Another visit to Meijer Gardens

I've shared several times about our visits to Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. Our daughter and SIL gave us a membership there and we love to go and walk around different areas.
They decorate for the different seasons and we were anxious to see the Fall decorations.

This is entering the gardens.  They had mums all over, it's supposed to have one of the largest displays of mums in the state.  They also had these pyramids of pumpkins and gourds along the paths.

This is a sculpture I hadn't seen before, and I thought it was pretty sweet.

They have a large Japanese Garden that we decided to walk around on this visit.

After we walked the Japanese Garden, we walked to the farm area which was loaded with mums and pumpkins.

The paths through the woods had lights strung through them and barrels that had lights in them.  I'm sure it's really pretty at night.

They had pumpkins out in the woods along the paths too, and they are also lit at night.

Our last section to check was the wetlands walk.  Can you see the crane and heron out near the plants?

Another cute sculpture along the walk.

Here we are, walking back up to the building after spending about 3 hours walking through different areas of the gardens.

We're so thankful to have this place near us.  We've enjoyed it in all seasons!

Friday Funny

 

Cooking Thursday

Here's a recipe I tried recently. I love sheet pan dinners and when I saw this one, I knew it would be good.  It didn't take long to get on the pan and we both really enjoyed it.

Oven Roasted Chicken and Veggies

2 teaspoons dried sage
2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil, divided
2 cups baby carrots
1 pound baby potatoes, quartered
4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs or breasts
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons honey

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Line a sheet pan with foil or parchment paper and spritz with olive oil.
Mix together seasonings and put half in a bowl or bag. Stir in about half of olive oil until combined.
Add carrots and potatoes and stir or shake until they are coated with the oil and seasoning mix.
Spread veggies onto the prepared sheet pan.
Place chicken on top of the veggies. 
Drizzle remaining oil onto chicken and sprinkle remaining seasonings onto the chicken and rub in.
Stir together the balsamic vinegar and the honey. Drizzle over the chicken and veggies.
Bake for about 40 minutes, until chicken is cooked through and veggies are tender.

ArtPrize

Some of you who've been with me for a while may remember ArtPrize. It started in 2009 and takes place every Fall in the city of Grand Rapids. It's an untraditional art contest where artists from all over the world can share their art, and the people that come to see it can vote on their favorites.  The art is displayed all over, outside of buildings, in museums, banks, restaurants and painted on buildings!  This year over $400,000 will be awarded to different artists based on jury votes and popular votes. The top popular vote piece will get $100,000!

Bob and I went to walk around and see some of this years art. I will say that we were a little disappointed this year, because it seems more and more of the art seems to have some statement on politics, the earth, violence... and often those pieces don't look so much like art to me. For instance, hanging clothes on a line and writing messages on them was one of the pieces.  But, to each their own!  We still had fun walking around and seeing things.  Here's a few pieces we liked.

It's hard to see all the details in this piece but it moved and was made of found and recycled items.

This is a woven tapestry with yarn wrapped trees.

This is all drywall screws, sunk to different levels to portray a face.

A painting, titled 'Potential'

This piece is knitted!

and this is the photo they used as a pattern.

This is a great pen drawing of Morgan Freeman, but even more incredible when you know the whole thing is just one line. The line is drawn closer together in the darker areas.

An Eiffel Tower reproduction with elevators that worked!

This man had what looked like a whole display of photos.  However, when you looked closely, this is what you see...

Each piece is actually a mosaic, made of tiny triangles of paper.

I'll end with this.  It's not part of ArtPrize, but one of my favorite spots in Grand Rapids.  I love the old building, reflected in the new.

There were hundreds of pieces all over the city, so this is just a taste of it. It's a great time to visit Grand Rapids!

Fun with the girls

Alaina and Ruby spent the night with us this weekend.  We always have a fun time together; we know we need to treasure these times because these girls are getting older!

We went out for supper and then walked around outside when we got home.  They may be getting older, but they still like the swing.

We took a walk down the road to say hi to the horses.

They were enjoying their supper, but did come over to greet us.

We usually do our craft on Saturday, but the one I had planned was a 2 step process, so we started Friday evening. We were making some small dishes from air drying clay. We molded it to soften it and then rolled it out. Then we cut it into a circle, pressed lace into it to make a pattern.  Ruby made on all over pattern, I did 1 stripe and Alaina did 2 stripes.  Then we left it to dry overnight.

Alaina has discovered she likes chess, so she and Bob played a game on the phone.

After the dishes dried overnight we painted the edges.  This is Alaina's.

Here's Ruby's dish.  She made her edges ruffly and it had lots of texture.

With the leftover clay, we made pendants for necklaces.

Next, we had to do something to go in the bowls.

You know, we always have an abundance of acorns here.  I've been collecting nice ones.  I baked them in an oven to make sure we didn't get any surprise bugs from them, then we painted them with metallic paints - gold, silver, copper and metallic blue and green.

Here's the girls with their finished Fall decor!  We all had fun with this.

A Day in my Life - October

We've made it to October already. Here in Michigan, we've been having beautiful weather, although we could really use some rain. It's been in the mid 50's in the morning and reaching mid 70's in the afternoon. Lovely weather to be outside!
Here's how the first day of the month went for me.  It was a very busy day!

I always start my day with 30 minutes on the treadmill.  I did that and then got ready to head out the door.  I left the house at 9:15

This is about 5 minutes from my house.  I'm on my way to a Bible Study.

I arrived at church about 9:25. Our Bible study is on Philippians, Joy in Hard Times.  We were done at 11 and I was back on the road.

I drove to Meijer to get groceries and then headed back home.

Here's a scene from my drive home, something seen frequently around here.  Those are crates filled with onions that are being harvested.

I was home shortly before 1pm, had some lunch and then we had to leave again about 1:30.

Bob and I had an appt here at 2.  He had to review his insurance for the next year and I had to get signed up for Medicare because I'll be turning 65 in November!  We got that all taken care of and were headed home around 3.

We took the back roads home and enjoyed some pretty scenes.

I love seeing barns!

When we got home, I took advantage of the nice weather and took a short walk.  Most of our leaves are still green, but we are seeing some really changing.

Our church has Wednesday night programs and we eat supper there so I didn't have to cook.  We left for that around 5:30.

Here's a field we passed on the drive.  The sky is beautiful and the plants are all looking like Fall.

We had pasta, meatballs and salad for supper at church.

Usually we have classes after supper but this week we had something special going on.  It was shoe box packing night!  Our church supports Operation Christmas Child from Samaritan's Purse which sends Christmas boxes all over the world.  We collect things for the shoe boxes all year and when it's time, kids and adults come to help pack them.

Here's all the tables set up with toys, clothes, school supplies...  They were all arranged according to age, with girls things on one side and boys on the other to make it easier to pack the boxes.

And here everyone is getting started.

They also have tables to check each box before it gets closed up to make sure it's full and that it has a good selection of things inside. There's a table with cards so the packer can write a note to the child who gets it, another table with little items to fill all the spots in the box and one last table to pray for the child who is getting the box.  I was at the praying table.

We ended up with almost 300 boxes.  This van had the seats removed and was packed from top to bottom when we were done.  They are all taken to a warehouse to prepare to ship them out.

I got home a little before 9 and relaxed the rest of the night.
It was a very busy day, but a very good one!