Galena Cellars Vineyard & Winery

'Tis the season for weekend getaways. If there is one thing Rob and I like to do it's get away from the city for a few days. Personally I'm happiest being amongst nature and fresh air.

We took a trip recently to Galena, Illinois. A historic town right along the Mississippi river. The city is super duper tourist-y but still a lot of fun. One of the highlights was our trip to Galena Cellars Vineyard & Winery. Vineyard tours and wine tastings are always a good time. Wine time! Oh yeah. I was really impressed by their dry reds. I find that a lot of Midwest wineries have sweet reds. Yack. Not a fan but sweet wines are quite popular. They're just not for me I suppose.

After our wine tasting and tour and our sharing a bottle with some new friends (fun!), we took a walk around the property. I took the above photo just across the street from the winery. Cornfields as far as the eye can see. Although the corn crops in that area are suffering because of the drought and should have been much taller. Sad.

Picturesque puffy white clouds. I love when clouds look like cotton candy. I just want to pluck them out of the sky and eat them. Ahhhh, nature!

It's Blueberry Time, Again!

It's been a rough year for fruit in these here parts. We had a long string of 80 degree days back in March. The fruit trees prematurely bloomed and then a frost came in April and destroyed the early blooms. Each year I go blueberry picking in Michigan around the first two weeks of July. This year there were very few places doing U-pick because of the damage to the blueberry crops. The same goes for cherries, peaches, and apples. Not the apples! My favorite thing to do in autumn is to go apple picking. Huff huff. There has been a drought this summer as well. All of these factors are affecting farmers and their crops. Such a shame.

Even with the lack of U-picks for blueberries, I did manage to pick some a few weeks back. Last year I picked 10 pounds of blueberries. On the day I picked this year, it was in the upper 90s and humid. Horrendous temps for picking. I literally almost passed out in a giant pool of sweat. So Rob and I only got two and a half pounds. Such a disappointment since each pound was only a $1.70. Huff huff, again.

I am going to put them to good use though. Tonight I am going to make a peach and blueberry cobbler in a cast iron skillet. Stay tuned for the recipe.    

Chive Flowers!

I just got back from Ohio where I was visiting my family. My dad is growing chives. I had no idea they have such beautiful flowers.

He is also growing asparagus. Unfortunately, those are the only two things he is successfully growing because the deer eat everything. I mean, everything. The deer love the asparagus but my dad has it fenced off so they can't get to it. Thank goodness.

He used to have flowers all around the house and a huge garden. Because they are tearing down forests in surrounding cities, the deer are foraging for food in people's yards and gardens....and eating everything. Such a shame really. They are just innocent hungry animals that have no choice.:(

On a lighter note, if you like these pictures, I have them for sale here. They are high quality prints on canvas. All pics are taken and edited by moi. :)

Changes

It really has been ages since I blogged. The banner that I had up was my snowflake banner. Yikes! It is now updated and fresh and summery looking. Ahhh. I want to say a big fat thank you to anyone who still reads this and/or checks back to see if I've posted anything. Smooches to you.

I recently moved and as everybody knows, moving is stressful. I hadn't moved in almost 5 years so my brain conveniently erased all memories of moving. As soon as I packed my first box, all the lovely memories came flooding back. Packing and me, we are not friends. But, we have been in our new place for over a week and are unpacked and settled and ready to resume some normalcy.

I've realized lately that I really miss blogging. It really is a stress reliever at times. I also miss baking, which I haven't done in ages. I think Rob misses it too. So tonight, I shall bake in my new kitchen for the first time!

In my blogging absence, I have been spending a lot of time taking and editing photos and posting them on Instagram. I have found a great community of people on IG. It's become somewhat of an addiction. Here are a couple photos, taken from my rooftop:

Western sunset

Eastern Skyline

This move is a first of hopefully many changes for me. It's time for me to do different things in life and I'm looking forward to what the future holds.

