More to Do Around Erie

 

Last summer I wrote several posts on things to do in Erie, PA.  We visited some additional sites this summer that are worth mentioning.

 

The Erie Art Museum in downtown Erie is the place to be on Wednesdays in the summer.  Admission is free on that day, and at noon there are concerts just outside the main entrance.

 

 The Lake Erie Arboretum at Frontier Park is definitely a hidden gem.  The paths meander through both wooded and cleared areas, beside a creek, and past gardens.

 

Even though we live in the middle of the woods on the side of a mountain, we got closer to a doe and her spotted fawn at the arboretum than we do at home.  An added treat is Romolo Chocolates which is just across the street from Frontier Park.  This family owned artisan chocolate store is well-known for its sponge candy, something words can't describe.  

 

I know I mentioned the amazing sunsets over Lake Erie before, but they are worth mentioning again because they are truly spectacular.

 

You see what I mean?

 

My children always like hunting for beach glass at the Walnut Creek Marina, but this summer our youngest son also collected flat rocks to create a walkway and a border for his hand-dug "hot tub."  These didn't come home with us.

 

Fishing at one of the piers at Presque Isle is always fun for our teen son.

 

There are a number of universities in and around Erie, and we try to walk around the campus of a college or two each summer.  Mercyhurst is of interest to our high school sophomore, and it is a beautiful campus.

 

 

 

 

 

Just a twenty minute drive from Erie is Edinboro University, which has the attention of our high school junior.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, if you do venture to Erie any time soon, be on the lookout for these cute painted rocks.  They're hiding all over the place, and apparently, you're to take your picture with them and post to Facebook, then hide them somewhere else in the city.  Our children found five during the week we were there.  Our youngest daughter thought this was especially exciting, and she gave a lot of consideration to where she would place them.  

For more information on Erie, PA, go to http://www.visiterie.com/.

Scenes from Lake Erie

 

Photos of Lake Erie at the Walnut Creek Marina two weeks ago.  It was windy, 66 degrees, and COLD!

 

But flocks of seagulls were everywhere bracing themselves against the strong winds.

 

That is, until our loud family showed up and the kids started running into the midst of them.

 

They temporarily took flight, but returned moments later.

 

Our main purpose for braving the misty winds was to look for beach glass, but there was barely any beach left as the waves came crashing in.

 

We had to settle for watching the seagulls and the lake instead.

 

In my opinion, the waves and cloudy skies provided enough interest and photo ops anyway.  

A Farm-to-Table Community Dinner

 

As a belated anniversary gift to each other, my husband and I purchased tickets to a fun farm-to-table dinner in Bedford, PA.  One of the main streets in town was closed so this event could occur, and it couldn't have happened on a more perfect evening.

 

This was a bring your own bottle of wine affair, but there was plenty of mango iced tea provided by a local shop owner and tables of delicious local goat cheeses, chutneys, herb butter, crackers, and homemade bread.  We helped ourselves to these as we waited for dinner to officially begin, and a kind lady seated across from us generously let us borrow her corkscrew since I didn't think to bring ours.

 

The four-course meal was catered by Horn O' Plenty Farm to Table Restaurant, and local celebrities and non-celebrities alike volunteered to serve around a hundred people seated down the center of South Juliana Street.

 

Organic ingredients from local farms are used by Chef Mandy at this restaurant, and all of the food was amazing!  These wooden chargers were handsawn from cherry trees locally.

 

The tables were rustic, yet elegant, with white linens, the wooden service plates, burlap table runners, and Mason jars filled with fresh flowers that a number of local guests got to take home at the end of the night.

 

A couple of talented local musicians performed throughout dinner and created the perfect background sounds.  No traffic from surrounding streets could be heard, yet the music wasn't so loud that we all couldn't comfortably chat with one another throughout the evening.

 

It was a full "house" and every seat was taken.   Not only did this event promote local businesses, but the proceeds benefited Downtown Bedford Inc., which is revitalizing this charming small town.

 

Not only was it a large crowd, but each course of dinner was large too, and I was stuffed by the end of the night.  And I definitely threw the low-carb diet out for the evening as well.  Everything was just too fresh and too good to pass up or feel guilty about consuming.  It was a lovely evening with interesting people and so inspiring for me to see people come together to support a community, good food, and each other.   It gives me hope for other struggling small towns that have been abandoned and overlooked.  Bedford has made an incredible comeback in a way I never would have dreamed twenty or thirty years ago.  For me, this dinner was a symbol of what is possible if people are willing to think outside the box, try something new and different, and commit to a vision for the future.

