Chocolaterie Stam

So, I finally got around to taking my camera to work - although I did forget to take a picture of the shop front :( So I'll have to take in my camera again another time. But for now, I have pictures of the interior of Chocolaterie Stam!

View straight back from the front door

The "round table" just in front of the front door

The wine display, just to the left of the front door - Stam carries wine from 5 local vineyards

Seating and display just to the right of the front door 

The display just to the right of the front door

The Gelato! Gelato has less air whipped into it, so it's much denser than traditional ice cream, and it's made with milk instead of cream.

The chocolate counter

My co-worker (and one of Rick's study buddies - Bronson) at the cash register

Our syrup selection for the coffee bar!

The coffee menu

The back of the bonbon counter - so many delicious chocolates :)

Our baby grand, a few times a week people schedule times to come in and play for a couple hours. We also let random patrons sit and play on the fly

The view of the shop from the back

Our Cream bonbons. These guys aren't my favorite filling, but they Are my favorite mold. The white and milk chocolate ones are shaped like mice, the dark chocolate one is a hedgehog! SOO CUTE!!

My favorite seasonal chocolates! The one on the left is a white chocolate praline` owl (praline` means it's a hazelnut cream) and the one on the right is a dark chocolate praline` owl. 

Organizing drawers with cardboard!

Rick and I only have room for 1 dresser in our apartment, which means we share drawer space and for forever I have been waiting for these adjustable dresser drawer organizers to go down to like... 25 cents a piece.

Still waiting.

Tonight I got tired of waiting so I made some!
Nothing so fancy as a pretty spring loaded piece of wood veneer, but I'm poor.

These are made of cardboard and they work AWESOME!

I did the sock drawer and the underwear drawer, but somehow posting our unmentionables on the internet seems a bit risqué, so you'll just have to imagine how amazing it is.

But just look at those sorted socks!
Black socks, my socks, Rick's tall socks, Rick's short socks!
All in their own little compartments.

Yay cardboard!

Rick's Career Day!

Today was the Engineering Career Fair at ISU. So Rick and I spent Monday afternoon running around getting some really nice resumes printed and then he went to a Chemical Engineer's meeting while I re-learned how to tie a tie.

I practiced a few times and then drew Rick these awesome directions on our whiteboard.

Have you ever seen better tie tying directions?

 Despite the fact that I drew Rick these great directions, he decided he absolutely could not tie the tie well enough to wear to the career fair so I had to come home for lunch to help him get ready. Which was a good choice in the end. The man can whip through multi-variable calculus like it's nothing but his tie tying is terrible, and strangely lumpy?

Rick gets ready to go score some interviews. His Mom can sympathize with the fact that those are his SOCKS balled up in the middle of the living room floor.

Rick models his suit next to the amazing tie tying directions.

He's already got at least one interview! We're looking forward to hearing from more places about summer co-ops/internships!

Erin's Day Off!

Today was my last day off in at least the next two weeks as I have class M-F and work Friday, Saturday, Sunday for the next two weekends.

But today was a day well spent!

I went to the farmers market this morning and got some fresh cider (the boy helping at the stand informed me it was pressed last night) and some apples from a local orchard.

So when I got home I crock-potted some Hot Spiced Cider!

I used the recipe I found at simplebites.net, with a few of my own alterations (that I went ahead and compensated for in my list of ingredients).

Ingredients

• 12 cups fresh apple cider
• 1/2 cup raw cane sugar
• 3 cinnamon sticks
• spoonful of whole cloves
• spoonful of star anise
• 1 small chunk, about 2 teaspoons fresh ginger, peeled and sliced in to no more than 3 pieces.
• 1 sliced lemon
• 2l bay leaves
• spoonful of whole black peppercorns

I then ignored the rest of simplebites' directions and threw everything into a crockpot and set it on low. It's been happily making my apartment smell awesome all day!

To serve, I scooped the cider into a teapot Grandma Laura gave me (it's got an awesome strainer so no one drinks any cloves or peppercorns) and added a splash of spiced rum.

IT'S DELICIOUS

my crockpot cider

I also took some Jonathan apples and cubed them up and made "Apple Enchiladas", I found the idea on pinterest, but again, took the recipe into my own hands. Instead of cinnamon sugar and butter I made my caramel apple dumpling sauce.

I chopped up a red onion (also purchased at the farmers market) and a cucumber and made a super yummy cucumber salad and also this potato bake!

But instead of pancetta (not 100% sure what that is?) I used bacon. THIS bacon! This PERFECTLY COOKED BACON!
This is a big deal because I normally burn the bacon. Or at least part of it.

PERFECT BACON!!

I also, again pinterest, learned a way to make My Own photo canvases! I tested it out on a couple cheap canvases I got at walmart. I painted the edges black to match the vast majority of my framed pictures, then modge-podged my photo prints on, let that dry, trimmed the pictures up (the rectangular one is an 8x10 photo on an 8x10 canvas, yet there was still a little overhang. Clearly walmart is lying to me about one or the other.) Then I modge-podged over the top, let it dry, and touched up the sides in black again.  

