Today marks day #7 of being on vacation. It does not feel like it's been that long already! We'd been at Tim's parents house in Pennsylvania until yesterday, and now we have four more days left at home. It's been pretty enjoyable so far. Here are some of my favorite parts:

• Rereading The Lunar Chronicles. While we were in Pennsylvania, I reread the first two books. At home so far, I've read the third book and just started the fourth one. I love it when it's been a while since I've read a series and can't quite remember everything about it. I become a lot more engrossed in the books.

• Tim's parents live in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania (seriously, the closest store is a Dollar General, and it's about half an hour away); however, they've got the cutest little antique cottage shop about a mile from their home, and they just opened a bakery! I got a mango smoothie, as well as a sugar cookie, a croissant filled with spinach, feta cheese, and some other delicious ingredients (it's got a special name, but of course I didn't take a photo of it, and now have NO CLUE what it's called! Ugh.), and some really cool bread which I also can't remember the name of it, but it had a bunch of holes in it and was covered in pepper, parmesan cheese, salt, and some other seasonings. Tim got a chocolate filled croissant. In my opinion, you can tell how good a bakery is from their croissants, and theirs were delicious. It was pretty cool talking with the owner who had overheard me talking about going to King Arthur Flour. She said they took some courses there about opening up a bakery. I can not WAIT to go to pastry school!!!

• Enjoying a day out with Tim when his parents were too tired to go anywhere:

• We first went to the mall and got Tim his first pair of gray high-top converse (lol! He never really cared for them when I wore them before, but then I got a pair of really cool motorcycle shoes that look like cons, and he was changed haha!). We also went to Target later, and I got three shirts and a pair of gray shorts :)
• We found an arcade/video game store and spent time playing in their arcade, which was a lot of fun. I even found and bought Exodus, which was a game that I absolutely LOVED growing up! Interesting and depressing fact that Tim told me when I bought it: the creator of this game along with the rest of the Christian games the company made were actually made illegally apparently...so way to make a good name for Christians lol. Moving on...We also went to a couple comic book/nerd stores later in the week (I don't know what else to call them haha-they've got everything a nerd would want: comics, music, games, toys, clothing...etc) and I got my very first two comic books (Supergirl and Serenity!) as well as a Ron Weasley Funko-pop figurine (the one where he's wearing his yule ball outfit haha). 

• We looked up pizza nearby on yelp, and found this super junky-looking, in-the-ghetto pizza place but figured we'd give it a try because they had great reviews. Turns out it was the best and cheapest meal we had on our trip! Don't judge a book by its cover! We each got two pizza slices that were so big, they were served on two paper plates. Add two drinks to that, and our total was only around $9!!! Super delicious pizza. Tim got pepperoni as well as chicken, bacon and ranch pizza (YUM!), and I got pepperoni and banana peppers as well as a taco pizza slice.

• We went to our very first recliner-seat movie theatre! We watched The Mummy, with Tom Cruise. Not the greatest, but not the worst. It was SO comfortable though-I don't know how many times we started to recline our chairs, looked at each other, and we both had the cheesiest grins on our faces haha! I've never been to a movie where I actually feel rested after watching it for 2 hours, and it was so nice to not have our backs hurt at all! We got some popcorn and drinks, our total with the tickets was about $40. Not worth doing that all the time for sure, but it was a fun experience on vacation :)

• Driving to Scranton, PA, where The Office took place. Technically :) Most of it was actually shot in LA. We went to three locations there: 

• The Steamtown Mall, which is in an episode where Michael takes the women employees shopping at Victoria's Secret for Women Appreciation day lol :) They didn't have much set up here, just the Scranton sign used in the show. I found a shop that could definitely be a hoarder's paradise that had a Dunder Mifflin mug, so I picked that up for $5.99!

• Lake Scranton, where the beach games took place as well as the time when Michael followed his GPS directly into Lake Scranton...haha :) When we got there, it was pouring rain and technically the park was closed to the public, so Tim parked the car and I sprinted to get a photo and we left immediately :)

• Alfredo's Pizza Cafe, which is Dunder Mifflin's employee's favorite pizza place. This was in the episode when Michael accidentally ordered pizza from Pizza by Alfredo and then kidnaps the pizza guy because he won't take Alfredo's Pizza Cafe coupons :)

• We went up to Montage Mountain later in the week, which is near a ski resort and they've got a strip mall. It was pouring rain when we got there, so we honestly only went to Guitar Center and then Starbucks for some mochas to drink on the ride home. Tim and I love doing that when it's raining :) Tim has been looking to test out a particular type of drum pedal, and this Guitar Center had it! They were nice enough to let him actually try them out on a (horribly tuned) drum set, but it helped-he bought them! He's so excited-he's got all top-of-the-line pieces to his drum set now, his music room has been painted, and he can finally start recording! Well, after we get some spot lighting. But still, he's SO CLOSE! I love it when he plays in public, I just feel so proud to be his wife. Even when he's playing on a badly tuned drum set, people still take notice. 

