Milwaukee County Zoo

Last Wednesday Joseph and I went to visit the Milwaukee County Zoo.  It is the loveliest zoo I have ever been to, aside from the San Diego Zoo.  It is large with so many lush green trees, it feels like the zoo is tucked away somewhere in the woods.

It was fairly empty, just the way I like it. 

There are a ton of photos after the jump!

Camping!

Last weekend Joseph and I headed out to Sandhill Station Campground to do a little weekend camping from Friday night through Sunday afternoon.  This is the same place that we went to last year and posted about here.  We had more time this year and I saw more wildlife this year but there were oh so many more mosquitos!  We lucked out last year because of the dry drought conditions there weren't very many mosquitos but this year there were thousands upon thousands. I am not even exaggerating.  They were everywhere and all over you if you weren't smothered in bug repellent.  We were luckily armed and managed to clear most of them way from our campsite, not all but enough to make ourselves comfortable.

I just love watching the sun set through the old Oak leaves.

 The smoke from the fire helped keep those pesky mosquitoes at bay.

 The classic Coleman lantern!

 This cute little Toadie that hung with us for a while.

 

 I never saw an animal come out of this cool hole in a tree but I bet one lives in there!

 Honey bee's living in the Oak Tree.  They didn't bother us at all which was cool considering our ice chest was right below it

 Bats!  They will probably be fat this year from all the bugs.

 The moon was ridiculously bright.  No need for a flashlight.

Peppers, Radishes and Kale OH MY!

My radishes weren't a huge success but I did get a few little guys from my crop, but my Beaver Dam Pepper plants have really been impressing me.  I planted them at the perfect time and I am going to have a ton of peppers soon.  My first pepper grows almost every day check out my little pepper photo 

diary below.

The first flower!

The first pepper from that flower

Getting bigger every day!

My Kale plant started off looking a bit flimsy, but now it's getting robust and large.  

Beaver Dam Peppers

There are so many buds on the 3 plants I have but this one has finally bloomed!  Looking forward to seeing a little pepper on there soon.

North Point Lighthouse

Saturday Joseph and I hit up the North Point Lighthouse in Lake Park.

 More photos after the cut...

Boerner Botanical Gardens

This was my first visit to the Boerner Botanical Gardens and I fell in love instantly.  I love all things nature related so it isn't really surprising that this place captured my heart.  

 The first thing I spotted was this cute little chipmunk, be prepared for a ton of photos of plants and landscapes after the jump.

Lovely Luscious Lips

My new favorite lipstick is Revlon's Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain in Honey.  It comes in this cute chubby little stick

It's the perfect neutral shade.

Three reasons I love it; 

Flawless application. The pencil design gives you perfect control. 

It goes on super smooth and easy just like regular lipstick, it's not dry or sticky.

As the name implies it's a stain.  The color lasts and lasts, even through food.  I only touch up when I need to restore a little shine and luster to my lips.  

I really want to try it in the shade Romantic, which is a red shade because I love me some red lips.

Self Tanning Trial Part 2

Sorry for the delay in the follow up.  Summer has been happening and there is so much to do and see.

I am so pale that the light to medium self tanner from Jergen's that I've been using actually made me feel too tan, and even now all these days later the dryer parts of my skin around my knees and ankles haven't lost all of there color, I also haven't been exfoliating them much but only to see how long the color would last as this is a trial.  I have used the daily moisturizer once for a quick touch up on my shins/calves to help balance out the color a bit between my knees and ankles.  I think I will continue to use the daily lotion self tanner, it's mild enough for my level of pastiness without leaving my entire leg splotchy.

Overall, if you've got nicely exfoliated skin that you moisturize every day the Jergen's 3 days to glow will probably look great on you, if you are a bit of a lazy bum like me watch out for splotchy coloring.  If i decide to try this again I think I'd exfoliate my legs every day for a week and step up my moisturizing game before applying the self tanner.

Self Tanning Trial.

First off let me say I don't really care to much about being tan.  I am super pale with olive skin tone and am comfortable with my blindingly white skin. I did happen to read an article though, that had someone touting about the awesomeness of Jergen's 3 Days to Glow self tanning moisturizer and then the next day I happened to find a couple of coupons for it.  It was like fate telling me that this was my chance to wear my shorts and skirts without having garish looking legs.  So here I find myself conducting a self tanning trial on my legs.

 I also bought the regular Natural Glow because they suggest using that twice a week for upkeep after the 3 days.

 

 Waking up today to find all the drier patches of skin darker while other areas look like I missed them completely, but you know I think I'd remember skipping over my entire shin area.  This is just day one, and it's only on my legs so I'm not worried.  I do own pants after all to hide the hideous discoloration.

 Some water hit my legs while I was washing my hands let me tell you if any water gets on the freshly colored skin, or within the 3 hour window they mention it will leave streaky marks.  Don't think one or 2 little drops of water won't make a difference. Also this picture is a very weird angle of my thighs, they aren't this short and squat as seen below.

 My ankles and feet look just disgusting, I wasn't going to do them but then I thought it might look weird to have super white feet and tan legs.

And here you can see the overall color difference with just one application. My pasty white arm and my new uneven tannish leg.

I put on a 2nd coat today, focusing on the whiter areas. We'll see if I even out any by the end of the three day run.  Expect a final update in a few days.

Green Thumb! A mini update.

It's true, I have a very green thumb and plants and flowers just seem to really like me. Here's a little update on my plants.  It may not be the most exciting stuff but I'm pretty excited about it.

4/5/13

This poor strawberry plant.  I didn't think it was going to make it. A year of being just pathetic and then one sunny day happened and bam!

