What I've Been Doing...

We've been out and about now that the weather is finally nice around these parts.

We took a trip up to Cold Spring, NY last week and discovered this beach along the Hudson River.  It was beautiful!  We were also able to explore the historic town (we've been there before but didn't have time to explore) and it did not disappoint.  

 Glacier has been on several swims already this year.  

We discovered his favorite ball floats.  His little heart is happy.

There is a new trail that opened up by us.  It is only about a mile or two long but it is packed with New England beauty. It has a marshy area with lots of fun birds.  Glacier went in for a dip but came out half brown.  The trail also walks past several farms, one with horses!

And of course, there has been some time on the beach over this Memorial weekend.

You can see more of where I went on Memorial weekend over at Violets & Laurel tomorrow.

Hope you had a good holiday!

xo 

Erin

I'm Back: Happy Spring!

I've taken an expected break from blogging since November.  Our lives were hit with a very sad event and a very happy event that took up a lot of my time and energy.  I'm back now and very much looking forward of what is to come for this blog and a special collaboration with AmandLouise! (More on this will surely be announced soon!).

This winter has probably been the worst one yet for me (and that says a lot because I'm from Wisconsin!) and thank God it is now Spring!  Spring really is a new beginning.

Happy Spring!

xo

Erin

Autumn Dinner Party

Amanda from Amanda Louise and I did it again; a dinner party!  I'm so thankful to have her as a friend.  We both love to throw dinner parties and even decided to continue this year with one for each season! 

This go around, we added a kids table equipped with  sparklers, fun straws, 

and markers to draw on the table top.

I mailed myself some decorative gourds from my parent's orchard when

 I was home this fall and we had a bit of an adventure getting those cattails! 

Ryan of course helped out again by cutting our slab of wood for the center piece

 and making creative cinder block heaters to keep us warm on the deck.

It was a fun night but we learned some lessons from this one that we won't repeat next time.  We decided to make a day of it and started cooking in the afternoon and figured we would slowly pull it all together in plenty of time to snap photos while the sun is still out and casually wait for our guests to arrive.  Well, we ended up frantically trying to cook everything, especially Amanda's pumpkin pie, and just felt this time crunch we weren't expecting.  We did pull it all together but with better planning (making the food the night before, or in the morning) we can enjoy the fun part much more (all the decorating and DIY's)!!

Head over to Amanda Louise to see more photos of the night

 and to find out how much we spent on the night!

Stay tuned for our winter dinner party in February!

See our Summer dinner party on the patio here.

See our DIY deck furniture here.

Check out our inspiration for the night here.

xo

Erin

Dog Days: Happy Monday!

These guys are still taking us on their daily hike each night.  We are so blessed to live where we do so we can just walk out our door and go for a long hike.

Our autumn hikes are consisting of a lot of boulder hopping.  Glacier gets nervous if he doesn't have a running start so he will just sit at the bottom of a boulder and whine. Azul is still the boulder hopping champion.  He's like Ryan and if it was up to him he would only hop from rock to rock and not touch the ground.

Happy Monday!

See more of these two here.

xo

Erin

Waterville Valley, NH Raft Series

Last week I was up in New Hampshire and I brought my camera knowing I was going to be surrounded by mountains.  Each morning I woke up to this pond with a raft and snapped a picture with my iphone on my walk to the convention center.  These moments were breath taking for me each morning.  I only took out my dslr camera once all week while hiking to a waterfall.

xo

Erin

Camping With The Dogs

We went camping with both Azul and Glacier for the first time.  We've been camping with Azul before and he's a trooper and we have no issues with him.  I was a little worried about Glacier camping hoping he wouldn't bark at every noise he heard during the night.  We brought our huge tent that we haven't used in a couple years hoping it would fit all of us.  We have just been using the two person tent when we go without the dogs.  We had more than enough room in the large tent.  We could have fit 4 more people!

This picture of Glacier pretty much sums up his personality.  His tail is a blur from wagging it so fast.

You may be wondering...
What do I eat while camping because my diet is so restricted?
Well...

I ate mostly protein.  For dinner we had brats and for breakfast we had hash browns and sausage.

Azul was on vacation... he didn't even stand up to eat his dinner.  He has such a hard life, it's good we finally brought him on vacation.

 
They may have got some of our food for breakfast... but we made them work for it.

Glacier doesn't understand the concept of a screen.  He was trying to drop his pine comb in the tent for us to throw for him.

Glacier did better than I expected at night with no major barking.  The camping trip was a success!

xo

Erin

We Threw A Dinner Party

I've always wanted to throw an outdoor dinner party so Amanda from Amanda Louise and I got together and made that dream happen!  We really tried to use everything we already owned for this event to make it budget friendly.  Ryan and I used our table from inside and drug it out to the patio and for the seating we used our wicker patio furniture.  Amanda did invest in these two strands of outdoor bulb lights.  I loved them so much I think we will have to invest in some outdoor lighting strands.

Ryan had this genius idea of filling our cinder blocks with ice to chill our wine and other beverages. 

I picked up these floral/botany plates from a thrift store along with some glass candler holders; flipped the candle holders over and glued them to the bottom center of the plates.  We used them to hold food, flowers and candles.

Ryan made us some place-card holders by cutting a slit into some scrap wood.

It was more fun than I imagined it would be!

I will be posting all the Allergy-Free recipes of the night here at Visibly Moved over the next couple weeks:

Allergy-Free Lemon Meringue Pie S'mores

Passion Fruit Lemonade Iced Tea

and

Amanda will be posting the vegetarian recipes over at Amanda Louise.

Check out our inspiration board of the night here

and more of our yard here.

If any of you have thrown a dinner party and blogged about it, I would love for you to put the link in the comments below so I can check it out!

xo

Erin

 

***UPDATE:  Check out our Autumn Dinner Party!***