7 Quick Takes (Vol. 15)

It's summer! I am supper excited :) Excited for longer days, warm weather, plants on the patio, flowers blooming, fresh fruits and veggies. I love it! Alright on to a quick list of my recent crazy life.

 

 ~~ 1 ~~

We had a siblings day a couple weeks ago because my younger brother was up for a wedding so we had some awesome hangout time and went to the great Wollersheim Winery (which I love). We're quite the stair-steps in the above picture.

This is what happens when Kevin chooses the pose. I can say that I think we entertained the lovely lady that took our picture, we were quite the group ;)

~~ 2 ~~

Did you know that they call Rockford, IL the Home of the Sock Monkey? Yeah, me neither. But it's true, I was there.

 

~~ 3 ~~

Over Memorial Day Weekend (I'm telling you, this is a hardcore catch-up post) my parents were up and we spent Saturday hanging out with my Dad's family and visiting the graves of my grandparents, great-grandparents and even great-great grandparents. The rain held off and it was a beautiful day.

We said a rosary at each of the cemeteries. It was a nice day of reminiscing about the past.

~~ 4 ~~

Last weekend I spent in the Wisconsin Dells with my boyfriend. It was a wonderful mini-vacation. The above picture was taken on the Original Wisconsin Ducks. I had never been and loved it. Wisconsin is such a gorgeous state. The tour was of course filled with all kinds of corny jokes that you had to laugh at, it's a very family friendly little tour.

~~ 5 ~~

 These Kangaroos were in the "nursery" the grown ones were outside in a larger area.

While in the Dells we also went to The Timbavati Wildlife Park. It was neat to see the variety of animals they had, but I didn't like the lack of space the animals had. They are doing a lot of remodeling,  so it may be better in a year or two.

 Can you tell he's an animal person?

~~ 6 ~~

 I was given a bunch of rhubarb and have enjoyed finding awesome stuff to do with it. I found this recipe that where you cook down the rhubarb and add some sugar and water to make a concentrate for drinks (bottle on the right). Add it to some sparkling water and you have a rhubarb Italian soda. The jar on the left is the cooked chunks of rhubarb that you can eat over ice cream or whatever.

~~ 7 ~~

I am in love with this sandwich! I made 1 big sandwich (using a hamburger bun) and cut the sauce recipe in half and it was awesome. It's a super quick and easy meal.

I hope you all had a wonderful week month, enjoy the weekend! 

For more Quick Takes, head on over to Conversion Diary.

Chi Town

So I spent most of the weekend visiting my lovely older brother (this was taken at his favorite restaurant in Chinatown). He lives in downtown Chicago and every time I visit we always go exploring in a different part of the city. This trip took us to the Wicker Park area that just has some pretty darn fabulous shops (there were tons of cute retail shops and I picked up this adorable red pea coat, love it!) along with great eateries and coffee shops. We stopped at the Worm Hole, which is a throw back to the '80's, complete with an original Nintendo system (that we of course played for a few hours) and all kinds of memorabilia from the time.

When you first walk in the door you are immediately greeted by the car from the Back to the Future movies (which is evidently called the De Lorean). Just a bit of fun :)

Our next adventure took us to Chicago's Chinatown. We had a fabulous lunch (see 1st picture ;) followed by a bit of window shopping and of course pictures by our Zodiac animal.

I have a tradition. Every time I visit my brother I always bring some sort of barcookie. Sometimes there's beer or cheese that also make the trip, but there is always a pan of barcookies. I think it started when I was still in high school and I would always be asked to make said cookies, usually sometime late at night after we'd been talking on one of his visits home. I have an old standby that I usually make, it's just an adaptation from the Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe, but recently I had stumbled across this AMAZING recipe and had to try it. Let me tell you, it was pretty great, uber sweet, obviously, but oh so good.

S'more Cookie Bars

They are definitely now on my go to list, especially for fall events, after all, who doesn't love s'mores? And a whole pan of them, come on!

Alright, so that's what I've been up to lately, cooking and traveling, surprise, surprise :) I hope you are all enjoying your week, it's almost halfway through (yep, it's going to be a long one).



Chicago and Siblings

It was all about Chicago over the weekend, which I'm ok with every now and then. I got to spend a lovely weekend with my older brother walking the city, visiting the Art Institute (which is amazing and I could easily have spent the whole day exploring), eating fabulous pizza and just enjoying each other's company. It's interesting how sibling relationships change as you grow up but how the love and support never change, but see to grow deeper. The five of us kids are extremely different, yet I love each of my brothers and sisters and couldn't imagine life without them. They help keep me grounded, keep me striving to be a better person, challenge me to take the next step, the next adventure that's waiting around the corner. God gave us siblings to teach us how to love inspite of our differences.