• Waking up today, it's raining, I'm blogging, drinking tea, and will continue reading The Lunar Chronicles. Yesterday was a relaxing day as well, but Tim mowed the lawn and I got groceries and my new glasses lenses (they're thin now!), so we weren't 100% at home yesterday. We did take naps though haha, which made it definitely feel like vacation since I don't like to nap usually. 

• Tomorrow I finally have my hair appointment to get rid of this ugly orange! I'm so happy! Last time she bleached my hair, parts of it turned out more red which looked nice, but fast forward three months, and obviously with washing it a lot, the red faded and it turned into an orangish-yellow. Yuck. I'm excited to see what it'll look like-either completely back to my natural hair color or possibly with some more blonde. That'd be fun for summer. I'm going to possibly pick up a couple more book shelves for our dining room because two book shelves is just not enough lol, get some macarons of course, go to a couple second-hand shops, then probably end at Target.

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The last two weekends have been great! I don't normally work Fridays but had to cover for the other receptionist this past Friday. I was expecting to feel like I didn't have much of a weekend, but this weekend has been more refreshing than any I've had in a while. It's because I was out enjoying life rather than looking online at blogs and pinterest and wishing I was traveling :)

We've had hot dogs from Lakeside Wiener Wagon five times so far this year. The bottom left photo is with pineapple chipotle salsa and a pulled pork taco with cilantro/onion salsa. The right is their porker (pulled pork, coleslaw and pickles) and an extra container of cole slaw because they love me. And because I also work on the truck sometimes :)

After having such carb-filled meals, Tim and I felt insanely bloated and disgusting. We tried out a "stir fry" bowl, with rice, boiled broccoli, garlic and snap peas, fresh red peppers, rotisserie chicken, cashews, and Bragg's liquid aminos for seasoning. We had kombucha to drink. Tim doesn't really care for vegetables, but somehow he loves cooked broccoli? He's actually the one that requested this :) It was super delicious, very filling, and it lasted us three days. Win!

Super sunny weekends meant accidental sunburns for us both...we went to Ludington and got Tim a new skateboard (he's been feeling nostalgic lately), ate at The Que with a couple friends (best bbq in Ludington), and relaxed at home. It was the first time I had been able to relax outside, and I was engrossed in my book before I realized I had been out there for 1 1/2 hours...oops. Excellent book though! "Love with a Chance of Drowning", by Tosse DeRoche. Look it up! It looks like she has a new book coming out in September that I'm super excited to read. She recently broke up with her boyfriend of nine years (so sad!) and lost her father when a friend asked if she'd want to travel through India with her. It sounds like a book of finding herself again and something I'd really enjoy.

The best part of both weekends happened yesterday. Heather and I bought our tickets to Paris/London!!! We'll be gone 10 days, 4 in Paris, 3 in London, and 3 for travel. The second to last day of travel we'll actually be in Chicago overnight because our flight will be getting in later than the train leaving to Grand Rapids. So we'll get an early train ride home. I stopped at the Daily Bakehouse on my way to her house and picked up some treats for us to enjoy while we purchased our tickets :)

We have now officially purchased our tickets from Chicago to Paris and London to Chicago! Best part????? Cheapoair.com had tickets for $1000 less than anywhere else we looked. We couldn't believe it!!! I will be using them for any plane ticket we ever need to purchase. Our total was $908.56! That meant I could actually afford getting a new mesh jacket and boots for the motorcycle for this summer! I just ordered them and can't WAIT to have air flowing through my jacket. I get so unbelievably hot in the one I have right now, so it's definitely worth it.

Today I got up at 5:15am, went and got groceries at 6am, made us delicious coconut milk pancakes and bacon for breakfast, am washing our sheets/comforter, will do dishes/more laundry, and probably spend the rest of the day reading a book or looking up more Paris/London ideas. Happy Sunday!

I haven't posted on here in a while, and it's always hard figuring out what to write after it's been so long! I'm just going to write what has been happening lately, and I'm sure posts will flow from there :)

So, most importantly, Lakeside Wiener Wagon and BBQ is open for the season!!! Tim and I went there yesterday! Tim got two street dogs (with grilled corn, garlic mayo, and parmesan cheese), a pulled pork taco (with cilantro cole slaw), and I got the porker (hotdog with pulled pork, coleslaw, and pickles) as well as the pulled pork sandwich, which also had coleslaw and pickles :) Everything was SO delicious! We then went and watched Guardians of the Galaxy II...I feel like it was just us, but we weren't thrilled with it. Everyone else in the theatre was enjoying it, but Tim and I both like the darker side of Marvel movies, and we felt like this movie was FULL of one-liners to make the audience laugh. It was pretty disappointing, but we were happy to get out of the house and spend time together :)

Friday I had to work part of the day. Rebecca and the kids weren't feeling well, so I didn't go there afterwards. I was in a productive mood, so I decided to take care of one of the rooms upstairs that we don't currently use for anything besides storage. I didn't realize how unorganized it was and just plain messy.

Our cat was pretty excited because she got to come up with me. We normally keep the upstairs closed off in the cold seasons because it isn't heated.

 The majority of stuff that had been in this corner was all wedding stuff. I went through it, kept what I wanted (or couldn't part with), and the stuff in the back left will probably be given to good will.

 This area looks SO much better. I don't know why we never used those book shelves for anything (doh!). Now all our extra blankets and pillows are in one area, and my extra books and kids books that didn't fit on our shelves downstairs are now organized :)

 Old magazines were gone through and will be given to the library, and our kid toys now fit all in one box, since all the kid books are on the shelf :)

It was SO rewarding to be done! I've got one more disastrous closet upstairs to go through, and one downstairs that's filled with winter coats, Tim's old cymbals and Loot Crate boxes lol, but after that, we won't have a ton of extra crap. It will feel so great. Getting rid of stuff is such an exhilarating feeling!

This morning I went and got groceries around 6:30am, then got home and made some yummy bacon hash. It's super easy to make, is super filling, and besides the bacon is really good for you! This is a recipe I found back when we were on the ketogenic diet.

Bacon Hash

6 slices bacon

2 cups chopped cauliflower

1 medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon garlic powder

salt

black pepper

1. Cook bacon in a medium skillet over medium heat until crispy. Remove from pan and cool, then crumble.

2. Drain some of the bacon grease*. Add chopped cauliflower, diced onion, and minced garlic to the skillet with the remaining bacon grease. Cook about 8 minutes over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until cauliflower starts to brown and becomes tender. Add garlic powder, and salt and pepper to taste. Add bacon. Stir until combined, remove from heat.

3. Make a sunny-side-up egg and put it on top :) In the photo, I accidentally cooked mine too long, which is why it looks like part of the egg's skin has been removed because it has been :) It got a little crunchy, and I hate when that happens! You could always do scrambled eggs as well, I'm just partial to sunny-side-up :)

*I'll leave that up to you as to how much bacon grease you want to leave in the pan. I don't like a lot of grease in my food, but you do need some of the grease because it adds flavor. So just eyeball it. You can always add more grease back in the pan if you want.

Kind of a random post, but hopefully I'll get back into the swing of posting more often! Now that summer is coming soon, I'm sure we'll be doing a lot more. I'd also like to start baking more and learning new techniques, so I'll be sure to share everything on here :)

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Day 4 in Portland, Pt. 2

 After spending our morning exploring downtown Portland, we ventured out to Cape Elizabeth. I wanted to see at least one lighthouse before going home. Actually, we really went there because the food truck, Bite Into Maine, aka the "best" place for lobster, is based there. I made sure that even though Tim doesn't like seafood, we had lobster for one meal. Well, I did-he got their caprese sandwich, which he apparently didn't realize had tomatoes and basil on it lol. He wished he had gotten their grilled cheese. Oh well.

This was my favorite meal on our trip. I will say Tim did try my lobster roll (and hated it haha), so I give him props! I got the Picnic Style Lobster Roll. The roll is grilled in butter, then has a layer of coleslaw, lots of butter, and celery salt. Oh, and THEN you take that container of extra butter and pour it all over. SO delicious. I also got some clam chowder, but the chowder Heather and I had gotten in Boston was way better. This one had sand in it. Wash those clams better! That blueberry soda bottle in the first photo is now in our kitchen. We've got a small collection of different drinks that were special to us-like the wine bottle from Chatéau Chantel from my bachelorette party to a few different pops we've tried while on vacation. Every time I look at them, they bring back good memories :)

 I was so insanely happy eating this roll. I was also thinking of my arteries closing up...I'm pretty sure I took a plant enzyme! I will say that I don't think having this much lobster (or butter) so quickly was a good idea. I got super sick that night. But it was worth it lol.

 It was such a beautiful area! We weren't as impressed as most people though because Michigan has lighthouses and the Great Lakes. Maine is supposedly known for their views, but I think Michigan is almost better.

 I had fun going around looking for shells and cool rocks.

 We were here for a good hour, just roaming around, climbing on different rocks. It was fun!

I loved how these walking trails were right next to the water.

