Posted by Christina // 1 Reply
Posted by Christina // 7 Replies
We have lived like tourists in our hometown lately.
Visiting places like the Botanical Gardens, History Museum, and the Zoo.
This weekend we had a special celebration.
My not-so-baby-sister grew up recently.
I took it as my duty to take her out on the town.
One of the do-not-miss spots was St. Louis’ pride and joy.
I think St. Louis is known for two things….
a rapper with a band-aid addiction and a King.
What’s better than beer? Free beer.
The tour is free and lasts about an hour. It is chock full’o history and oh yea…BEER.
At the end of the tour you get two glasses of the freshest beer you’ll ever taste.
I assume that’s what my sister was there for.
I was there for the pretty buildings.
There were about a million different buildings to see and they all served a different purpose, the first building was the large aging room where the beer gets all of its delicious flavor. Want to hear the craziest part? Those tanks were stacked six high. To drink just one of those tanks you would have to drink a beer an hour everyday for over 130 years. Then you would have quite a beer belly.
We also got to see where they jump in giant vats and mash all the hops up ala Lucille Ball. Ok so maybe that doesn’t actually happen….but mashing does.
Big surprise, this building was huge as well.
If I had to guess I’d say twenty stories.
Then there were of course, more pretty buildings.
One of the last stops was the factory. It was…take a guess….huge.
This is where the magic happens, they bottle and can and keg all that tasty goodness. I so wanted to sing the Laverne & Shirley theme song, if only I had a big glove. Maybe a neck scarf and a cardigan.
On the way out I decided I need a green door somewhere in my life.
I can’t imagine why…
Our trip would not have been complete with out a family photo.
Then this happened.
I wish I could thank that man personally.
Have you had any hometown fun lately?
Posted by Christina // 28 Replies
I do believe everyone has caught on to the awesomeness of thrift shops.
Macklemore has helped, but so have DIY blogs.
The blogs that inspire you to take on the horrid dresser and paint it kelly green and change out the hardware and voila it’s gorgeous. Oh c’mon it’s just that easy, right? Yea right.
Obviously I was delighted when one of my favorite blogs decided to host an unofficial thrifting challenge.
The challenge was to basically live out the song…if you have ever seen the video then you know I was dying to run across the recliners. All for the challenge of course, but T wouldn’t let me. What a buzz kill.
There was also a scavenger hunt to find the things they rap about.
I wish we would have tried harder for fringe and green gator boots.
I would say we did pretty good finding all the randomness.
We also found a couple other favorites, look at my boyfriend wiggin out.
He was so excited about that oversized hand.
My favorite find was a little more realistic…and if I would have known that a nice clean person took care of these before me then we’d be eating off them tonight. But there wasn’t a full set and what if a hoarder used to own those in a drawer full of cat poop? These are the things that go through my head people.
On top of finding all those sweet spoils….we stayed under budget too.
I think those are Tim’s favorite words, “under budget”.
So what did we splurge our $18.98 on?
Well, as much as I loved that pink suit….it did not make it home with us.
I have big plans to jazz up most of that stuff. Especially the vase and utensils.
What thrift store gold have you found lately?
Posted by Christina // 6 Replies
We told you yesterday about our adventure in the World’s Fair wing at the Missouri History Museum.
Now we are going to give you a little more Missouri History.
If there is one thing I can say put St. Louis on the map….it would be beer.
This is a beer biased town for sure. Home of the Busch family and Budweiser Brewing. We do our part to keep the Buschs in business.
Almost as prominent as our brewing history is our sports history.
So it is no wonder that these two things made several appearances throughout the Missouri History Museum.
Tim’s favorite part of the museum was the War memorabilia, we spent a lot of time looking though the old posters and uniforms and Tim got to tell me all sorts of stories of his grandfather being a prisoner of war.
My favorite part of the whole place was finding out that Missouri voted YES to putting an aquarium in Forest Park. Holler.
I have a new life plan….open aquarium in St. Louis.