I like how they came out. 

Pinterest Hoarding

I will start today's blog by saying- I love Pinterest. 

But I'm also aware that Pinterest is dangerous. 

Pinterest turns perfectly normal people into hoarders. 

Rick had to stage me an intervention this summer because I was saving all the empty toilet paper rolls ... HAVE YOU SEEN HOW MANY NIFTY CRAFTS YOU CAN MAKE WITH EMPTY TOILET PAPER ROLLS!?! 

But alas, the toilet paper rolls are no more. 

I'm content with digital hoarding, for now. 

But still, Pinterest has some AWESOME ideas. For instance, 

This Scarf organizer!

I made this using a clothes hanger and those super cheap shower curtain rings you can buy
for a $1.79/dozen at Target

 But then I thought, why stop at scarves? Why not organize Rick's hats!

So viola! Hat Organizer!

I used a different shower curtain hook $2.79/dozen at Target- I thought this kind would be easier to get hats on and off because you can open the ring itself one handed so don't have to re-adjust the hat every time.

After I did the hats I thought, well hell, I'm feeling creative -

Belt Organizer!

Same type of curtain hook as the hat organizer. I bought two packs because I thought Rick had a lot more hats here than he did. 

I found that the scarves and belts especially like to slide to one end and make the hanger hang funny. Tying a rubber band around the bar of the hanger on either side of the rings keeps everything in the middle and hanging level.

from IA to PA

In July, Rick and I had to say goodbye to our closest friends Kelly and Ryan as they moved from Iowa to Philly where Ryan is going to grad school and Kelly is working in Americorps. After a stint with some of Ryan's relatives and a problem-riddled apartment they've finally settled into (a different) apartment for at least the next year so I put together a small "housewarming gift" for them!

These vases are Starbucks Frappuchino bottles wrapped in jute and tied with pretty orange ribbon for fall. I got the little lettered chips from Hobby Lobby.  

I made this mini photo-wreath for Kelly to put in her office, the states I cut out of an old atlas and all the pictures are wallet sized prints from various adventures. I put Kelly's cat Paul, in the center - because he's pretty much a god in terms of how far he outranks the measly humans. This could really be re-interpreted as a shrine to worship the almighty Paul.
This little project was a lot of fun and super easy to make. I cut a hoop out of a piece of cardboard and glued mini clothes-pins to it. She'll be able to add and change out pictures as much as a she likes.  

Dodger

Rick and I went for a short walk this morning (before football started) while we were out we found Dodger - a cat we've met before. He talks a lot and lies in the middle of the trail so you have to stop and pet him.

Pretty Monarch

This is Dodger. He loves people.

Dodger talking to Rick

Family of Mallards! Rick and I have been watching these guys all summer. 

Cy-Hawk Day

Today in Ames marks our annual grudge match with the University of Iowa. The Iowa State Cyclones squared off against the Iowa Hawkeyes for the Cy-Hawk trophy at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames this afternoon. 

Rick and I decided that our meager funds were better spent on rent and food than on football tickets, so we didn't buy season tickets this year. The Iowa/ISU game is the one game you can never find a scalped ticket for, so we didn't bother trying. Instead, we're watching the game at home over hot plates of grilled brats and garlic-green-beans! 

We did make a trip into campus though, Rick needed to print a few things and I'm always up to take pictures!

Male Downy woodpecker - he was very busy excavating this hole on central campus and completely ignored Rick and I while he threw his sawdust at us. 

A rose near the library

A chipping sparrow near Lake LaVerne

The "wildlife" on campus is SO USED to foot traffic that they're all completely desensitized to people. This squirrel let me walk to about 4 feet from her and sit down while she dug around looking for a place to hide this acorn.

I got the feeling this squirrel didn't want Rick and I to know where she was going to hide her acorn.

A pretty Sulpher butterfly near Catt Hall

 After our walk around campus, Rick and I headed over to Ada Hayden. We took the prairie loop around the lake so our total milage was about 5.4miles.  There's a pretty good sized patch of thistle near one of the smaller lakes behind a housing development and the place was buzzing with these amazing
Hummingbird Moths!

I was playing with my shutter speed while I took these, hummingbird moths beat their wings the way actual hummingbirds do, so I really had to crank up the shutter to freeze the wings so you could see the colors!

These bugs are HUGE, they're the size of small hummingbirds!

Here I stopped adjusting and just turned my shutter speed all the way up so I could completely freeze the movement of their wings. These guys never seem to land!

While this isn't, in my opinion, one of my better pictures, I love being able to compare the size of the
Hummingbird Moth to that Honey Bee!

A Red Admiral blends in with some dry grass

The butterflies at Ada Hayden today gave Rick and I some practice in telling a Monarch from a Mimic

The black stripe running down the lower wing of this butterfly gives this guy away as the monarch mimic: Viceroy. This is one of the most colorful viceroy's I've ever seen. Normally they're a pretty solid orange without so many red and yellow tones.

This is a true Monarch - notice the lack of strip on it's lower wing