Needless to say, we look forward to attending this inaugural event next year, and I hope to see more of its kind nearer to where we live. 

A Day at the Falls: Taking a Family Day Trip to Niagara

 

 Our family just returned from our summer vacation farther north.  We spent one day at Niagara Falls, NY, after many months of planning what we'd most like to do on this side of the border.

 I had been to the falls twice decades ago, but always on the Canadian side in Ontario.  There isn't quite as much to do on the American side, and my kiddos gazed longingly across the Niagara River at the large hotels, ferris wheel, and tower that they could clearly see from the US.

 

But we spent plenty of time hiking the many trails along the Niagara River to take in every possible view of the American Falls and the Horseshoe Falls.  We were on our feet most of the day.  

 

We started out walking from the Niagara Falls Visitor's Center and approached the falls from up high near the rapids.  Then we crossed the bridge to Goat Island and hiked down closer to the tip of the American Falls.

 

If you stood close to the railing, you almost felt as if you were going over the edge.

 

And you got wet.

 

Some of us stood back and simply took pictures.

 

Even though I have heard great things about the Maid of the Mist ferry ride that takes you up close the base of the falls, I wouldn't agree to doing that because even with the poncho they gave you, those people looked drenched.

 

So we simply kept on hiking until we got to the Horseshoe Falls, which were definitely more impressive to our boys, but because of the mist, they were harder to photograph and see well.

 

After walking through the crowds of people from all over the world for an hour and a half, our kids were drooping, so we popped into the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch.

 

Our children had never been to this franchise before and raved about the size of the hamburgers for days.  It was mostly 80s music playing with music videos on the screens from my teen years, which was kind of nostalgic for me, I guess.  But I have to say that seeing Billy Idol and a bunch of big-haired, leather-wearing young women dancing rather provocatively doesn't seem cool anymore now that I'm seeing it through the eyes of my children. 

 

After sustenance and resting our legs, we made the 1.5 mile walk to the Aquarium of Niagara.  We like to support small museums with a family membership each summer wherever we travel, so we did the same here.

 

Even though my younger children enjoyed watching the sea lions show off and swim around, I have to say I was rather disappointed.  After having been to the aquariums in the Baltimore Harbor, Charleston, and the penguin house at the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, this one paled in comparison.

 

We spent about an hour and a half there, but only because our daughter kept wanting to look in the gift shop.  It was small, rather rundown, and very crowded.  Plus the layout of it was kind of weird.  I definitely wouldn't go again.

 

After hiking back down to the parking lot and getting more pictures of the falls from yet another angle, we were ready to call it a day.  We were being approached by a number of strangers asking for money---something my children have never experienced before---and it was getting hot and very crowded.  We spent about five hours there, which felt long enough, and I was glad we hadn't made this a week-long destination like I had considered doing.  It was awesome seeing these famous waterfalls as a family, but we were pressed to find enough interesting things to fill our day that weren't...tacky.  I think if we went again, we would probably visit some places in nearby Buffalo, but my kids just really wanted to veg out and not walk anymore.  So we drove the two hours back to their grandparents' house, stopping at a college (more about that another day) and a restaurant for a light dinner, and everyone slept late the next morning because we were beat. 

And being the list-maker that I am, I can now check that off the bucket list of places I'd like my kids to see.

A First Birthday Party in the Hundred Acre Wood

 

It's hard to believe, but our grandson turned one yesterday, and his mama and daddy threw him a party in his own little Hundred Acre Wood.  The party was in the screened-in porch of their lovely colonial stone farmhouse, and they converted it into a scene from the Winnie the Pooh story books.

 

Branches of trees on their property were cut by his daddy to create his own personal forest on the patio.  His mama painted the signs herself in the morning before guests arrived. 

 

Balloons, streamers, and other brightly colored decorations filled the party room, but the birthday boy most definitely loved the balloons most of all.

 

You can't see them, but the gift table held stuffed Pooh characters, and there were other plush Pooh friends peeking out in other places as well.

 

One of his aunties made these adorable vanilla cupcakes with honey bees on top.

