September Style Challenge Recap

So I took on three different style challenges on Instagram this month - Style Me September, Pinned It Spinned It and Patterns.  I didn't hit each one every day, but I had fun with the ones I was able to do.  I had the easiest time with Pinned It Spinned It - probably because it was easy to take the suggested outfit and create one of my own.  At any rate, I had fun playing along and because I don't share my outfits every day here I thought I'd highlight some of my favorites from this month.

I was going to take October off from any of the style challenges but then I saw a few that sounded fun, so because I like the Inspiration, I'm taking on three more again - Fall Style Challenge Still Being Molly, Outstanding October Style with Curvy Girl on the Run and I don't have the calendar from them yet, but I'm doing Jamie and Amy's Pinned It Spinned It again too.  Between the three I will always have some sort of inspiration for what I should wear that day!  It sure does help some mornings, I have to say that much!  Once again, you can follow along on my Instagram which is also on the right side of my blog here.  I may highlight outfits in blog posts every now and then too.  Onward to October!

Summer strikes back

Just off of another very nice weekend - we were spoiled here in Minnesota with very summerlike weather.  It was a perfect day on Saturday for a round of disc golf in the morning followed by the Autumn Brew Review in the afternoon! The park we disc golf at is just starting to have it's trees turn color - I think by next week it will be even more vibrant, though I don't know if we'll get out there next weekend, got a few things going on!

The Autumn Brew Review was a lot of fun too - it was the third festival in the ticket series we bought for this year.  It's neat that they hold this particular event in the parking lot of the old Grain Belt Brewery - which ironically is where Nate's office is now!  This event was huge - there were almost 125 breweries present from both Minnesota and some other spots in the US.  We had a great time going around and sampling - there is no way we could have gotten to all of the places though!  

My only complaint was the lack of shade, while it was great to soak up a sunny day, after awhile the sun actually got to be a bit much.  We made sure to take a lot of water breaks.  I did end up with a mild sunburn at the end of the day though!  The best part of this event taking place right outside Nate's office?  After we'd had our fill we were able to stop in his office for more water, a comfy place to sit and a nice indoor restroom to use while we waited for his dad to pick us up! 

We went back and dinner with Nate's parents as they had kindly watched Oliver for us.  He decided to be a bit of a stinker on Saturday and not nap terribly much, so we got him to bed fairly early and then played some cards with Nate's parents as well.  

Sunday was a nice calm day at home.  We got up and took our time making a nice breakfast at home. Oliver played and worked on his new skills - not only does he crawl, but he now will pull himself to a standing position on things.  All that work makes a boy tired, so he napped much better for us!  We did some boring things too like shop for new patio furniture - I was shocked we managed to find some this late in the season, but we desperately wanted something different for our deck before our annual Oktoberfest next month and we were lucky to find some at Menards.  While Ollie took his afternoon nap we made some homemade applesauce and it turned out fabulously.  Ollie woke up smiling and showing off his newest skill.

The weekend ended on a little bit of a sour note.  We don't usually get too into politics, but this election there's an issue on the ballot in our little town that is important to us and we had a yard sign in our yard supporting this issue.  Someone who opposed the issue decided that they opposed it so much that they needed to steal the sign out of our yard.  That just didn't sit well with me - how dare they infringe on my freedom of speech, trespass on my private property and theft my sign?  We were able to get a replacement, but it just makes you really question the world you live in sometimes.  We tried not to dwell on it too much though.  It was just a tiny blimp in an otherwise awesome weekend that may be the last warm one we'll get! It's already cooler today!  I hope you all had a good weekend too!

TIGF

Hosted by Ashley, Nay and Laura

Happy Friday my friends!  Is it seeming like the weeks are passing by faster and faster to anyone else now that it's Fall?  It's already October next week, wow!  Anyway, to close out another week I'm back with my weekly dose of gratitude.

This week I am grateful for:

A good eater - Ollie LOVES to eat.  He rarely turns his nose up at anything now.  His newest favorite food? Salmon.  I'm not even that big of a fan of salmon!!  We make pretty much all of his food from scratch and he is seriously doing so well with it.  I'll do a post on how we do his food soon in case anyone is curious.

Beautiful weather - this week has been absolutely gorgeous, warm days, cool nights, pretty much everything to love about Fall in Minnesota!  We're soaking up every moment with walks outside, disc golf, eating at patios and other outdoor activities while we still can!
A fresh new look - I don't know if anyone noticed in recent pictures, but I cut my hair last weekend.  Yes this is a frequent occurrence for someone with my type of hair, but I changed up the look a little bit and went for more of a shaved pixie.  I am loving it.  So easy, light feeling, fresh.  

Lunch hours with this guy - I'm so, so thankful that even though I have to work, I work close enough to my parents to spend my lunch hours with Oliver.  And even if it's blurry I adore this picture my aunt took of us earlier this week.  Such joy, this little boy!

New followers and friends - Thanks to the Amazon giveaway I'm part of for Carseat safety awareness with Bloggin Mamas (see original post here, it's not too late to still enter!) I have gained quite a few followers on Facebook and Twitter in the last week or so - thank you all for following along, I look forward to getting to know more of you!
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!

Thrift Style Thursday - Orange is the New Favorite

I was super excited for today's Thrift Style Thursday theme of "orange".  I love orange!  I am not sure why in the last several years it has become my favorite color, it just has.  When I was a little girl, if you asked me my favorite colors it was always pink and purple.  Then I went through an anti-pink phase in my teen years, but I still claimed purple as my favorite color - my first car was even purple.  Somehow though I've become less of a fan of purple in recent years.  I started finding myself gravitating towards oranges, corals, and peaches in recent years.  Maybe there is something about the warmth of these shades?  Either way, I love orange and I love my outfit today!