 5/3/13

The leaves started to get bigger and new leaves started shooting up.

 6/15/13

 It continues to grow little by little.  We've kind of hit a plateau since we haven't had many consecutive warm summery days but hopefully that will change and we can get some more warm sunshine poking through the windows to help this little guy have another growth spurt.

Our little Jade plant clipping is just doing phenomenally well.  From meager beginnings with the teeniest tiniest sprouts

 To lots of little leaves

To a whole  mini plant with new teenier tinier shoots!

 All of our succulents are doing really well although I may need to move my rosey looking one into the window that gets more sun as it is starting to stretch out a little. The one on the right has a small mini shoot growing near the base also he's grown quite large and thick. They are going to need to be transplanted soon.

Home

I went home for a little bit a few weeks ago, again I got caught up in the moment and didn't take enough pictures of the people I love but here are a few I remembered to snap with my phone.

 The encroaching fog! 

 Market Street

 I was so close to this guy I could have reached out and petted his handsome cheek.

 Half of the bay bridge

Lake Merritt

Make your own delicious soft pretzels!

I promised to post the recipe for the pretzels I made earlier and today I deliver!

Here's what you'll need:

1 1/2 cups warm water
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (1 packet)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon sea salt
4 1/2 - 5 cups all-purpose flour

Canola oil (to grease bowl)
3 quarts water (for bowling the pretzels)
2/3 cup baking soda
1 whole egg, beaten with one tablespoon water (for egg wash)
kosher salt or course sea salt (for pretzel tops)

How to make the pretzels:

Combine water, sugar, yeast and butter in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix with a dough hook until combined let sit for 5 minutes.  If you don't have a stand mixer you can use a regular bowl and spoon and a little arm muscle.

Add the salt and flour and mix on low speed until combined.  Increase the speed to medium and knead until the dough begins to pull away from the sides, about 3-4 minutes.  If the dough appears to be to wet add additional flour one tablespoon at a time. Remove the dough from the mixer bowl and knead on a flat surface  into a ball with your hands.

Rub a light amount of canola oil on the inside of a large bowl, add the dough to the bowl and turn it over until the oil lightly covers the surface of the dough.  Cover the bowl with a clean towel and let sit for one hour in a warm spot.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Bring the 3 quarts water to a boil in a large bowl

Divide the dough into 8 equal size pieces.  Roll each piece into a long rope, longer than you think, and shape into pretzel shapes.  Once you're done shaping your pretzels slowly add baking soda to the boiling water and boil each pretzel for 30 seconds.  The pot I used let me boil 2 pretzels at a time. Remove from boiling water and place 4 pretzels on a cookie sheet ,I lined mine with parchment paper, and then paint the egg wash all over the tops of the pretzels and sprinkle with kosher/course sea salt.  Bake for 15 - 18 minutes or until pretzels are golden brown.  I had to turn my pan at the 15 minute mark to avoid hot spots from my oven. Let pretzels cool on a wire rack before digging in!

Enjoy your soft, delicious pretzels alone or with your favorite topping.

Dragon!

My nephew, Lucas, who is 7 years old drew me the best dragon any 1st grader ever did draw!

So I Made This

I made these delicious homemade soft pretzels with a Welsh rarebit cheese sauce.

Recipe to come soon.

Green Thumbs

Last summer I decided I wanted to try my hand at growing some herbs and things so I planted a few seeds and, lo and behold, those seeds did germinate and grow into *gasp* real live plants.  The catnip I planted went crazy, as well as the basil while my little spearmint seedlings and strawberry seeds took there sweet time to become stable little pants and by sweet time I mean almost a year!  Strawberry seeds, while not impossible, are kind of hard to come by and now I know why they just take a lot of love and a lot of time and patients for them to do anything.  It's always easy to find strawberry plants to transplant at your local garden center and I'd highly recommend just doing that than starting from seeds from my experiment.  Hopefully this spring they'll start to take off.

Here is little bitty strawberry. Still grasping at life.

Here you can see the spearmint has finally come into its own.  No more teeny tiny leaves, it is finally growing larger mature leaves.  I think I will need to transplant him to a bigger pot soon.

Over the winter I trimmed the catnip plant way back as instructed I hadn't properly pruned the plant in the first year and it was all vines and scraggly but after doing some homework I found how to properly prune the plant to grow big and full.  Catnip plants practically go dormant during the winter.  The thing did not grow not even a little but it didn't die either it just was stagnant, but ever since spring arrived (which here in Milwaukee means just last week) I've seen it start taking off growing straight up and I've remember to prune so hopefully by the middle of summer this plant will be huge and full of catnip buds for my kitty to enjoy.  Seriously catnip is super easy to grow even indoors so if you have a cat and want to try your hand at an easy, hardy plant give it a go, it needs full sun and lots of water and good pruning. This website How to Grow Killer Catnip Bud has a lot of great tips.

Here is the catnip.  I had left a few long vines but all the new growth is shooting straight up at the sun.

Unfortunately my basil plant bit the dust back in November.  I had a friend out visiting and I forgot to water him one measly day and he just never recovered.  Basil are super thirsty plants. I'm going to plant some more basil seeds this year along with some radish, kale, some alyssum flowers, which will be transplanted outside, Beaver Dam peppers. We are anxiously awaiting our pepper seeds to arrive since we had to order them special.

Some seedlings we've started this year.

Our other plants that we didn't grow from seeds.

I can't wait until I can live somewhere where I can plant a real garden.  There is nothing like growing your own food and herbs. The flavors of your own homegrown foods is out of this world.