After that we drove around for a while, having no clue what to do next. We thought it would have been fun to drive up the coast, but knowing we had a long car drive the next day made that not so appealing. We ended up going to a few book stores and then found a place for pizza (I was SO disappointed, it was terrible. What a way to end our trip!). We took it back to our hotel and watched some more American Pickers.

We left around 6:30am to drive home. I saw the sunrise as we were packing up the car and sprinted over to the beach, wanting to enjoy it one last time. It was the perfect way to end our trip. Our drive home lasted 17 hours. We listened to the podcast Serial the whole way home-I don't know how else we could have lasted that whole ride! It was also our anniversary, so we got to spend every waking moment with each other, in a car lol.

We got home around 11:30pm and walked in to the smell of cat. The guy feeding our cat for us apparently didn't think of cleaning out her litter box. It smelled SO bad. We immediately cleaned up the house and made it smell good before going to bed. Eww.

The best part of our vacation was we had five days of travel and five days to relax at home. Win-win for Tim and I. 

We spent the first day at home playing Gears of War 4. We've played the first and second ones together, so it was fun :) I made sure I had bought a frozen pizza for dinner before we left because I knew we wouldn't want to go anywhere that day.

The next day was back to working out. The kitty stayed next to me the whole time. She definitely missed us.

I was feeling very baker-like, so I wore my new cupcake socks, my "Bake love, not war" shirt, and ate the lemon shortbread cookie from Two Fat Cats. 

I also ate half the whoopie pie. I was nice and saved some for Tim :)

That's about the end of our vacation! I'm so happy we went, even with my car's oil issue costing so much beforehand. I believe it's more important to travel even when stuff like that happens. The way traveling makes you feel, making you forget about work and the stresses of life and exploring new places and the experience of trying new foods, is worth not having that money saved in the bank. Can't wait for our next trip! I think this fall may finally be the time we go to Seattle :)

Day 4 in Portland, Pt. 1

Day 4 in Portland was awesome :) I woke up around 6:30am and went across the street to Old Orchard Beach. They are well known for their pier, which has a bunch of restaurants and also an amusement park with a ferris wheel by the beach. I can imagine during the summer that this is the place to be. There is also a block of tourist shops that were closed down for the season (our motel was actually closing down four days after we left! we made it the perfect time to go, cheap!). I had such a cold but relaxing time taking photos. There were less than 5 people on the beach, all taking photos or enjoying each other's company while the sun came up. It was so beautiful.

After that, Tim and I drove back to Portland for breakfast. We walked about a mile in super windy conditions-thankful for the sun that day so it wasn't super freezing! We were both laughing because it was just so windy lol. We had breakfast at Marcy's Diner, which was such a unique experience. We were seated at the counter and could watch the chef make breakfast while they blared music Tim used to listen to like 10 years ago, more heavy music. It was such a cool experience, besides the fact that we couldn't really hear haha!

 We then walked down near the harbor. The thing I loved about Portland is there's not just one "downtown". They have all different sections, and they're all busy! You walk downtown Manistee, and there's nobody out enjoying life. You walk downtown Portland in the pouring rain, and you come across 100 people. Imagine when it's sunny, like it was this day. I just loved it!

Tim and I came across this alligator outside an ice cream shop, and I jokingly told him to pose by it, and he did it lol :)

 Tim didn't mind exploring by the harbor, but I know he was doing it especially for me :) 

 haha

Portland used to have a love locks bridge, like Paris; however, due to the heaviness of the locks, also like Paris, the bridge started to fall apart. They ended up taking down all the locks but kept a small portion of them in memoriam. I was so happy we came across them :)

The Standard Baking Co. supposedly makes the best pain au Chocolat in town. Pain au chocolat is literally pastry dough filled with chocolate and covered with some sugar. Sadly, they hadn't made any that day, so I ended up just getting a regular croissant. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't just eaten a massive breakfast :)

We went to a few more shops, including a Christmas shop. It's tradition that everywhere we go on an anniversary trip, I get a Christmas ornament. This year I got one that didn't quite scream us, but oh well :) It's of two snow shoes and it says Portland, Maine on it. 

Here's Tim letting me shop while on his phone lol

 After that we went back to the Holy Donut and got a BUNCH more donuts :) Our favorite is still the dark chocolate donut. We should have just gotten a dozen of those!

 THEN we went to yet another bakery. I had heard of this cute little place from Bakingdom, who had taken a trip to Portland the last year with her husband. 

 I, of course, wasn't hungry after being to breakfast, so I just got a whoopie pie and a lemon cookie, two of her recommendations. SO delicious! Looking back now at the below photo, I definitely wish I had gotten some pie!

I was glad we walked around so much, probably about three miles, because after this, we were off to Cape Elizabeth, where delicious lobster and views of the ocean awaited us :)