Weekend in Instagram

What a weekend! Midpoint was fantastic, I finally got over my stomach bug, we ate some amazing food, had friends in from out of town and went to the park several times.  It was a great time!

Thursday was the first night of the Midpoint Music Festival and I was still feeling a little rough, so Antoine and I took it easy.

We started off the night with some dinner at Quan Hapa.  I got the ramen in order to appease my still upset stomach and it did the trick!  Mighty tasty, I can't wait to go back!  We took it easy the rest of the night and only went to a couple of shows.  But we still had a great time.

On Friday I had the day off and I was finally starting to feel better so I spent the morning cleaning, in anticipation for the arrival of Amanda and Aaron.

It must have been very tiring for Cheese, watching me clean, because he slept most of the morning.  Then Amanda and Aaron arrived and we all (4 humans and two dogs) headed over to French Park for a little hike through the woods.  After the dogs were properly worn out, we got ready and headed downtown.

After some tasty sushi at Fusian, we all made our way to Washington Park to check out Youth Lagoon and The Head and the Heart, which both put on great shows.

On our way out of Washington Park.  We headed over to Street Pops for some tasty popsicles, then listened to Warpaint for a bit before heading to Japp's.

Good Graeff put on a great show at Japp's (they are so cute!) and I totally fell in love with their pumpkin they carved!  Antoine and I finished off the night with the Kishi Bashi show at CAC (awesome!), while Amanda and Aaron went to see Murder by Death at the Taft Theatre.

Saturday morning started with Cheese jumping into our bed, being adorable and staring out the window.

After a quick breakfast at Panera, we took the dogs to Alms Park and then Ault Park for another walk through the woods to tire them out!  

I think it might have work...

Then the humans got cleaned up and headed over to Barrio in Northside for some tacos and margaritas.  And that's when things got really interesting.  The first pitcher of margaritas tasted so good that we decided to get another...

And the tacos were delicious too.  But those margaritas...so good!  And we left Northside feeling all kinds of good.

We headed downtown for the final night of Midpoint and continued to drink and just got happier and happier.

 And then Aaron rode a pig!  (I'm pretty sure he was a rodeo cowboy in a previous life!)

And then Amanda decided to straddle two pigs, because why not!

All in all, it was a pretty fantastic weekend with some outstanding music, great times with friends and amazing food!  How was your weekend?

Park Love (on film)

This will likely be my last post for the week, what with me having a bug the last couple days (bleh!), tonight being the first night of the Midpoint Music Festival, Amanda and Aaron coming in to stay with us for Midpoint, and then Antoine and I gearing up for our trip to Texas.  I don't think I've mentioned our Texas trip on here yet, but we'll be leaving shortly for our multi-city, seven day road trip around Texas.  Antoine is from Texas, but I've never been...even though I have some family there.  We're starting off in Austin for the Austin City Limits Festival, then heading down to San Antonio for a day just to relax, and then finishing up in the Dallas/Fort Worth area before we head back home.  Since we've got so many people to see and so much good music to listen to and good food to eat, it should be equal parts exhausting and fun!  Here's my Texas Pinterest board, in case you want to check it out and recommend something that I definitely need to check out that isn't on there.  I always love some travel tips and must-see recommendations!

In the mean time I'll leave you with my other roll of film that I recently got back.  This one is from about three and a half weeks ago when Antoine and I decided to get some take out and head to the park for a picnic, but instead we ended up going to three different parks!  While we were waiting for our Indian food, we headed up to Bellevue Park to check out the view... 

It was a little humid and hazy that day, but still beautiful.

With our delicious Indian food in hand we made our way to Alms Park to have our picnic and snap some pictures.  I've already expressed my new-found love for Alms park and my digital photos here, but here are some film ones I took.  [Again, I'm so lucky to have Antoine who's willing to lug around my extra camera for me and wait for me to take all these silly pictures I take!]

 Then we headed of to Ault Park for a leisure walk (and so I could geek out over all the flowers still in bloom and the beautiful light making its way out of the park).

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!  I'll be enjoying a bunch of awesome music with some of my most favorite people, what could be better than that?!

July on Film

I recently had two rolls of film developed and processed; one roll was from our recent trip to Alms and Ault Park, and then this one was of random snippets from the month of July.

My most favorite tree in Pleasant Ridge, a Kwanzan flowering cherry tree at the end of Grand Vista Ave.

A peony from our backyard / our rose of Sharon tree

A brief trip to Lunken Airport, though I didn't get to go inside.

More bumble bee infatuation

Blueberry picking is one of my favorite things to do in the summertime!

Another shot of the view from our B&B in Amish Country

Recipe Love

If you haven't already noticed, I've been on a cooking/baking/jamming kick lately!  I think there's just something about the arrival of Autumn that just makes me want to be in the kitchen.  Since I've been pinning recipes like crazy as of late, I thought I'd share some of my favorites that I've made and some that I desperately want to try out!