Oh yea, I also quite enjoyed face time with my honey. Oh and trying to figure out how I wound up on a random TV screen and where on earth the hidden camera was lurking. Only slightly creepy.
We also learned a thing or two…especially about the big St. Louis fire.
Even though I’ve hung out with Chuck Berry at the casino before, it was still neat to see him and all of his famous St. Louis Blues buddies (not of the puck and stick variety, but go Blues).
And how adorable is this pink kitchen?
Parts of the museum were like walking back in time.
I think that Tim and I actually learned a whole lot about this great city of ours.
Look at my boyfran-man…so excited to get a view of the car…just making sure all the windows are still there.
Did you know Andy Cohen is from Missouri, and Sheryl Crow, and Mark Twain, and John Goodman, and Brad Pitt, and Dick Van Dyke, and one of those house wives girls….I think her name is Alexis.
Have you ever been to St. Louis? Do you live here and know of a secret spot of awesomeness? Where are the hot spots in your town?
Posted by Christina // 10 Replies
As often as we can, Tim & I like to go out and enjoy our hometown.
You may remember our trip to the Botanical Gardens for the Lantern Festival.
With the weather turning colder and the Holiday madness winding down, we were finally able to squeeze in another adventure. The Missouri History museum is in Forest Park and neither one of us had been since a third grade field trip.
The History Museum has six wings, four of them are free and since you know I took an overload of photos I decided to break them into smaller posts. The first wing we visited was the World’s Fair wing which was my favorite area of the museum. It was so full of history and enlightened me to so much that I didn’t know. The geography of St. Louis was totally different in 1904 and it was fascinating to look at the maps.
I knew that the St. Louis World’s Fair was where the ice cream cone was invented, but I didn’t know it spanned 1271 acres. Or that it ran for 187 days and most of the buildings were built just for the fair. Or that there were elephants…..who brought those?
And how exactly did we let people in the Philippines know that we were having a Fair in St. Louis in 1904…and how did they bring the elephants? Someone please find the invitation for me.
As silly as it sounds, I never actually thought about the Worlds Fair. Or that people from all over the WORLD would be there….hence the name. I just always assumed it was like your local fair, with a few more people. Apparently “a few” is actually 20,066,537.
Timothy’s mom collects silver…so I told Tim he needs to sneak in and “borrow” all of those spoons next Christmas. He declined saying something about morals or something, I think he is just chicken. Bawk Bawk.
I was intrigued by all the history and culture and learning there was to take in.
Being an Accountant, I was most excited about the cost of going to the Fair. I wonder what those gold coins are worth these days.
Did y’all do anything fun this weekend? I beat Tim in gin rummy 5 times in a row. You read that right…five times…in a row.
We live an exciting life around these parts…museums and gin rummy.
Posted by Christina // 7 Replies
During our short jaunt up to Chicago for the YHL book tour we decided to stop by this little store we have heard about a time or two.
Yea you heard right, we had never been to Ikea…but we fixed that right up.
Even though we had been up for way too many hours, and I had gone all giddy crazy meeting the Petersik’s we still made room for some Swedish lovin.
We gave ourselves a $100 budget and only an hour to shop.
Hey, we are broke and had to get home before the energy drink wore off.
Most people would think that was crazy, and it was.
Holy speed shopping.
Every single person we told that we were going to Ikea said that we absolutely must get the Swedish meatballs. And ice cream, definitely ice cream.
They were tasty indeed.
Do they cater for Christmas? To St. Louis?
I of course loved all the pretty, Tim was shocked and thrilled with the prices.
So in short, we had more fun than a toddler on a teeter-totter.
We did make our time limit and got back on the road by 4p.m. to make the long trek home. The budget on the other hand, we blew by a measley $18.
We bought simple white dishes and lots of white frames so we can get crackin on that living room frame wall. I can not wait to show you all.
I know we said we want to add more flava and color in our lives, but we figure those are staples and can be spiced up with lots of colorful napkins and art. Am I right?
Now where can I start a petition to get Ikea in the Lou?