 

While another auntie made him his own little cake to crumble, mash, and destroy.

 

He really wasn't sure what to make of it all at first and was surprisingly neat about eating it.

 

But I would say that other than getting a bit tired once the gift unwrapping was underway, the guest of honor was quite happy with his first birthday.

 

And even though yet another storm was raging outside, we all had a lovely time celebrating such a special day for a special little boy. 

A special thanks to T. Brown for most of the photos in this post.

Learning Bunco!

 

In my quest to bring people together to enjoy one another's company face-to-face, some friends and I decided to start up a Bunco group.  When our family lived in a charming Southern suburb decades ago, Bunco was the big thing with the SAHM crowd.  I was never a part of one, but I did create Bunco-themed soaps to sell as prizes at these Bunco parties.  They sounded like a lot of fun, so when a friend approached me with an interest a few months ago, I jumped on board.

 

There is a plethora of information on the Web regarding this game.  We thought that would make it simple to learn the rules, but what we discovered is that nearly every website has variations of the rules, which made things rather confusing for all of us newbies.  However, the themes and food and decorating ideas I found on blogs and Pinterest were fantastic.  There are so many fun things I'd like to try the next time I host one of these gatherings, and maybe I'll actually have the time when I'm not overseeing so many outdoor projects that are happening simultaneously. 

 

I didn't actually have a Bunco game myself, so I was fortunate enough to find free downloadable printables of score sheets, table markers, and extra lists of rules.  These can be found at http://www.ishouldbemoppingthefloor.com/search?q=bunco.

 

Although I found adorable homemade cupcakes with sugar cubes made to look like dice, I took a shortcut and bought miniature cupcakes from Weis and placed real dice on them that we can use to play with later.  The awesome edible ones found on Pinterest can be made by following the instructions at http://everydaydonna.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-09-01T18:59:00-07:00&max-results=7.

 

All kinds of prizes can be used to award the various winners (and losers, and random participants).  Some groups simply pitch in $5 each month and the prizes are monetary.  Since this was our first time to gather and play, and it was at our farmhouse with our bottom refrigerator shelf full of farm fresh eggs, every prize was a carton of brown eggs.  I look forward to playing this again next month, especially now that we all have a better idea of how to play and keep score, and I especially look forward to hosting again and trying out some Pinterest Bunco inspiration.

For those of you interested in hosting your own group or who just need some fresh ideas, these are  some of the pins I collected:

Cute table decoration 

 Party themes 

Mini cheesecake dice 

Party checklist 

Dice cheese spread 

Bunco snack mix  

And just to show you what was going on in my backyard in the hours leading up to our first Bunco Night (along with another wicked thunderstorm and broken water pipes on the other side of our property): 

 

This is where our pool had been, now covered in grass seed and straw with last year's garden down below covered in plastic to kill weeds until we can get some raised beds built for a flower garden.  This job was literally finished just a few hours before my game-playing friends arrived, and although it's an eyesore, it's still a vast improvement from what it looked like last week.  Five days ago you'd have thought we had a mini-landfill in our back yard.

I'm now in the fun dreaming and planning stages of a backyard oasis.  Back to Pinterest I go.

About Those Low-Carb Diets...

 

Atkins, Paleo, Mediterranean, Keto diets.  I'd heard about them for years.  We had friends who would come for dinner and eat very little of what I cooked.  They ordered hamburgers without buns, had salads instead of potatoes, and ate eggs and bacon for breakfast instead of bagels or waffles.  I thought to myself, "Good for them, but there is no way I could ever do that."  

But this year, I went and did do just that.

I have been blessed with fairly good genetics, at least where weight is concerned.  Throughout my twenties, as long as I taught aerobics classes and did some strength training weekly, I could eat whatever I wanted and remain a size 2-4.  In my thirties while carrying, birthing, and nursing five babies, I still ate whatever I wanted and stayed under a size  6-8.  But around the time I reached my mid-forties and was no longer breastfeeding or chasing toddlers around, I noticed the weight creeping up little by little.  I had to go up another size, and then another.  Everything seemed to be settling around my middle, and I felt bloated and uncomfortable all the time.  Additionally, I craved sugar and simple carbohydrates more and more.  The more I craved them, the more I ate them.  I felt my self-discipline waning, and I felt more sluggish and less motivated to go for a hike or do some yoga or hit some tennis balls with my children.  When my father was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I knew that I needed to get my sugar addiction under control.  I tried to use will-power.  I told myself I would only have dessert on the weekends and I'd cut out breads from my lunch.  I did this intermittently, but those pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks in the fall, Christmas cookies and hot chocolate in the winter, Easter candy in the spring, and ice cream in the summer got the better of me.  I might lose five pounds or so after the winter holidays before summer came, but in the fall I'd gain it back again.  I would begin each year a few pounds heavier and an inch wider around my middle than the previous year.

