Daily Dose of Cuteness: Sisters

I told you I would be back with an update on our first bike trip of the season! There’s a great bike shop a couple blocks away from where we live that just opened, so we took the opportunity to give a local business some revenue and sent in both Tim’s and my bike to get a tune-up (and a tire fixed replaced and possibly some broken brakes a little love-and-tender-care). Honestly, I’ve had my bike since I was sixteen, and I don’t think it’s been in for a tune-up since then (!). I know all you bike enthusiasts are shaking your heads at me. I’m sorry I let you down. Oh yea, and the breaks? They’ve been broken for at least two years. Seriously. I’m hanging my head in shame.

BUT they are working wonderfully thanks to the nice guys at the charming bike shop and we hooked up our burley to the back of Tim’s bike and went for a fun family ride! The girls? They were P.U.M.P.E.D.

Maybe that’s too strong a word… once we got going, they both loved it. It just took some persuasion. They are pretty darling, all smooshed in there. However, we were on an important mission. Not only was it gorgeous outside, but we couldn’t wait to get our mits on these guys:

Cinnamon Rolls from Isles Bun and Coffee in Minneapolis. Stop it. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. They also had a pretty bomb raspberry ice tea that I tried and might have to go back for. The whole meal was really tasty. One might believe that we rewarded ourselves by getting these last, after a long, gruelling bike excursion. Nope. We went here first and then proceeded to “bike off” all the delicious calories we had just consumed. Not sure if it worked, but it was a great maiden voyage of the 2012 bike season.

Cheers!

Jen

Update: For those wondering, we love our burley. In the picture it looks like there is no room, but it’s because it was a tad on the chilly side that day so we crammed about four blankets in there with the girls to keep them warm. On a regular day, there’s lots of room for both of them to be in there. If you’re contemplating a burley, contemplate no more. Just do it.

Happy Easter

We here at the Bean House hope that you all had a wonderful Easter holiday! We had a wonderful time collecting eggs that the Easter bunny hid for us (seriously, why does the Easter bunny hide eggs? Shouldn’t it be carrots or something?) and eating a lot of wonderfully, unhealthy, delicious food, and visiting with all of our friends and family. Sophie had a great time eating all the chocolate, candy, and rainbow-colored goldfish that the Easter bunny dished out for her. Plus, she couldn’t even handle herself when it came to egg hunting. The girl loves a good egg-hunt. No joke.

But first things first. Here’s what our little Beanette’s wore to celebrate!

And if some of you are wondering, “That’s it? That’s the best photo you could get?” The answer is yes, yes it is. Sometimes (read: always) the girls don’t cooperate when it comes to taking pictures. Although, if I can state an opinion, at least they weren’t nearly as bad as the Thanksgiving fail this year. At least Charlotte looks happy!

So, in our family, we separate family holiday’s like such… Christmas Eve is with Tim’s parents, Christmas day is with my family, Thanksgiving is with Tim’s family and Easter is with my family. All the other holidays we just kind of bounce around because they are what we consider, minor holidays. But Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving tend to be pretty big deals in both our family’s, so we knew even before we got married, that we would have to have a game plan for how to split them up so that we could make the rounds sufficiently. And although things don’t always go according to plan, we try to stick to this schedule as best we can. Wondering why you never got a Christmas post? Well, that’s one of those “didn’t go according to plan” moments that we just decided to use as a teachable moment for us. We’ve got a whole new game plan for next year. But I digress…

So this year for Easter we were at my Mom’s house. Actually, we were able to do a pre-Easter celebration with Tim’s family on Saturday. Sophia, Charlotte, Tim and I went down to Tim’s parent’s house for brunch. Then, on Sunday we were at my mother’s. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon there, hanging out with my mother’s side of the family. When my family gets together, it’s a major lounge-fest. We don’t really do anything but talk, vedge, eat and have a good time. It’s probably not the most thrilling of traditions, but nothing feels more like home to me.

