go badgers

Saturday was the first home football game of the season for UW-Madison. Dave and I didn't have tickets, but figured if we couldn't buy any at the stadium, we would at least be able to enjoy the game day excitement around Camp Randall.

We walked from our apartment along the bike path, thinking we were so smart to use the bike path instead of the sidewalks. Well, great minds think alike and a lot of folks had that same idea, too. It was a parade of red all the way to the stadium.

The atmosphere before we even got in was a lot of fun. Tons of people, tons of parties and great fall weather. It turned out there were still some tickets available so we got in! We finally made it to our seats in the upper deck and here was our view.

I thought the seats were great. I like the birds-eye view of the field and plus we could see two lakes - Monona and Mendota - from up there! The student section finally filled in - 6 whole sections - J through P!

The Badgers won and we enjoyed a very Wisconsin-y lunch of brats with spicy mustard. Here we are (brats not pictured).

making our old chairs new

If you've been to our house, you might recognize these chairs.

They are our extra chairs when we want to seat more than four people around the kitchen table. Or we put a blanket on the seat near a sunny window for the cats. Or they served as luggage rack in the guest room. The chairs are hand-me-downs from Dave's grandparents and have served us well over the last few years, but they looked a little beat up and needed some tlc. So...I decided to paint and reupholster both chairs this weekend.

I'd been searching for fabric for the chair seats and found some blue and white fabric that I loved. So the plan was, blue and white fabric cushions and white painted wood.

That is until I found some brown and green fabric that mimicked part of the graphic pattern from our rug!

Not only did the fabric go great with the rug, but I found it in the remnants section of the fabric store and scored all the fabric I needed for under $3!

Here's the fabric with the primer, paint, and poly I used.

And here's the fininshed product. What do you think?

I'm still getting used to them. The light sage green paint is pretty funky. But our apartment needed some color, so we got it!

Here's the before and after side-by-side. I think I like them!

sweet endings

And we ended our Labor Day with a cherry pie! I used cherry raspberry pie filling from Wienke's Market in Wisconsin. The cherries are from Door County. You may already know this, but it's news to me that Door County is on Wisconsin's penninsula that sticks out into Lake Michigan. From what I can tell from pictures online, Door County looks a lot like the northern New England coast. I'm dying to go. But for now, I'll just eat a slice of Door County cherry pie.

Picnic Point hike

We started off our Labor Day with a hike on the Lakeshore Path out to Picnic Point.  The Lakeshore Path runs along and around the shore of Lake Mendota and is a nature preserve owned by the University. The University also maintains a great website for the preserve with with a very cool interactive map.

Here are some shots from our hike!

that's so Madison

A couple images from our lunch on State Street today. State Street is the main drag through campus - shops, restaurants, bars, etc. - that leads straight up to the Capitol building. We had lunch at Pot Belly's, which is actually a chain sandwich shop, but this is Madison, so of course they had live music randomly in the middle of the day on a Friday!

Other fun sights on and around campus and State Street today:

A long line for what looked like possibly free (or maybe just for sale?) vegetables from a local farm. That's so Madison!


And here we have a gentleman playing the piccolo in front of the University Bookstore wearing all orange - even down to his flip flops. He was actually sounded pretty good! Live and let live. That's so Madison!

what is it? #1

Today is the first installment of a stirring game called "What is it?". The game goes like this. I post a picture of something that's new and different to me, something you don't see on the east coast or something unique to Madison. You leave a guess in the comments section on what you think it is. Whoever guesses it right is the *winner*!

There is just one problem with this game. It would be better if I had a camera with a zoom feature. The iPhone takes pretty good shots, but the zoom is not so great. But the camera (with zoom) will come in time, so we can fix that.

Ok, here goes nothin'. Comment away!

where's the partridge?

A pear

that fell from a tree



in front of a bed and breakfast down the street.

Is it wrong to take a pear from the ground?

It was so good and there were tons on the ground and in the tree that obviously no one else wanted! Isn't that B&B cute, by the way?