All Pints North 2015

This past weekend we went up to Duluth, MN for the All Pints North beer festival.  This has become my favorite of all the MN Beer festivals.  I'm not sure if it's the fact that we're getting away for a weekend or the summer vibe or the fact that it's in one of my favorite cities in the state or what it is, but it is just my favorite of all the beer festivals.

We drove up on Saturday and just spent one night, next year I might be tempted to have us go up on Friday so we can have a little extra time in Duluth, but it worked well for this year to just go one night again.  We dropped off Ollie in the morning with Nate's parents and made it to Duluth by around 2:00.  The festival started at 3:00, so we had just enough time to drop off our things at the hotel and then walk over to the park.

The gates opened and the bagpipers lead us inside the park.  I seriously love that every beer festival starts with bagpipes!  We stopped at the Surly Brewing Company tent first, we knew from past experience that their lines would get long and they would likely run out of some of the special kegs they brought, so early would be better than later.  We tried their Nein, which is their ninth anniversary beer.

Happy to be out and about together 

We hit up a few other places, ran into a few people we knew from the Cities and then decided we needed a little food to go with our brews, so we grabbed a hotdog from my favorite food truck of all time, Natedogs.  We also grabbed some water (it was pretty warm, even for Duluth and our rule was one bottle of water per hour so we wouldn't get heatsick) and parked on a hill in the shade for a bit.

Best hotdog ever!

It's so fun to people watch at these events!  It was such a beautiful day.  It was pretty warm, but the breeze off Lake Superior really helped a lot.  The backdrop of the iconic Lift Bridge in the background was pretty neat too!

Crowd shot - Lift Bridge in the background, you have to love it!

Of course I made Nate take a bunch of selfies with me.  He's a good sport.  

Outside of the Bent Paddle tent (they are local to Duluth) they had cute whiskey barrel tables and stools to sit on so we stopped there for a bit.  I thought this was so cute - barley in a beer can.  I might have to duplicate that for our Oktoberfest party this year!

Another selfie while Nate was in line getting something.  I wanted to show off my hat.  I remembered it was very sunny with not much for shade last year so I decided a hat was very necessary!

Bent Paddle also had a giant Jenga game, so we decided to play for a bit.  Nate was the victor, but it was a very close game.  We had the tower almost taller than both of us for a time!  

Festival outfit! 

Shirt and top - Stitch Fix, Hat - Target

Bag - Thirty One, Sunglasses - Fun Sisters

Shoes - Thrifted

He is pretty much my most favorite of all time ever.  

Pretty soon it was 7:00 and the party was over!  It goes by so fast.  We made sure we paced ourselves well, we shared everything and as I mentioned, we made sure to drink plenty of water too.  We stopped by the merchandise tent to pick up a shirt I liked, we each grabbed one final beer taste and then we started our walk back to the hotel.  

We had to take pictures by the Lift Bridge on our way back to the hotel of course!

Our hotel was right next to Canal Park Brewing Company so we stopped over for an after festival snack and a final beer and sat outside and enjoyed the view of Lake Superior and watched people walking the boardwalk.

Lift Bridge at night

We grabbed breakfast on Sunday morning at a restaurant not too far from the hotel, then drove about twenty minutes north of Duluth real quick to stop at a smokehouse we love to get some smoked fish to bring home with us.  Then we drove back home to the Cities and were reunited with our boy.  We really had a great time though.  I absolutely love this festival and plan to return again and and again. I'm already excited for next year!