Once everyone else had gone home, Tim, myself, Charlotte, Sophie, my mom, sister and Tom all rode our bike to Lake Calhoun and did a little Easter egg hunt there. Charlotte slept the whole time, but Sophie was pretty thrilled:

She had so much fun that she didn’t believe us when we told her she had found all of them. She kept wondering around saying, “Go get some more!” Oh, and if you’re wondering why the eggs are such a funny color, the reason is that we tried the whole natural-egg-dying thing this year… but we did it with out really reading anything about it before hand. So in the end all of our eggs ended up coming out some off-shade of vomit. Except the ones that were in the cabbage! Those ones turned out a really pretty blue. All the others were weird shades of brown and yellow. Guess we know now that we should probably do our research before just diving head-first into something new.

Whelp, I hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend! I’ll be posting pictures later of Charlotte’s maiden voyage on the burley. The two girls look pretty funny all smooshed into the burley, covered in blankets and hats. We’re really happy we got it though, it’s been wonderful taking them for bike rides now that the weather is nice!

Cheers friends!

Jen

Expecting Baby Peaches

For those of you who read this and thought, “Oh God, she’s pregnant again.” Psych!

Actually, we’re really excited about my cousins little Bean-to-Be, who has been lovingly named “Peaches” until the true reveal of her name (when she is born). We’re all about code names. Sophie was “Bean” up until her birthday too. Gives you a little time to think of names you love, and if you’re not telling people the name you’re thinking about, nobody has a chance to get attached to an option and then get mad when you deviate. Personal experience? Perhaps. So, in honor of Baby Peaches and her lovely mom, we held a baby shower the weekend before Halloween (told you these were all out of order). Really, this post is just going to be a photo dump from the shower, so enjoy!

Those caramel rolls on the table? Probably THE most amazing caramel rolls I’ve ever had in my life. I tried to make them on my own once, but it was a miserable fail. For some reason the ability to make caramel rolls has always escaped me. These little beauties were made by my mother. She made A LOT of them for the shower and I think I probably had three… in my defense, Sophie kept stealing parts of mine. That’s not much of a defense…

There ended up being 109 diapers in this container. Guesses ranged from low 40′s to the 120′s… The best part about this game? The Mother-to-Be gets 109 usable diapers, plus a convenient little caddy to store things in. Gotta love games with some function to them as well.

I cut these little onesies out of cardstock I got uber cheap at JoAnn Fabrics (with coupon). Super adorable + super thrifty = Job Well Done

Don’t you just want to mush his little face???

Aww the Mom-to-Be and Aunt-to-Be!

All in all it was a really good time, I think. Happy Wednesday!

Trick or Treat

With two kids, the post has literally taken me three days to write. Plus, this post is definitely not in order… and the post after this will also be a part of that trend. This post is all about Halloween which happened before Charlotte turned one month old (how about that photo? Isn’t she a doll?) and the post after this one actually happened before Halloween. So I’ve got my timelines wrong… I’ll blame it on the lack of sleep.

But I did want to post about Halloween because it was an amazing day. Sophie, of course, was really excited about knocking on peoples’ doors, saying the “magic words” and getting candy put into her bucket. She didn’t really eat the candy too much, she was just really excited about putting things in her bucket. Gotta love that girl.

First, a couple people have asked if we carved pumpkins with Sophie and Charlotte and if we did anything to get them “involved” in the process since toddler + knife = disaster and newborn baby + physical activity = not happening. This year we thought it would be fun to get Sophie involved by letting her pick out her own pumpkin (which she ended up picking about 8 of them and we just sort of took one from that pile… the whole way home she was asking “punkeen okay?”) and we used her hand as a template for the carving. Observe:

We traced her hand onto the pumpkin and carved it out. It’s not the most creative thing in the world, but we thought it was pretty cute. She loved her little pumpkin. She was really confused though when she would try to pick it up from the stem and the top would come off without the bottom coming too. Took her a couple of times before she realized she had to grab it from the bottom. Too funny. Here’s her pumpkin hanging out with its friend…

As far as costumes and traditions go, we dressed up Charlotte in a little flower suit that we got as a gift when Sophie was born. Sophie was born right as we were going into summer and so wasn’t able to wear it for very long, but we took the opportunity of a baby born in the heart of fall to show off the adorable piece (we’re also excited that we’ll be able to use it several times before she outgrows it… I think Sophie only got to wear it once):

