jacket on in some capacity.  I usually pride myself in my packing abilities but I really dropped the ball on this one. I brought 4 shirts, one of them being a tank top and the other three being basically the same color that clashed with said jacket. It was pretty chilly all weekend so I basically ended up wearing this jacket, plus a hoody, and another jacket all weekend. Good one.

We were trying to get pictures of us in the air. Adam was a little late in taking this one haha but I really stuck my landing.

Next stop was Grand Haven. This lighthouse looked similar to the first one but had a house/barn looking thing along with it.

The pier was long and the wind was really chilly so this is where I was hiding for a little bit.

After we took a scenic detour through Holland, Michigan to see all the dutch related things, we came to Muskegon. This had two separate light houses on two separate piers. The one pier was super long!

this was the half way mark in the "L" shape pier. It was a long walk but it was really cool.  We finally made it to the cottage around 6 after traveling all day but we really enjoyed our adventure.

Memorial Day Part 1

We were invited to go to Adam's aunt and uncle's lake house in Michigan this past weekend. The funny thing is that it's about 70 miles away if we went right over the lake but we decided that was way too expensive!!! (the ferry is a $500 roundtrip for 2 people and a car- Yikes!)

So we decided to go to Wheaton to visit some friends on Friday night and cut down some of our trip. (Uncle Dan and Aunt Steph weren't getting there till Saturday). So we met some friends for dinner and real bocce ball. Apparently it's played indoors and a little more like bowling.

 (it's all laned off. You have to throw the ball before that yellow line. You have to get it past the center line but you can't hit the far wall or that ball is out of play. Then obviously you are trying to get it closest to the small ball. It's way easier to hit any of the balls out of play than when you play out on different terrain.

 The winners! (We look like we're holding our first child haha)

 The three couples ;) Adam's friends from high school. I really like them. They are a very fun and friendly group.

 The boys! (Matt and Brogen were in our wedding ;)

 They've been friends since middle school when they were on different sports teams and living super close to one another.

The girls- Jenny and Kaylyn

 We had so much fun! I'm really glad we decided to do this. Then we headed to the in-law's house and got to catch up with them before bed ;)

The Table Reveal!

All the original chair pieces before we worked on them

I told Adam I really wanted to re-do furniture so about a month ago, when he helping his buddy move he saw this table that our friend's mom was getting rid of and swooped it up for me.  

I never saw what it looked like put together but I imagine it looked something like this.

This was one big learning project since we both don't have much experience with furniture. We did lots of sanding, stripping (the furniture kind, not anything else), staining, painting, and using polyurethane to protect the stain. We also were led astray by a nice man in Home Depot who told us to use steel wool and Comet to strip off the existing polyurethane. If you are going for that kind of distressed look, that method is very affective but if not, it kind of roughs the wood up more than sand paper and therefore affects the color of the stain. All just a learning process.

Adam and I both had ideas for the table and were able to mesh them together to make a really unique item. We're such a good team. He helps our ideas come to life. I am not very good with straight lines or measuring and of course, he is really good at these things. Very convenient for me.

We had a lot of work to do with all the staining and painting. I decided I wanted to stain the table and then using four different shades of a yellow to paint a couple of inches on each leg a coordinating yellow. Then I wanted to paint the chairs except a a couple inches on the legs that we would stain to coordinate with the table. This was a long process but by the end, we got very good at it.

The legs drying after we stained them

Here is how the chair seat looked... um, yuck. So I decided to re-dos those too.

Here is our table. It's hard to get a good picture of it.

And here are three of the four chairs. The last chair needs to be repaired before we can paint it the brightest yellow we've got.

 I love the ombre colors

I think I like the fabric I used, but was also considering using the fabric on the left

with the blue fabric or just using all blue fabric. I"m not sure how I feel about my fabric choices. Any advice? Is the bold fabric too much for the table that already has some stuff going on? It's also hard because all the chairs are different yellows so it's hard to plan what will look good on all of them.

 All in all, I'm really excited. I think the table turned out how we wanted and we can say that we did it ;) I'm also excited to have people over for dinner and not make them stand, share the two stools we have, or eat on our new couch... just saying that thing was expensive.

Great Weekend

The weather was supposed to be gross this weekend, full of wind and rain, but instead all we got was beautiful sunshine! I loved it. Our weekend was full of fun, chill and spontaneous plans. The best kind of weekend.


Saturday, we walked out of apartment and saw all these cars because folks, the farmer's market has started and it is literally across the road. So exciting! (usually there isn't a car in this area)

This time of year, people are mostly selling flowers and herbs but as different harvesting seasons develop, people will bring different stuff on Saturdays. I'm so pumped. We got some local white honey (really yummy) and real Wisconsin maple syrup. Yummy!

We then decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and walk down in the Third Ward. I love, love this party of the city. We stopped in a cute boutique and put on some hipster (dorky) glasses. They're kind of fun.

(I don't know why the picture is stretched ;(

The Third Ward has this really cool public market modeled after the one in Seattle. We went there for lunch because you can get all kinds of fun, local stuff. (Katie, Amy, and whoever else has a gluten problem, they even have gluten free options here ;)

We found a river walk and got to see fun views of the city.

 So fun!

Then we went to another suburb and saw Lake Michigan. It was so nice.

 Skipping rocks. Classic thing to do on Lake Michigan. Adam is really good at it.

 I am really bad at it (my form is atrocious) but I have really cute shoes on so... who cares, right?

 The city!

Sunday was full of more time at Lake Michigan (bocce ball and laying out, with friends, and two graduation parties. It was really fun to attend these events and A) not have to think about getting homework done around our spontaneous fun B) not have to small talk everyone you have ever known because the party is all about you or C) not have to help out with any of the said parties because it's your family member graduating... It was nice.

In other news, we got our table and three of our chairs done (the other chair needs to be fixed a little before we can redo it).

Ombre yellow! So excited to reveal it this week ;)