How awesome is this blazer I scored at the Goodwill?  It's suede.  I got it for a steal.  I can't wait to style it in many other ways this fall and winter!  I really like how well it matches my bird shirt though for today!

Blazer - Live A Little (thrifted), Shirt - Gap (via Instagram shop)

Pants - unknown brand (thrifted), Bag - Merona (Target)

Shoes - Steve Madden (thrifted)

I think this makes the perfect Fall outfit even if we're not really having Fall like weather this week.  It's even going to be close to 80 this weekend!  I won't complain, I know we'll be whining about snow before too long!

Do you have a favorite color?  And head on over to the Thrift Style Thursday page on Facebook for more orange!

Frolf!

Our new favorite hobby has suddenly become disc golf (Frisbee golf).  We had tried it quite a few years ago before we got married and just didn't really get too into it at that time.  Last month while Nate's cousins were up visiting one of the parks we went to use the beach at had a disc golf course.  They thought that disc golf sounded fun and wanted to give it a try, so they all went and bought discs and went playing one day.  At first I didn't really want to join in, but Nate convinced me to give it a try and I ended up really enjoying it.  We've found it's actually a great activity we can do on a weekend morning and we can bring Ollie along quite easily.

So you might find yourself wondering, how does one play disc golf?  Well first you need a set of discs.  A standard set will come with the only three discs you truly need to be able to play.  A driver, midway and putter disc.  You can buy other discs that are weighted differently as you kind of work on your skill, but you'll get by just fine with the main three if that is all you have.  Nate took and fashioned a backpack into a disc golf carrier for us too, it makes it easier for playing.  We hang the backpack off of Ollie's stroller and we're good to go!

Next you need to find a park with a disc golf course!  There are some with nine holes, some with twelve and some with eighteen.  We're lucky enough to have one near our house that has twelve holes.  We have found we can get a round in in about an hour or so.  Each hole has a net that you're throwing your discs to.  You start from the launch pad that is set up and throw your driver.  Then you go to where your driver landed and you throw another disc.  You keep going until you hit the net.  It sounds fairly simple, but it can be hard! Some holes have you throwing through trees, over water, and of course, being that it's like frisbee, the wind can be a factor too!

I'm not super great at it, but I enjoy being able to do something outside with both of my boys!  Another perk is that unlike regular golf, once you buy your discs, disc golf is pretty much a free activity.  There are a number of other parks around us that we'd like to try, but right now it's so easy to go to the one that's five minutes away!

We go nice and early since Oliver is an early riser and so we're usually home in time for his morning nap.  He enjoys watching us and being outside.  Once he slept through the whole thing because we got a later start, but most of the time he's awake the whole time.  We rarely run into other people, although we've seen one guy a couple of times and he complimented us and said it was nice to see us out with our son. I would have to agree!

I am not looking forward to the snow arriving in a couple of months and not being able to go anymore for a while.  Until then though, we'll keep up with it on the weekends, we can all bundle up if need be!
Have you ever tried disc golf?

Apple Picking Adventure

I said in my post yesterday I'd talk more about our apple picking adventure this last weekend.  Nate was originally going to brew beer on Sunday, but while we had some family time on Saturday it was a bit scattered and he really wanted to do something with just the three of us, so he decided not to brew and that we should instead go find an apple orchard to wander around.  I had grown up going to an orchard in White Bear Lake, MN called Pine Tree, but decided against going there because we wanted to be able to walk around outside with Oliver and there isn't much of that at Pine Tree.  There are some other fun sounding orchards west of Minneapolis that I think will be fun when Oliver is older.  After some debate we finally settled on an orchard near Stillwater, MN called Aamodt's Apple Farm.  They have pick your own apples, lots of space to walk around and be outside and a little winery/vineyard for adults.  Sounded perfect to us!

We got there right when they opened for the day.  We had tried to time it so Oliver would nap in the car on the way out there, but that didn't quite happen.  That was ok though, we set him up in his stroller and proceeded to explore.  We decided to do a pick your own apples bag since I had never done that before. They were letting people pick Haralson apples that day.  It was neat, there were tons of trees to pick apples off of!

Oliver wasn't real sure about what we were doing, he wanted to be moving.  He sat patiently and took it all in though!

I was surprised by how short some of the apple trees were.  I'm not sure if all apple trees are this short or if they do something to keep them low to the ground, but they were very easy to walk up to and grab apples from!

As we walked back to the barn we passed some trees that had a lot of apples on the ground.  We're not sure if this area is where people were picking on another day, or if these trees are already done with their growing season or not.  Lots of wasted apples on the ground though!

We decided to do a wine tasting too, but Oliver was getting unhappy in his stroller, so Nate put him in the Ergo carrier and Ollie finally fell asleep!  We covered his head and protected him and Nate just carried him around for awhile.  I joked with him that now he has a sense of what it was like to be pregnant!

We were hungry then, so we bought ourselves an apple brat with slaw for lunch and sat outside and enjoyed it.  Ollie woke up and was hungry.  We offered him small bits of apple, but he was more interested in the tomato puree we brought him instead!

It was such a fun day and now I feel like I can cross something off my fall bucket list.  I love going to the apple orchard every year and I was so excited to share this experience with my little guy!  I can't wait until he's a little bigger and can enjoy some of the fun activities they had for kids - they had an area with riding toys and also a little apple barrel train ride that I think he'd adore when he's a little bigger!  And now I have tons of apples to bake with and make goodies - I'd better get on that!

What's on your fall bucket list?