Things I've made lately and loved:

This blueberry peach crumble and an apple crisp, both with some very minor modifications.

As far as jammin' goes, so far this year I've mades these: strawberry vanilla jam, honey lemon [spiced] apple jam, nectarine raspberry freezer jam, strawberry freezer jam, orange ginger marmalade (pictured), and pineapple jam.

 


I made a three layered carrot cake with maple cream cheese frosting using this recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

We've also been on a bit of a soup kick lately.  It started with the best creamy tomato basil soup I've ever made, which I found on Shared Appetite.  As soon as Antoine and I finished off this soup we were already craving another batch (and I intend to make some more very soon!)

To go along with the tomato soup I made some classic white bread using a recipe from the back of a Gold Medal flour bag.  It became grilled cheese sandwiches, of course!

I also recently made a batch of potato leek soup that I found on the Food Network (though I added a couple garlic cloves to it!)

 

Recipes I desperately want to try out:

• Creamy pumpkin pie bars from Joy the Baker - so perfect for Fall!
• New York style cheesecake with graham/pretzel crust and salted caramel sour cream from The Kitchy Kitchen - I mean, come on.  Doesn't that sound ridiculously amazing?!
• Blueberry upside-down cake from Thibeault's Table - so pretty and a good way to use up some of the blueberries I picked in July and froze!
• Herbed goat cheese soufflé from The Novice Chef - Mmmm, goat cheese...
• Butter chicken from Bonlook's blog- This looks delicious and relatively easy to make.
• Newcastle fondue from Emma at A Beautiful Mess- I love fondue, but have never made it at home before!
• Ginger carrot soup from the Food Network - I've never made a carrot soup before, but I love the combo of carrots and ginger!
• Easy cheese danishes from Completely Delicious - I adore cheese danishes, but that shouldn't surprise you because they are sweet and made with cheese, why wouldn't I love them?  Well, I've never made them and I'm dying to try out this easy recipe.

Happy Friday everyone!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!  Mine will be busy.  I'm on a committee that has been planning our staff family picnic for work, and it's tomorrow...so I'll be running around like a crazy person.  Hopefully I'll get some down-time on Sunday!

Ault Park Garden Love

I love Ault Park and its beautiful gardens, so Antoine wasn't at all surprised when I suggested we stop by Ault Park on our way home from Alms Park a two weekends ago.  And Antoine, being the awesome and loving fellow that he is was like, "Yeah, sure! Let's go!"  I just love how he's usually up for whatever and so easy going.

Anyway, it was pretty hot and humid out, but I was totally okay with it because there were so many things blooming and so many insects and creatures out and about.  Here are some photos I took, and you shouldn't be at all surprised that they are all of flowers and bees/insects...

These creepy, tiny yellow bugs were all over this plant.

More proof of how much Antoine likes me, he even holds plants in place so I can take pictures of bugs!

It was just before sunset and the light was streaming in through the gardens in the prettiest way and I couldn't get enough of it!

Have you noticed this summer that I'm really digging bumble bees?  Yeah, I'm kind of fascinated with them, and their fuzzy legs!

Not caught on camera, two chipmunks engaged in a rather loud and crazy wrestling match!  Usually chipmunks are all kinds of cute, but I didn't want to stick around to see one or both of them get hurt, because it definitely looked like that was about to happen.

Alms Park is Kind of Awesome

In all my years of living in Cincinnati, 10 years and counting now, I've never been to Alms Park.  I've been to Ault Park many of times, and love it, but Alms Park has always been a mystery to me...literally.  Let me explain, on several occasions Antoine and I have attempted to go to Alms Park but failed.  No, really, we just couldn't find it!  Granted we weren't using the GPS function on our iPhones, we were going old school and following park signs; you know, the ones that say "Alms Park" with  a big arrow pointing down a road you've never been on.  Well, what happened to us every time is we'd turn onto that mystery road (from Linwood Ave) and then we wouldn't see any more signs until we ended up on Columbia Parkway.  And then we'd give up, until the next time.

Well, last weekend we decided that this time we were going to find it (so we used Antoine's iphone, oh technology)!  It turns out that if you're coming from Columbia Parkway, and not from Mt. Lookout like we were in previous attempts, it's actually quite easy to find.  And it's gorgeous!!!  We had picked up some Indian from Deep India (our favorite) in Clifton Heights, so we had a little picnic and then walked around taking pictures and enjoying the beautiful views!

The pretty pavilion.

Us on top of the pavilion.  Antoine is such a sweetheart!

Loved the pagoda thing and the view of the river!

Stephen Foster statue.

I'm kind of in love with this tree!

This tree had a huge bee hive up in its knot that we could hear all the way from the ground.

The view from the other side, overlooking Lunken airport.

What a great spot!  We'll definitely be going back to Alms Park soon, especially as the weather cools down.