i recently completed construction on my spooky village neighborhood and all thirty dwellings are inhabited by a myriad of various halloween citizens. i absolutely could not be more pleased with how this one turned out, from the bright happy colors, to the quilting, to the scrappiness, and mostly to all of the fussy cuts. now […]
anna
september stuff. 2023.

oh, september. fall is just around the corner. school is new and exciting. football season is finally here. it’s really an underrated month if you ask me. and then there’s labor day weekend. i mean. a holiday to celebrate, well, days off. and this labor day weekend, my work pal cynthia invited me and my […]
the rest of august.

with a large chunk of august spent in iceland, and with the time before that spent feverishly preparing for iceland, and the time after it spent feverishly recovering from iceland while simultaneously getting the kiddos ready for school the following week, this recap for “the rest of august” is going to be short and sweet […]
iceland. day five.vik, black sand beach, lava show

on day five in iceland, we awakened (once again) to gloomy, drizzly skies in the southern port town of vik. this is pretty common in vik though, as it sits just south of a massive glacier and something about the wind and science and meteorology and blah blah. anyways, we bundled up, and made our […]
the remainder of july

before i begin this post, can we just take a minute to acknowledge that i am about to complete that task of getting this blog entirely caught up, 20 posts covering the past two months, just in time for derek and i to depart for an epic adventure (which will necessitate a plethora of new […]
mount lafayette of the white mountains

for our last hurrah in the white mountains and our 2023 summer road trip, anna and i embarked upon the mount lafayette and franconia ridge loop, an 8.6 mile “challenging” trail with 3800+ feet of elevation gain, and three different summits. with several new england hikes under my belt at this point, i knew that […]
mount willard of the white mountains.

there’s a zillion hikes in the white mountain wilderness. but a lot of them are no joke. long. steep. brutal. but, derek researched and discovered mount willard, a popular hike that gives a great bang for your buck. it’s only about three miles out and back, with 900′ elevation gain. and, i sound like a […]
flume gorge and the basinfranconia notch state park

our first order of business in the white mountains of new hampshire was the flume gorge in franconia notch state park. it was sort of similar to the ausable chasm hike we had gone on in the adirondacks, both in expense ($$$$) and length and strenuousness. and since that hike was a raging success amongst […]
from the adk to the whites.

for the last week of our great northeastern summer adventure, we had a week booked in lincoln, new hampshire at a time share resort gifted to us by the grandlidboms for christmas. but i’m getting ahead of myself. first, we had to get there, with some stops along the way. we woke up bright and […]
hurricane mountainADK adventure #5

when we woke up to fantastic weather on our last day in the mountains of the adirondacks, i knew we had no other choice but to attempt the hike that we had originally planned for the first day. my pal, andrea, who i had hiked with a few days earlier, told me about hurricane mountain, […]