If you like the pictures above, you can purchase those and some of my other photos here.

Now I just need to decide what to bake tonight...

Sprecher Brewery

I swear I feel like Zane Lamprey lately with all these blogs about wine and/or beer. I still have things to post about my Michigan Winery tour. I blogged about my first and second stops and still have five more. Oh boy. Eventually they'll show up.

Since my Milwaukee visit is fresh on my mind, I thought I'd blog about my visit to Sprecher Brewery. I've been there once before and enjoyed it. The tour is $5 and you get four samples and an etched glass.

The tour isn't terribly exciting. Although I love this painting inside the brewery:

I also love this, my tickets to free samples:

Slurp slurp.

Hoestly, I'm most excited about their sodas. I'm not a big soda drinker but we did pick up a few bottles for the occasional soda craving. Yum x 10.

If you are ever in Milwaukee, check out Sprecher Brewery!

Hipstamatic: Chicago Style

I wanted to share some pictures I've taken out and about in Chicago with my Hipstamatic app. I take more pictures with this app than I do with my regular camera. These are some I've taken over the past few weeks. Enjoy, and happy 11/11/11!

View of Chicago from the Planetarium

View of Chicago near Buckingham Fountain

Takin' a break..oh yes.

Lakeshore Boulevard

Someone sit next to me please.

The alley next to my house

Morning sunrise while waiting for the train. Beautiful.

Michigan Wine Tour...Second Stop: Tabor Hill

Whoa. I'm so behind with the wine tour postings. Seven wineries in two days and so far I've only blogged about one! I'll be honest, after so many tastings things start to blur. But this was only our second winery so I was still coherent. Actually, I was coherent the whole time, really. Yes, really! Samples in general aren't very big and I weigh 225 pounds so it takes a bit for me to feel the vino. So bring it on!

Am I making any sense?

Okay so, obligatory vineyard pictures to follow. But first I'd like to say again how beautiful the weather was for mid-October. I was wearing shorts!

I loved Tabor Hill. It was truly picturesque. My only complaint is that their tasting room was tiny and there were a lot of people packed in trying to sample wine. We were told they were in the process of expanding. Hallelujah! Wine lovers rest easy tonight.

 Pretty, pretty vines

 Wine and food. Mmmm!

 More pretty, pretty vines

Tabor Hill had a complimentary wine tour. I love a good tour. Rob snapped this photo of me. Notice our lovely tour guide in the bottom left corner. I can't remember her name. I blame my age, not the wine. Ha....ha.   

 Wow those things hold a whole lot of wine....

MillerCoors Brewery Tour

I'm not a fan of Miller beer (sorry Miller). But recently, on a visit to Milwaukee, Rob and I decided to take a tour of the MillerCoors brewery. My favorite Milwaukee breweries are Lakefront (yum!) and Sprecher. The MillerCoors was a free tour with three free samples, so...why not. It's a massive operation so it was interesting to see. That's about it...ha! Enjoy the pics. :)

The Girl in the Moon logo...hey hey!

The bottling plant...huge.

We were like a herd of cattle being directed through the long hallways...moooove.

A massive Miller sign on the side of the brewing building. I'm dizzy.

The huge brew kettles

The Girl in the Moon, inside the cave.

If you look closely...

The Fonz!

So excited to finally see the famous Fonz statue in Milwaukee!

Ayyy!

Ferrante Winery

My motto: Never pass up a wine tasting opportunity.

I stick to this motto wholeheartedly. So of course when my parents suggested a wine tasting at Ferrante during my last visit to Ohio, I could not refuse. I recently got back and I miss my family already. Sad face. But I have lots of great memories. Specifically, the memory of drinking all of these wine samples in the course of 20 minutes and barely being able to walk.

 

Slurp, slurp, slurp.

Yeah, that was fun! Can I get a "Whooohoo!"?

