For the Dogs

When my best friend, Amanda, and her boyfriend, Aaron, came into town for the Midpoint Music Festival they brought their dog Gatsby with them.  They just recently rescued Gatsby a couple months ago and this was only his second trip to Cincinnati, so we wanted to make sure we kept the dogs stimulated and exercised during the day, so they'd sleep like babies while we were at Midpoint every night.  On Friday when they came in we all headed over to French Park for a little hike through the woods.  Seriously, it my favorite Cincinnati park we've been to to take Cheese, he loves all the smells and the cool, flowing water in the creek.  Cheese and Gatsby both had a blast! 

And apparently he also loves chewing on flowers...what a weirdo!

I think Gatsby had a really great time.  Here, he is anxious to jump off this rock and play in the creek.

Gatsby, Aaron and Amanda

After we came out of the woods the dogs still seemed to have a bunch of energy left, so Aaron decided to run around and frolick with them a bit...

Look at them go!

I like how Cheese starts out in the front and then quickly gets passed up by Gatsby!  Story of Cheese's life, the dogs with the longer legs are always beating him in races!  Poor guy.

Here's some post-running shots of them.  They're still running on some adrenal, but after our little hike back up-hill to our cars they were pretty worn out!

Stay tuned tomorrow and next week for more dog and park goodness!

Apple Picking

Hands down, picking pumpkins is one of my top Fall activities to do.  I just love it!  And, as you know, blueberry picking is right up there amongst my favorite Summer activities.  What can I say, I like to pick stuff!? (Okay, sorry, that sounded gross!)  Lucky for me, Antoine enjoys fruit/gourd picking almost as much as me...or maybe he just likes to see me get all kinds of nerdy, because I really do geek out about this stuff!  Regardless, when I suggested picking apples again this year he was like, "yeah, that would be fun!"  But here's the weird thing about me and apple picking, I really don't like apple baked goods.  GASP!!  I know, it's madness.  Now blueberry baked goods are my jam (haha, literally!) and there are few things I love more than carving pumpkins, but apples...meh.  I mean, I like to eat raw apples, though I tend to be a little particular (pink lady apples are the shit!), but when it comes to cooked apples I'm just not a fan.  I think it's the texture.

But the picking I dig!  I enjoy going to a farm, taking pictures, being amongst all the green and trees.  It's just a good feeling.  So, about two and a half weeks ago Antoine and headed about 45 minutes north to Lebanon to Irons' Fruit Farms, where we had picked a couple years ago.  It was a gorgeous day, sunny and not too warm. 

Irons' Fruit is a great little farm that also offers pumpkin picking and hayrides.  They have a variety of animals on the property and a cool little store with baked goods, jams and other fruits and veggies for sale.  Sadly, the property was a little more overgrown and worn than the last time we went.

But the creatures are all still pretty fun to watch, including this big pig!

 I naturally had to snap some pictures before we made our way out to the apple fields.

Sadly, the apples weren't too great.  The fields were overgrown, there was poison ivy everywhere, and most of the apples we would initially pick had to be chucked because they were rotten or bug infested.  So it took us quite a while to pick enough decent apples for fill a half bushel, but we still managed to have fun!

 Like I said, we picked a 1/2 bushel (which was $13)...in retrospect, that was way too many apples.  After making several crisps, jam and bread I still have apples coming out the wazoo!

After we picked out half bushel of apples we headed to the little Irons' Fruit store to pay for the apples and grab some baked goods, cider, green beans and peaches.

Antoine enjoying his apple hand pie!

On the way to our car we spotted this guy, who so nicely came up to the fence so we could pet him and I could take his picture!    So cute.

Despite the apples being kind of spotty and the crazy amounts of overgrown vines and poison ivy, Antoine and I still had a blast apple picking!

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?!