 

However, that changed in late-February when I decided I had nothing to lose but pounds and inches by trying to majorly reduce carbohydrates from my daily food intake.  What once comprised a good 70% or more of my diet got reduced to less than 25%.  I went from eating probably several hundreds of grams of carbs some days to eating under fifty a day.  I didn't follow any one specific program; I just did a lot of research and daily chose foods that were low in carbohydrates and high in healthy fats and proteins.  That has meant whole, unprocessed foods for the most part.  Meat, eggs (which we have no shortage of here), nuts and seeds, greens, most vegetables that grow above ground, heavy cream, full-fat hard cheese and cottage cheese, and a bit of yogurt.   This has been a huge change for me, and it's one I never thought I would want to make or that I would be successful at keeping.

In all honesty, I do cheat a little.  I sometimes have a dessert.  I eat some berries with my eggs some mornings at breakfast.  I have discovered that if I don't eat many carbs the rest of the day, I can have a 1/2 cup of full-fat ice cream and only consume 16 grams of carbohydrates.  I know that has sugar in it, and it's not ideal, but it's still far less sugar than I used to consume.  And once in awhile I break down and get that 500 calorie frappuccino at Starbucks and go over my entire day's allotment of carbohydrates with that one stinking drink.  But instead of giving into the temptation several days a week, it happens about once every few months.  My point is, I don't follow this plan as strictly as many others would advocate that you should, but I am looking at this as a lifetime change, not a quick fix.  And there are a lot of celebrations and holidays in a lifetime that I'm not willing to completely forego indulging in a slice of homemade pie or cake once in awhile.

 

Even with those occasional indulgences, I have seen success in a way that I wasn't sure was possible for me at this age.  I did lose 4-5 pounds in the very first week of cutting my carbs to 20-50 grams/day.  This was primarily water weight, but my stomach was flatter, my pants felt looser, and it gave me the motivation to stick with it.  Over the past 4 1/2 months, I've lost around 14 pounds, over 2 inches from my waist, and I've dropped 1-2 sizes in pants and shorts.  I haven't been able to successfully get down to this weight in over 4 years trying anything else.  Not by cutting fat, exercising more, occasional fasting, or simply reducing calories.  I'm not saying that eating a low-carb diet is right for everyone, but it has been a positive experience for me.

Now, I'm not going to kid you...it certainly comes with its sacrifices.  I haven't consumed a single craft beer (or any beer) since mid-February.  I haven't eaten pasta, rice, or bread of any kind.  Instead of snacking on crackers, pretzels, popcorn, or cookies, I have 1/4 cup of nuts or sunflower seeds instead.  I do sometimes eat dark chocolate-covered almonds or honey-roasted peanuts, which have some carbohydrates, but far fewer than the other processed snack foods.  I rarely do any baking anymore because I cannot resist licking the beaters or the wooden spoon.  And to pull some steaming homemade chocolate chip cookies out of my oven and not eat a single one is just torture.  So I don't do it.  Initially, I really missed drinking juice with a bagel or a muffin for breakfast, but now it's not such a big deal.  I think that eating out in restaurants is the hardest because it often means that I'm limited to a salad of one type or another.  If I can order meat free of sauces or breading, I have that with  one or two low-carb veggies.  Mostly, I try to focus on the things that I love that I can still have: dry wine, a bit of dark chocolate, and heavy cream in my coffee.  I know that I never would have made it this far if I'd have given up those.

So I am going forth with the resolve to continue this way of eating and living.  My husband has gotten on board as well, which does make it easier.  Learning that I am not powerless to defeat the middle-aged spread is empowering, and fitting into clothes that have hung unworn in my wardrobe for years is a great motivator to stick with it---even with a daughter in the house who creates the best cupcakes in the world.