Material Culture

This semester Kenneth is taking a class titled: Material Culture. It's studying the cultural and historical significance of the things that we make. His project this week was to actually interview someone who makes things and then learn to make something himself. 

Kenneth decided to interview me and have me teach him how to piece a quilt block on my sewing machine. He did such an awesome job! So well, in fact, that we made his block into a pillow. It looks so great decorating our couch :)

Ode to Milwaukee

This post goes out to some of my favorite people in the world that are trying to make some pretty tough decisions...

Here are the top 10 reasons that Milwaukee is awesome 

(disclaimer: I have never actually been to Milwaukee - so if any of you out there have please leave positive comments)

#1: The Milwaukee Zoo.

They have a Safari train, bird and sea lion shows, animal rides, a sky safari, a zoomobile, and a carousel. Not to mention some really fantastic animals, like a leopard shark, a pacific giant octopus, a chinese alligator, and more!

# 2: Summerfest! 

This is a music venue - with a HUGE summer music festival. 11 days. 11 stages. Over 700 bands.

 #3: The Milwaukee Brewers

There is nothing more fun than going with your family to a summer baseball game. Especially on the 4th of July - fireworks over a stadium are amazing :)

#4: Milwaukee River Cruise Line

This looks like so much fun! You can cruise the river, eat dinner, learn about Milwaukee... 

The Thursday Dinner Cruise is a popular choice for special occasions.  In 2008 The Edelweiss dinner cruises were voted Milwaukee’s best dinner date venue.  This 2 hour cruise features a 3-course Italian dinner menu.

#5: Church History! Milwaukee is only 5 hours away from Nauvoo, 7 hours from Kirtland, and 11 from Palmyra. We can go to the Nauvoo temple, Carthage jail, the Kirtland temple, the Isaac Morely Farm and the Newel K. Whitney store. We can also visit the Sacred Grove, the Book of Mormon publishing site, the Hill Cumorah and the Palmyra temple. (*Bonus: while we're in Palmyra we can visit Niagra falls - it's only an hour away!)

#6: AIRFARE! Every flight we check going into or out of Milwaukee is super cheap. You'll have the best of both worlds. The adventure and fun of living away, but the closeness of knowing that for less than $300 you can not only get home.. but you can fly to Boston (or any other vacation destination you are interested in).

#7: The Milwaukee Circus Parade. I'll just let these pictures speak for themselves....

#8: GERMAN FEST!

According to the official website, the most German city in the US's German Fest is all about the food:

• 10,000 pounds of potatos used in potato pancakes
• 8,000 pounds of onions
• 10,000 pounds of potato salad
• 5,000 pounds of coleslaw
• 10,000 pounds of sauerkraut
• 5,000 chickens
• 200 pigs for Spanferkel
• 20,000 bratwurst
• 20,000 roast pork sandwiches
• 9,000 dumplings
• 15,000 pieces of strudel
• 20,000 pieces of torte and pastries

OK. So how much food is that? Well, let’s do the math. The 20,000 brats that are consumed are equal to eight Empire State Buildings. By that, we mean that if you stacked each of the brats eaten at German Fest end-to-end, they would stretch out 10,000 feet, or the combined height of eight Empire State Buildings.

Or, if you would prefer a sports analogy, that same amount of bratwurst is equal to the length of approximately 28 football fields.

Obviously. a lot of people think that eating at German Fest can be tons of fun – literally. Take the potato pancakes for example, German Fest attendees consume five tons of the delectable delights.But that’s not all, they also devour four tons of onions, five tons of potato salad and five tons of sauerkraut.

Finally, the 35,000 pieces of strudel, torte, and pastries consumed at German Fest are enough to serve to just about every person living in the cities of Beloit, Wausau or Manitowoc.

#9: You can live at the BEACH! Who wouldn't love this in their backyard?

#10: You get to live closer to us!!! (and obviously, we're super cool)

Hackintosh

Kenneth has a new toy. Inspired by our friend Court, he bought a Dell Mini 9 netbook (it's so tiny!) that could be hacked to run on Apple's Mac OS X operating system. Luckily Court has a way with electronic devices!

We've actually been wanting to get a 2nd computer for a while now. But we could never justify spending the money. But these little Dell laptops are super cheap. This one was refurbished, and set us back just about 200 dollars! Not too shabby for a "MacBook Nano."

Kenneth has been loving carrying this around campus since it is little bigger than a paperback book. Hopefully from the pictures you can see how small it is!

Ikea Quilt

I saw this quilt on a blog a few months ago and totally fell in love with it. My quilting buddy/sister-in-law Jeanette loved it too - so this past weekend while Kenneth was fishing we started work on our own. 

I just finished piecing the top of mine and I love it! Hooray for Ikea fabric and fun blogs to copy :)

I don't know what I am going to do now that we're home from Utah.. No fun family weekends in Kamas, UT... no quilting buddies.. no fishing....   It's a good thing we have friends and fun times in Boston, this could be really depressing.

(just the border is from Ikea, the rest of the fabric is from Mormon Handicraft or my own stash)

Fishing

Kenneth and I have been married for 5  1/2 years now and I never knew until just last weekend that he loves fishing. 

Here he is with his brothers:
 

They didn't actually catch any fish, but they all claim that they got some big bites and just let them get away :)

Purple Houses

This is my July quilting project:

The family I work for went on vacation for a week in July, so I decided I needed a project. I made it for my cute sister-in-law Jeanette. What do you think?

(Does it seem like all I make are houses these days?)

Hogle Zoo

Last week, while Kenneth and I were in Utah, we went to the zoo! It was so much fun. We got to see the new baby giraffe and the new baby snow leopard - which, if you live in Utah, I highly recommend. They are super cute :)

Here are some pictures from our adventure: