excuses and delays.

December 7, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

Entirely too long of a break — BUT it’s the hoooolidays!

Is this an excuse?!

Seriously tho, celebrate them or don’t, but this time of year always seems to pick up and get really busy for some reason.

Of course the energy in the air is picked up because of the major few.. The kick off starts with Halloween, then followed by Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, New Years… it doesn’t seem to end for a few months. Everyone who partakes in the festivities naturally gives off a buzz and whether I like it or not it seems to affect me.

I just seem to get busy.

Here’s what I’ve been doing! Backing up a bit if I may, jumping around, and coming back to the present.

I mentioned a few posts back that I went to work with Ben! Well, here is that proof. At the end of the day, I stripped off the paper and tape that covered my feet to my knees and I posed for a picture or two!

(Seriously I think I know entirely too much about spray foam.. and I don’t know when why or how!)

Scooting forward a bit closer to present day, Thanksgiving we took a road trip to Council Bluffs Iowa to stay with some friends of ours! It was bad weather in Colorado and a short enough drive to make it happen! The last time I was in Omaha (butts right up with Council Bluffs) was for a volleyball tournament when I was in high school, so it was fun to explore the area some! It was a nice time of R&R and a lot of Super Mario Bros on the old Nintendo game counsel!

Lost time was made up, and I’ve improved my skill!

I don’t want to overload in one post so I am going to break this down into a couple I think.

The trailer is still amazing. More on that in the next post.

And I will leave you with this.

I think I am going to turn into pizza.

Honestly I could eat it daily and not get tired. All kinds of pizza… vegan, supreme, cauliflower crust, just cheese… it doesn’t matter. I am not biased.

I bring this up because Ben and I have been trying out different Pizzerias in the area — because well.. pizza. Every place we have has been really good… so we keep trying more! #foodies

Ben’s tastes in pizza are pretty straightforward … meat, everything, more. I like to switch it up however and try specialty pizzas — I love a good Margherita pizza, and I did a sort of “make your own” at the last joint we went to, and it basically turned into the Margherita pizza :p

The two we have recently tried, Serafini’s Pizzeria and Fuhgidabowdit Pizzeria have been unique in their own way and I would for SURE go back to them. Again… pizza. It’s hard to go wrong.

Cheers!

Okay in my next post I will be letting you know how my homemade toothpaste turned out! We are still in the “testing” phase so I want to gather more data before presenting!

Colorado the Beautiful *

October 25, 2015October 25, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

I crave fall like some people crave chocolate. Cold crispy days that leave the tip of your nose red, running and just a little numb; when your cheeks are rosy and pink, a winter jacket is just too much but one layer isn’t quite enough.

I crave these days. The past few days here in CO has been what I’ve been dreaming of since last fall closed down for the winter to move in. I don’t even mind the rain… I am half convinced I could live in a place like Seattle with constant rain and I wouldn’t get depressed, but I don’t have any plans to move there anytime soon so we can’t know for sure yet. But anyways, the last two days have been steady with a light fall of rain, not to windy, not to heavy, fading in and out just enough so Ben couldn’t work and we could get out and explore CO some!

Our mission Tuesday was to head blindly into the Rockies for the day and just figure it out, as we often do when we do some “Sunday driving”. We spent a few hours on back roads winding and twisting and since it was bad weather we couldn’t see beyond the base of the hills and mountains to about half way up… still didn’t take away any of the magic. We came across some signs for a trail head about an hour and a half into the drive so we pulled off and went for a 3.4 mile hike. It was gorgeous and I was BEYOND ecstatic to be back in the mountains again. I promise my soul belongs in the mountains, it just does. So anywho, it was an awesome chilly day with a great hike, the rain didn’t bother us at all and the hike followed a river the whole time so that was pretty cool.

This was a pretty cool church we came across in the mountains not much else around but it…

On Wednesday we decided to head down to explore other parts of CO, so we headed southwest to the Red Rocks Amphitheater. That hike ended up being about 2 miles and was very cool! I didn’t realize (I don’t know where I’ve been) that CO has cacti and had some desert to it, the Red Rocks Amphitheater was full of red rocks obviously :p but it was really big smooth rock formations, and the amphitheater is almost built into the rocks. As you’re hiking along the trails you wouldn’t necessarily notice that there is an amphitheater there if it wasn’t for the signs, random parking lots and enormously big ramp to walk to get to the top.

