Minnehaulin'

Ahhh, Memorial Weekend ... a time to relax, enjoy the warm sunshine and extra day off work beside a lake or pool, see a parade, sip a cool drink ...

Or fill a box up with doughnuts, steal your parents' Subaru Forester, and haul butt to Minneapolis for an Ikea-Craigslist-garage sale-biking-puppy-wrestling extravaganza!

Mike would like to remind the world that it's spelled doughnut.

Mike's parents were gracious enough to lend us their Forester for a trip up to Minneapolis to see my friend Stacy and squeeze in some opportunistic shopping for the house. Of course, my little Elantra and Mike's two-door Acura CL weren't going to suffice except for fun kitchen and decorative items, so we did the ol' puppy dog eyes and got to enjoy the SUV life.

But we can't start a road trip without Donut Stop - the best doughnuts in Omaha! We've got pink, chocolate, and cinnamon. Some for the road, some for our hosts. Earlier in the trip planning, we decided to head up on Friday and officially celebrate second anniversary, which was last weekend. It's a good thing we'd managed to do some relaxing and fun meal making then, because what we envisioned got a little blown to smithereens.

And so this post doesn't become Lord of the Rings, I'm just going to give the highlights.

The Woes and Triumphs of Ikea

We've done Ikea before, so we figured we had this down. Go in on Friday, stretch our legs, and have a targeted list of items but also be open to serendipity. Then, after a couple of hours, celebrate the haul with a lovely dinner and then relax in the hotel room.

Go ahead and laugh.

Yep, we hit our sore point long before checkout. Yet even though we felt like we were striking out and the prices and selections weren't as good as we remembered, we still managed to fill a cart. And then we started failing fantastically:

Fail #1 - The butcher block kitchen cart Mike found for the laundry room? Out of stock. Curses!
Fail #2 - Ikea charged us twice for a different cart (requested by a friend). We were at dinner when we discovered this.
Fail #3 - We left the two kitchen chairs at checkout.

So, after our delicious dinner at Joys Pattaya Tha, we had to go back for our refund. But we decided to pick up the chairs later, because We. Were. Done.

But I did say there were ups. And I'm going to take full credit for this one. On Saturday, just as we were making plans with our hosts for the evening, I popped onto Craigslist to see if there was anything we should snatch up. Lo and behold - there was the out-of-stock cart! Plus, it came with two barstools. And for $30 less than Ikea's price.

The next morning, we unloaded half of Ikea haul and went to get it. Seats down, Sammy!

And now it sits in our laundry room, providing mobile surface workspace. It needed a little cleaning up, and Mike's going to sand the stains out of top, but we're pretty excited with the find.

Garage Haul

On Saturday morning, we met up with Stacy & John, gave Petra her puppy (which she took delight in chewing up) and hit the garage sales. Stacy took us to some of the ritzier neighborhoods near Hennepin and Minnehaha, so we were enjoying the weather, sights, and each other's company than hunting for goodies. But we still managed to strike some gold.

Mike found an antique stool that we just couldn't pass up. But as we wandered around, someone else started eyeballing it and fiddling. Gulp! We circled around, trying not to be obvious. The moment the man walked away, I hissed, "Go get it!"

The woman selling it told us the seat is supposed to spin up to different heights, but right now it just spins (Mike will try to fix it). When she found out it was going in our library, she got all excited, because, "Now I know it's going to a good place!"

Right now, it's hanging out in the library with our new chair while we re-upholster a foot stool. Future post on chair and adventures in Craigslist!

Stacy and I found these cool astronomy thingies, and if I had any skill in Divination, I'm sure they'd be useful. They look cool just hanging out our shelves.

Then it was time to enjoy the afternoon and evening, which involved watching a huge puppy chew on her stuffed likeness (kinda disturbing while being totally cute), and using the city's bike share to hop to different tap rooms. Yeah, we totally worked for our drinks. And it made us fall in love with Minneapolis. It was so easy to get around between the different stations, and with all the bike lanes and boulevards, you didn't feel like you were taking your life into your hands. Take note, Omaha!

Entering my guest code

Sunday Deja Vu

Sunday turned into a mix of rinse and repeat and feeling like we're on vacation. After picking up the Ikea cart in Uptown, we stopped at a diner for a savory Cajun breakfast smothered in things not good for you. But we walked it off as we strolled around, poked our heads into a coffee shop, and then into an incredible furniture store crammed with towering aisles of beautiful creations we just couldn't afford. Then we were off to take a look at West Elm and grab our chairs from Ikea before returning to our vacation.