Don’t you just want to pick her up and snuggle with her? We definitely took lots of pictures of our little dumpling. She seemed pretty indifferent to the whole Halloween thing. That was kind of alright with us though because most evenings she’s awake from four until eight… awake and really unhappy. I don’t think it’s colic but it’s definitely her bewitching time where she just doesn’t want to sleep, thinks she hungry every ten minutes and will not let you put her down. Sophie did this too, if I’m remember correctly so we’re hoping she grows out of it as fast as her sister did. Otherwise we’ll never be able to have friends over for dinner again.

What did Sophie dress up as? Did I sew her a super sweet costume? Well, no I didn’t sew her anything. We found a witch costume for four buckaroos at Menards that sang cute and cheap to us. Remember how Tim loves cheap? This was no exception. So we jumped for the cute, cheap witch costume and Tim promised me I could make her something next year. I’m holding him to that. We tried to teach Sophie how to say “Abra Kadabra” too, but that didn’t really turn out. “Trick or treat” caught on a lot better. Here’s our little family all dressed up (Tim and I went as parents to two cute little girls… creative right?):

I love Charlotte and Sophie’s looks in this photo. Tim and I are being all cute and smiling for the camera while the girls both look like they’ve got other things on their mind. I believe Charlotte was pooping, and Sophie was watching a dog run around in the yard. We did have a couple of people join us for the trick-or-treating experience. Tim’s parents came out with us and my aunt and uncle with their puppy, Eddie, came too. Sophie loved taking Eddie for a walk along the sidewalk and, even better, he was all dressed up for the occasion.

 We probably stopped at about 8 to 10 houses and then headed back to my Mom’s house for the annual chili get-together. It’s something we do every year and, I would like to officially put this out there in cyber-world, my mother makes the best chili. This year she outdid herself, and it was amazeballs. It was awesome. I know many of you would like to argue, but you’re officially invited to next years chili dinner and you will see that you have, in fact, been wrong all along.

I hope that everyone else had a great Halloween. We’re looking forward to next year when we can take both little munchkins out for some good, old-fashioned candy hourding. Cheers!

Mmm Salty

Well, I feel like spring may have officially sprung (disregard the fact that we’re supposed to get a nice drizzle of snow tonight)! All manner of little shrubs and flowers have started to poke their sleepy little heads out of the ground and it makes me oh, so happy.

To ring in the new warmer, sunnier weather we took the good old burly out for a spin! We bundled our little Bean up and strapped her into her seat (and brand new helmet!) and saddled… er… greased up the bikes and were on our way to Sea Salt! It was really a spectacular ride. I wish I had taken pictures of it because it was just gorgeous out and Sophie loved walking around around petting all the dogs she saw. She was also quite the little attraction herself. Ever since she discovered her pipes her favorite volume is loud and louder. She was just trying to tell the whole place that she really liked her kiddie fish basket.

I hope the warm weather allows for some more fun trips in the near future (beach anyone???). We’ll keep you posted. Happy April!

Ikea Inspiration

Remember those lovely walks? Well, considering the temperatures are peaking at 21 degrees, the outdoor walks have definitely slowed come to a complete stop. The outdoor walks, not the walks themselves. So we’ve resorted to walking indoors. Thus far we’ve hit up many of the malls around the area, including Mall of America and Rosedale Mall (complete with a train that can take you around the bottom floor!) but this week was special. This week, we hit up the one and only

Yes, the amazingly functional, fantastically priced, super store was calling our name! It’s actually Sophia and I, plus our friends Callie (mom) and Leo (super-cute little boy). When Callie mentioned that we go to Ikea for our walk, I was completely on board. All the modestly-priced eye candy was calling my name. Plus, I wanted to check out the kid’s section to see if there was anything our little Bean was in need of for Christmas!