From the top of the amphitheater, awesome views!

We could’ve used those two days “off” to work some more on the trailer, but we’ve been here for a couple weeks now and I’ve been just itching to get out and go! BUT, I have made some improvements on the trailer since then! I was able to find some individual stack-able drawers for our clothes! YAY! When I went to buy them, I went right back to the clearance spot where they were, and there was only 1 left! I was so sad, buuuut then I turned around and they just re-arranged the place J SO I got all 5 and an extra collapsible box so we have some more organization in our lives!

The white stack-able drawers are what I found to be useful to hold our clothes 🙂

My summer wardrobe (the little of it that exists) is slowly being cycled out and my fall and winter clothes are being brought into the trailer. Like I said… I crave this season so I am STOKED! We’ve had some cold nights so we’ve moved the electrical heater into the trailer. It looks like fan and it adjusts on and off with the temperature in the trailer which is very nice for those times we leave it on all night. As you can imagine it doesn’t take much to heat a small space like that, so that is an excellent feature… it does heat up like a sauna rather quickly. Of course that’s wouldn’t always be a bad thing as saunas are basically amazing, but not for sleeping. But EVEN BETTER the heater fan we use is a Vornado VH2 and we got it at a garage sale for $5. Ben insisted that it would be useful, and it has proved to be so far! WIN!

I feel like we are gaining some more order and footing in our lives. It’s a hard thing, change. I’ve said it once and I will say it a thousand times! BUT, it feels oH! So good when things start to chill out and the new routines start to feel “normal” again. (I hate that word, normal. It’s not a real thing.) But for lack of a better… “normal” is nice sometimes.

I picked the right Starbucks to sit at this beautiful afternoon. I’ve been writing this post for a few days, but the weather has been too awesome to stop and finish it. Now that I do, the sky is very clear, and I have a nice widow seat facing the snow peaked mountains in all of their glory, and my mint tea which is bomb.

The mountains are beautiful today, I may have to go explore some more 🙂

**fyi. I started this post on a Thursday and finished it on a Sunday. So if it was confusing that is why 😉

Tid bits —

September 28, 2015September 28, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

SO: Here are some tid bits of how we are operating. EVERYTHING you see is open for interpretation and can be subject to change 🙂 it already has changed a few times… I’m thinking we are very quickly going to realize what we like above the rest, and what we deem a priority, and what we just plain can’t live without.

We purchased our first stove! #yay! LOL I’ve only used it once and that was to boil some water to make coffee in our french press we got from our wedding! BUT it worked like a charm AND it heated the water up faster than any conventional stove I’ve used. I found it at Target on clearance (another win)! The nice thing is, it is small and flat, compact enough to not be in the way.

For an oven we have a convection toaster oven / broiler, and it’s the kind that has the vent on the side. I found that beauty at a Goodwill a few years ago and those things are hard to find at a good deal, (the specific kind that we wanted). Okay the “we” on that one really means Ben — he was the one who had very very specific wants for a convection oven. BUT I found one hardly used at Goodwill for $14.00 and we’ve been winning ever since. That one is too valuable to let go and we now know why 🙂 And really it’s not all that big.

We also have a Black and Decker griddle that is used and abused, also slim enough to store away without being an issue. Once the kitchen is in design and production I’m imagining their own permanent homes, but for now they fit where they must!

My first time with the french press. I did have to YouTube how to make it, and I will get better with time (I hope!)

This shot was taken before we foamed the interior but look how cozy it is! That particular night it was rather windy but the sun was really hot, so we opened the ramp (my future patio deck) and clamped the bed sheet to the wires. I have OH so many ideas for the deck. But it all kind of depends on how we set up the sleeping area to know which direction we will take for the patio.

The bed is a queen and fits in there with about 4 inches on each side. We definitely will be needing to get a better sized bed as ours is not good with conserving space. But that is something we will have to work towards, eventually the bed will most likely be put up on a platform or an adjustable cable system (gotta love them DIYers and their ideas), or we could go with a more modern futon/fold out couch style set up. Multi-purpose… but for now our set up works just fine!

I mean honestly… This is like full time camping with some more style / conveniences … but just not all of the conveniences.

For now. 🙂

dynomadic life

Dynamic Design. Nomadic Nature.

travelinglife

excuses and delays.

Colorado the Beautiful *

Tid bits —