West Elm didn't hold anything exciting for us, but after getting the chairs into Sammy and with half our haul sitting in Stacy's guest room, we decided we should probably call our shopping complete and just enjoy the rest of our time. 

Which we did! =) Stacy & John showed us some of their favorite hangouts, we dined on delicious food every single time, and we can't wait to go back! With less shopping, next time. But they also need to come down here hint, hint! ;-)

I know there's been a lull in posts lately, but we do have lots of in-progress things going on, so there will be more shortly. But on a last note, I wanted to share one of our Ikea finds, the Ribba frame, which we have now put our sailboat watercolors in. We found the portraits in the BVIs on our honeymoon and can finally hang them on the walls. Will they go in the library, the master, or somewhere else?

a dirty job

Remember these guys?

Yeah, they're dead. Not because they couldn't weather through winter, but because we didn't like them. So, as my mother taught me, if you don't like someone, get rid of them. Gardening shears are a good method.

Just kidding, Mom!

But seriously.

They're so dead.

They deserve it. They are evil. Sith Lord evil. They have these long, very nasty thorns and are just placed in a funky way, so there is a big, vacant area behind them. I know you're not supposed to plant too close to the foundation, but this was getting awkward. You could have a party back there. Or stake us out.

So, we took to aggressive negotiations. Name the movie.

Mike grabbed a 5 pack of yard bags at Home Depot, but he soon had to run to Lowe's, because our shears were no match for Darth Hedge. As I was snarfing a pizza, Mike said, "I need loppers." Okay, honey, sure. Go get'em!

Apparently that's a real thing.

They look like beaky garden shears, but they were "the best $18 I've ever spent," Mike declared two minutes into using them. They snapped right through the thick trunks and branches and unsnagged some gnarly roots later.

Mike chopped while I bagged. In the above photo, you see a ton of green under the dining room window. That's Darth Hedge's apprentice, Moonshadow Euonymus, which you'll get to see more of in a minute.

As we were working, our neighbors were dressed up and headed out. They shouted, "It looks better already!" from the car. We hope that means they also disliked the hedges and aren't internally panicking that we're a disgrace to the circle.

We had the hedge chopped down and the bags were filling fast. Even though the weather was perfect and we had our own little rock concert on the stoop, thanks to Pandora and Bluetooth, we were starting to get a bit weary and nervous. What had we done? Would we regret this? Holy crap, this was going to be a lot of work to fix up!

Once the hedges were chopped, Mike started on Moonshadow. It's a viney, gnarly thing that is supposed to grow around 4 feet wide and 24 inches high, but it definitely took a horizontal approach and seemed to spread out 6 feet either way. Mike raked it up into a bundle so we could get at the roots and chop.

Mike decided not to wear his notorious flip flops for this job. Smart man.

Once the viney thing was relatively free, we started pulling it out.

All the way to the street. Also, I'd like to say that Home Depot did not sponsor this post, but we would gladly accept any sponsorship and totally write advertorials for them if it meant some freebies! Just sayin'.

Once we had the majority of Moonshadow out, it was time to dig up all those roots and trunks.

Mike had this hefty job while I continued to bag all the rubbish, though I'd intermittently jump in with the loppers to cut roots. As we neared demolition's end, we tossed ideas back and forth. Obviously, our three baby rose bushes had one heck of a task to fill in the area, so we were trying to figure out our vision, which had somehow changed in the course of getting dirty and sweaty.

Mike's mom became our inspiration. Every time she comes over, she laments how much she wishes we had a front porch. Well, we couldn't get that written into the house contract, but it did get us thinking about what to do with this space. A little bench or two chairs and a little table would look cute under the window.

So, we are thinking of cutting a path up the center and creating a little nook under the window. Rose bushes and other stuff on either side. And then a trellis along either side of the entry way. I'll try to slap a mock up together this weekend. We have a good idea in our head, but it's going to take time (and money) to get there, so we're going to need to be comfy with pacing ourselves. Hopefully the neighbors can deal with that.

Oh yeah, and the house looks ginormous without those hedges. One of the pushes on the other side is dead, so we'll need to figure something out over there, too. Don't worry, My Lady, we won't leave you naked for long.