I was surprised (sort of) to find the entire store decked in Christmas decorations. Although, I guess since everyone else has jumped on the early-Christmas-bandwagon, why not Ikea too? Unlike those other jump-the-gunners (ahem… Target) however, Ikea not only had their Christmas decorations out, in true Ikea fashion they had set it up all over their store transforming those beautiful furnished rooms into beautiful furnished rooms fit for the holidays! Translation? Inspiration!

Check out these great candle holders!

For 14.99 beans! These BLOMSTER candle holders would look beautiful on top of a table with a white table-cloth underneath. Topped with some amazing pillar candles, it would add a great ambiance to the whole meal for not a lot of money! Always a bonus when you’re having the relatives over.

How about these SNÖVITA decorative goats? Decorative + Goat = Fabulous… always! Well, maybe not always but I love the texture these would add to all the shimmery silver and gold adorning the Christmas tree and table-tops.

Making cookies? Display them in these beautiful TRIPP storage tins! It’s a great option for storing cookies, bars etc. without ever having to find a place for them in your cupboards. Leave them out on the counter stacked and no one will know you’re using it for storage. You could even put your wrapping essentials in them so you don’t have to go dig them out every time you need to wrap a gift! Plus, once Christmas is over you can pack them all inside each other, or you can stuff them full with some of your more breakable ornaments and you won’t have to worry about them being smashed by the other decorations.

Speaking of wrapping gifts. Check out Ikea’s wrapping inspiration on their website! For those of us with little creative vision, it’s nice to be able to see others make a box look awesome! It’s easy then to simply draw from that.

Moral of the story, I love Ikea. Especially their holiday decor. Check out their website or visit a store. Whatever you do, you’re sure to walk away with amazing ideas and a brain full of inspiration! Cheers!

Training Wheels

That’s right friends, Sophia is now old enough to travel via bike! Well kind of… cue our newest addition to our collection of baby-travel necessities:

Here she is… trying to catch bugs! We’re so proud. Truthfully though, for those of you who love to bike, but can’t find the time because you’ve got a little one rolling around, my suggestion is to invest! These are great and Sophia was such a trooper. We went for about a half an hour bike ride and she was content as can be in her little mobile pod. We’re hoping to take it out a few more times before it gets cold. Wish us luck!

An Apple a Day…

On Sunday, Tim, myself, Sophia and Nanna (my mom) took a trip to Aamodt’s Apple Orchard and the St. Croix Vineyard. I had never heard of it before but it sounded like a great place to take our little Beannette and the weather was perfect so after church we made the trip out to Stillwater, and we were not disappointed! For those of you who have never been there, I would highly recommend it.

Not only do they have a pick-your-own apple orchard, they have an entire barn devoted to all things apple, natural and delicious. I had an amazing Apple Oatmeal Cookie Ice Cream Sundae that makes me want to start ordering in bulk from them. We bought Sophia a Honeycrisp apple to suck on while we walked around and she loved it! She was gumming that thing like she’d never been fed before. They have lots of great things for kids to do too, like their hay bale maze and tractor-trikes. They have a small area where kid’s can pet and feed some very friendly goats, and a little swing set.

Attached to the orchard is also the Saint Croix Vineyard. It’s one of the largest vineyards in Minnesota and has been around for 19 years. After all the excitement of the Orchard, Sophia took a nap in her stroller and we were able to stop in and do a wine-tasting (amazing!) of five of their award-winning wines. Nanna even commented that, though she’s done the wine tasting before, the wine tasted like it had been improved since she had last done it a few years back. So it’s obvious they are continuing to perfect their wines which is great and I’m curious to see if we’ll be able to notice the difference next year when we return!

All-in-all it was a great time, and I can’t wait to go back next year. We definitely agree that this place is going to be a yearly thing for us, just like cutting down our own Christmas tree, and visiting a pumpkin patch for Halloween. Gotta love new family traditions! Here’s some of the great photos we snapped while we were there :

Mom, Dad and Baby

Nanna, Dad and Ravenous Baby

Sophia enjoying her treat!

Note: Sorry again about the quality of the photos. Our camera is still missing in action so all photos are being snapped with cameras on phones. We’ll be investing in a new camera soon though. Looking forward to no more grain!