The temps here have been HOT. Like 95 degrees HOT so no baking the past couple days. But...there is a cool-down this weekend and I have plans to bake now that the weather will be cooler. Can I get another "Whooohoo!"? Anyone?

Summer Sunsets

I just wanted to share a few photos of some sunsets this past summer. All three of these were taken on Lake Michigan.

Ahhhh, summer...you will be sadly missed.

Dune Rides

As I mentioned in my latest muffin recipe post, Rob and I went on a mini vacation recently. Every year, for the past four years, we have gone to Saugatuck Michigan. It's a really easy trip, only about a two and a half hour drive from Chicago. It's a great place to get away from the city and just relax. Ahhhh.

I've blogged about Saugatuck before. The most recent post was about our Fenn Valley Winery tour. That was amazing! It was a perfect autumn day. This time around it was hot and sunny. We hung out at the beach, went on a sunset cruise and went on a dune ride. I just had to blog about the dune ride because it was just so much fun and not at all what I was expecting. It's fast...very fast! It was also educational. The dunes actually formed because of The Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The land was originally thick with trees and after the fire, the town of Singapore Michigan was almost completed deforested for the wood. The lumber was shipped to Chicago and used to rebuild the city. After the trees were wiped out, the wind off of lake Michigan blew sand inland and created the dunes at an alarmingly fast rate. The town of Singapore was eventually evacuated and is now buried deep under the dunes. And now it's a perfect place for a dune ride. Whooohoo!

So here are some pictures from the ride. We had a really fun and funny tour guide/driver named Joey. He told us that the last row of seats was the bumpiest so we took on the challenge.

You can't tell, but we were actually going really fast when Rob took this picture. I am gripping onto the seat with my left hand...yikes!

Our fellow co-riders:

Our tour guide/driver:

I think his hands weren't on the wheel. He did that a couple times to scare us. Ha!

So purdy!

Construction? It's like being back in Chicago.

Our driver tried to convince us that a worker was buried in the dune. If you look closely you'll see feets sticking up. Something tells me he's lying...

Can anyone say, workers' compensation? Haha.

He took us up to the highest dune and we had some time to stop and get out to take pictures. Here I am on the dune:

This is a better picture of what was behind me. It's quite breathtaking:

If you are ever anywhere near Saugatuck, you must go on a dune ride. It was tons-o-fun.

Chicago Botanic Gardens

This past weekend was PRIDE weekend in Chicago. Whoohoo! Happy pride to all. An exciting weekend all around especially because of this. New York is the 6th state in the country to legalize same-sex marriage. Being such a huge state it will hopefully open up the doors and influence other states to change laws and legalize same-sex marriages. It's an exciting step but there is still a lot more to fight for so show your pride and stand up for equality! Yes!

On a lighter note, Rob and I had decided we were going to go hiking on Saturday and enjoy the pride parade and festivities on Sunday. We decided to do some hiking in the Forest Preserve, then head to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. Admission is free, unless you park in their lot which will cost you $20 dollars. We decided to cheat and we parked in the Forest Preserve parking lot and walked roughly 2.5 miles up the gardens. We were feeling very ambitious. I think we walked roughly 7 miles that day. Here are some pictures I took around the gardens. It's such a visually stimulating place!

I liked these but I forgot what they're called. Whoops.

More pretty flowers that I also do not know the name of.

Here's my little bee friend. Hello little bee friend!

I loved this sculpture.

These flowers were my favorite! Purple Alliums or "Onion Flowers"

Ahhh refreshing!

The Theodore C Butz Carillon.

One of my favorite parts of the gardens was the Rose Garden. "Stop and smell the roses", as they say. We literally did. This may sound cheesy but it was such a great moment. To admire and appreciate the beauty of nature that we sometimes take for granted. Each rose was so special and smelled completely different. I wanted to smell the roses all day! Any chance I get from now on I will definitely stop and smell the roses. :)

Ahhhhhh...

Amazing!