The news from here

It's funny.  I took Ollie to a friend of mine's house for a playdate over the weekend and we hadn't seen each other for awhile, so naturally she asked what was new and what we'd been up to.  And I said "man, I feel like we have been really busy this summer, but I can't figure out with what!" When I list off the things we've been up to, it really doesn't sound like we've been doing much, yet, we've been filling our days pretty well.  Anyway, I thought I'd just share a little of what's new here to kind of check in.  It's hard to believe we're kind of at the midway point of summer!
-We've been playing lots of disc golf.  We have made a rule for ourselves that every couple of weeks we have to try a new to us course.  So far we've tried one new one, ha.  There's a course at a park about five minutes from our house so a lot of times we pick that one out of ease!
-Ollie is starting swimming lessons this week which is both exciting and anxiety inducing for mama.  It's not that I'm afraid he won't love it or will have a problem - the boy is a fish, that will be no worry at all.  It's the whole timing thing, gotta get dinner on the table, get packed up and head out by a certain time.  It'll be a good exercise in being organized and prepared!  
-On Friday I enjoyed a nice day off.  I finally had a chance to attend a Social Media Breakfast event, it's a great event sponsored by some marketing firms in Minneapolis, it's all about networking and learning to make social media work better for you while enjoying a little bit of breakfast!  I really enjoyed learning more about social media and marketing (and drinking a mimosa!) After that event I enjoyed a pedicure with a good blogger friend of mine, Jen from Wonderfully Unkempt.  Then I picked up my boy and had a nice afternoon with him!
-CSA season is in full swing at our house and we're loving it.  The addition of a cheese share this year has been the best thing ever.  We're just loving having fresh veggies and eggs.  I'll be sharing some of our latest eats later this week.  
-I attended a fun event yesterday at a new to me brewery.  Laura from One Girl, Two Cities hosted a "Tweet Up" for some of us active Minneapolis Twitter folks at Insight Brewing.  It's a great space and the beer was delicious.  I'll be making a return trip soon with Nate because I know he'll love it too and bonus, it really isn't far from our house!
-Speaking of beer, Nate's been brewing a bit to try to get ready for our annual Oktoberfest.  He has a schedule for what he's brewing and when for the rest of the summer.  It'll be a little intense, but I'm so excited for what he's rolling out this year!  
-You might remember my post about the hypothetical bridge I wanted to cross.  Sadly that bridge was closed to me, but I decided what was on the other side maybe wasn't for the best.  I am still searching for other bridges to cross though.  I'll find the right one.
-The bridge I want to cross in terms of blog changes is getting closer though!  I'd say I'm about halfway across the bridge.  I want to do this right so I'm not rushing to get to the other side quite yet. We're very close, Nate's been helping me a ton.  I've set a "go live" date of August 1st, so we're just about two weeks from the big reveal.  If I feel things are ready sooner we'll roll it out sooner, but that's our goal right now.  I promise I won't just sit here and talk non-stop about it, but who are we kidding, I'm kind of antsy pants about it, I just can't wait to share!
So that's kind of the news from here!  Like I said, we're busy, but I feel like it isn't HUGE things keeping us busy.  It's just kind of life.  We take it as it comes and it certainly hasn't been boring.  It's been a pretty decent summer so far.  What's new with you?

The Beer Dabbler

So it's no secret to readers of the blog here that Nate and I are pretty into beer.  We're lucky that the craft beer industry is absolutely booming here in Minnesota.  There are quite a few festivals throughout the year that we have enjoyed going to and this year we decided to try one we hadn't before - The Beer Dabbler at the Winter Carnival in St. Paul.  The event was this past Saturday and we had a blast!  We decided to splurge and get "VID (Very Important Dabbler)" tickets and that was the best decision we could have made!  We got in a half hour early and got to start drinking beer right away, we got free hats, free food, access to a heated tent and no lines for bathrooms - yeah, totally worth the extra price!  Anyway, I thought I'd share some pictures here (if you're Facebook friends with me you've already seen these, so apologies for the double post in that case).

Above I'm drinking my first beer of the day.  You'll notice too that this event was outside.  Normally in Minnesota you'd be crazy for going to an outdoor festival in January, but we lucked out and had a day of warm weather - it was actually in the 40's, so I got by with a sweatshirt and a puffy vest!

Of course I had to take a selfie with my favorite person.  We don't look at all excited about the fact that we had a babysitter and could be out of the house drinking beer together do we?

You could choose which color hat you got as a "VID" ticket holder.  I chose a pink/blue/purple one because I'm such a girl.  Nate chose a maroon and gold one (Go Gophers I guess!)

No beer festival is complete without a lineup of food trucks.  I was SO excited that one I've been wanting to try for ages was there - O'Cheeze, a gourmet grilled sandwich truck.  Yep, sign me up!!

We had some sort of chicken chipotle grilled cheese with cheddar and pepperjack cheeses.  Sounds like it would be super spicy, but it wasn't too bad.  Another awesome thing at this festival was that they had meat and cheese samples available for free inside the Colosseum (this event took place at the MN State Fairgrounds) - so we ended up spending close to an hour in there sampling cheeses.  There were some beers being poured in there as well so we didn't have to go without!

These last couple of pictures are just me being silly.  Above I was showing off my dorky necklace that was very useful - it holds your beer glass so you can be hands free.  However, somehow mine managed to fall out of the necklace in the mud, so I was sad panda thinking I was done having any beer, but Nate said "come on, let's just ask for another one".  I didn't think there was anyway they'd give me one, but when they saw we were "VIDs" they said we could have one.  Um, score!

One of the MN Breweries, Dayblock Brewing, also has bacon, so they had a giant bacon strip outside their booth, so I was like, I need a picture with the bacon.  Because bacon.  I love bacon.

We didn't partake too much in the free booya stew we also got as VID members, we could have as many bowls as we wanted, but given the food trucks and cheese samples, we pretty much filled up on that and didn't need the stew.  Also, it was just not that cold out, so we didn't feel the need for that to help warm us up.  As for the beers?  There were good ones out there, we found a lot of the breweries weren't stepping outside the box too much, but I will say the two best ones I think I had was Stir Crazy (winter ale) from Indeed Brewing that had peppermint added and then Summit had their Oatmeal Stout with cinnamon and vanilla on cask - that was quite delightful!  Overall we had a great time and I would definitely consider going to this festival again and I would absolutely pop for the VID if we do.  Our next big beer event won't be until the summer more than likely, so I'm glad we did it up pretty big for this one!  
Hope you all had a great weekend too!  If you're on the East Coast, I'm thinking of you, hunker down and stay safe in the snow!

Friday Five - Christmas wishlist, beer edition

I still love doing gratitude posts but after doing up TIGF pretty big for the month of November I'm giving myself a little break and have decided to be greedy today instead and talk about my Christmas Wishlist.  I found five items I wouldn't mind seeing under the tree (psst, hey Nate) and somehow they all ended up beer related.  I think maybe it has something to do with the fact that we're doing a Beer Advent this December (thanks to Alice from Dining With Alice for the invite!) so maybe I just have beer on the brain or something.  Here are five beer related items I think are pretty nifty:

I actually saw this shirt at the I Like You booth at the State Fair this summer and have been kicking myself for not getting one.  I noticed the I Like You store in Minneapolis has these, so if Santa doesn't bring me one perhaps I need to go down there!

This shirt from the Beer Dabbler store in St. Paul is pretty cute and kind of funny.  There's another one that talks about designated drivers, but I think the "another round, that's what she said" is a little more fun.

These bottlecap necklaces, again from I Like You, are super cute as well.  From what I was reading, each one is a little different.  I love my home state and my city, so I'd love to sport one of these!

This plaid sweatshirt from the local beer publication "The Growler" is too fun.  And it's plaid.  You all know how much I love plaid.  This looks like it would be super warm too.

And finally, from one of my favorite MN breweries, I have been telling Nate for months now that I'd love a sweatshirt from Indeed Brewing - not only do we love their beer, but we also both tend to say "indeed" a lot, so it just feels appropriate.  Not to mention, Nate has a t-shirt from there, Ollie has a onesie from there, I think it's time for me to match!
I gain nothing from promoting these local businesses, I just really think these items are super fun.  I could think of a few other things I wouldn't mind having, but we'll just keep this to a Friday Five list this week.  What's on your wishlist?

Summer strikes back

Just off of another very nice weekend - we were spoiled here in Minnesota with very summerlike weather.  It was a perfect day on Saturday for a round of disc golf in the morning followed by the Autumn Brew Review in the afternoon! The park we disc golf at is just starting to have it's trees turn color - I think by next week it will be even more vibrant, though I don't know if we'll get out there next weekend, got a few things going on!

The Autumn Brew Review was a lot of fun too - it was the third festival in the ticket series we bought for this year.  It's neat that they hold this particular event in the parking lot of the old Grain Belt Brewery - which ironically is where Nate's office is now!  This event was huge - there were almost 125 breweries present from both Minnesota and some other spots in the US.  We had a great time going around and sampling - there is no way we could have gotten to all of the places though!  

My only complaint was the lack of shade, while it was great to soak up a sunny day, after awhile the sun actually got to be a bit much.  We made sure to take a lot of water breaks.  I did end up with a mild sunburn at the end of the day though!  The best part of this event taking place right outside Nate's office?  After we'd had our fill we were able to stop in his office for more water, a comfy place to sit and a nice indoor restroom to use while we waited for his dad to pick us up! 

We went back and dinner with Nate's parents as they had kindly watched Oliver for us.  He decided to be a bit of a stinker on Saturday and not nap terribly much, so we got him to bed fairly early and then played some cards with Nate's parents as well.  

Sunday was a nice calm day at home.  We got up and took our time making a nice breakfast at home. Oliver played and worked on his new skills - not only does he crawl, but he now will pull himself to a standing position on things.  All that work makes a boy tired, so he napped much better for us!  We did some boring things too like shop for new patio furniture - I was shocked we managed to find some this late in the season, but we desperately wanted something different for our deck before our annual Oktoberfest next month and we were lucky to find some at Menards.  While Ollie took his afternoon nap we made some homemade applesauce and it turned out fabulously.  Ollie woke up smiling and showing off his newest skill.

The weekend ended on a little bit of a sour note.  We don't usually get too into politics, but this election there's an issue on the ballot in our little town that is important to us and we had a yard sign in our yard supporting this issue.  Someone who opposed the issue decided that they opposed it so much that they needed to steal the sign out of our yard.  That just didn't sit well with me - how dare they infringe on my freedom of speech, trespass on my private property and theft my sign?  We were able to get a replacement, but it just makes you really question the world you live in sometimes.  We tried not to dwell on it too much though.  It was just a tiny blimp in an otherwise awesome weekend that may be the last warm one we'll get! It's already cooler today!  I hope you all had a good weekend too!

Weekend recap

Happy Monday!  Did you all have a nice weekend?  Mine went by way too fast!  That just seems to be how it always goes though, doesn't it?  Anyway, thought I'd do a little weekend recap with pictures, because that's more fun than sitting here complaining about Monday!

Friday I got home from work and played with my favorite little guy.  He was getting ready for the Vikings game a little early here.  Sorry buddy, they didn't win this weekend!  After Nate got home we went for a walk and got Ollie off to bed and then we watched the movie Delivery Man - it was really cute, I really enjoyed it.

Saturday I got up pretty early and headed up to Alexandria, MN for my sister-in-law's best friend's bachelorette party.  They rented a cabin for the weekend and planned to go to a grape stomp at Carlos Creek Winery.  I didn't stay the night, but I went up for the day and hung out.  It was a fun afternoon - the grape stomp was insane, it was like the State Fair meets a Craft Fair meets a beer festival except instead of beer it was wine.  We felt kind of bad because one of the bride's friends is pregnant and the other one is dealing with some health issues in which she really can't drink, but they enjoyed walking around and looking at all the vendors.  It was fun to watch the people stomping the grapes too.  I told my sister-in-law if we ever decided to sign up to do one, I'd make her stomp since she's more of a runner than me!  Anyway, we had dinner in town and then I got on the road to go home, a little later than I'd planned, so I had to drive home in the dark which is not my favorite, but I cranked up my music and sang at the top of my lungs and I survived the drive back!

(My SIL Ali, Me, Lindsey the bride, Trista, Steph)

Sunday we got up and Nate got ready to re-do the beer that we had to dump out last weekend.  He tweaked his recipe a bit since he now had fresh hops to use.  This time things went much more smoothly.

While Oliver napped and Nate was at a point where he didn't need my help, I got my Betty Crocker hat on and made cupcakes.  I haven't baked much since Ollie has been born, but I especially haven't made cupcakes and I've been wanting to for so long.  I have about 80 cupcake recipes pinned to my Pinterest right now!  So, I chose to make Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with cinnamon frosting.  They turned out really good!  I think next time I'll choose a cream cheese based frosting though, this frosting was almost too light, but it sure tasted good!

And now I'm back to work for the week!  I guess it could be worse, it is raining outside!  I was excited to pull out a dress (as a skirt) today that I haven't actually worn in two years.  I couldn't wear it last fall when I was pregnant, so it's been since the fall before that since I've worn it!

Sweater - Ruff Hewn (consignment), Dress as skirt - ModCloth

Necklace - Zulily, Bag - Merona (Target)

So that's the news from here!  I'm looking forward to a calmer week and a quieter weekend next weekend! I'm glad we got as much done as we did though!  And it was fun to hang out with the girls, but I definitely missed my boys!