101 Things Update - The Dahlia Show

Chloe recently took me to the Dahlia Show at the Frederik Meijer Gardens.  There were rooms full of dahlias, so we couldn't pick just one picture to share with you!  All of these photos were taken by Chloe.

Isn't that last one crazy?  It looks like it's been painted on the wall, but it's totally real!

This final picture is of one of Chloe's dahlias, AC Devlin:

*sigh* They're just so beautiful!

Love and Petals,
Leah Joy

Meijer Gardens: Butterflies Are Blooming

First of all, Happy Pi Day!!!  We'll be celebrating with some apple pie tonight!

This past Saturday, my sister and I went to the Butterflies are Blooming exhibit at the Meijer Gardens.  Apparently, half of the state of Michigan had the same idea.  We couldn't take a step in any direction without violating someone's personal space.  We did end up getting a corner of a bench and sat there for a while before deciding to come back during the week when it'll be less busy.  (One of the many perks of Chloe's membership!)  I was able to take some pictures, many of them through lens fog since it was 85 degrees in the conservatory!

These first two are not of butterflies, but they're so pretty!

These next two pictures are of the same kind of butterfly (technically a moth, I believe).  They're so big that they're actually kind of scary!

I hope to be able to share more pictures later!

Love and Pie,

Leah Joy

101 Things Update: March 13

This past weekend, my parents took my brother to a basketball tournament, so my sister Chloe came to stay with me.  We decided to tackle some projects from my 101 Things in 2014 list, and ended up accomplishing 5 of them!  We didn't take great pictures, because I was pretty tired from oral surgery still, and we decided to focus more on hanging out than taking great pictures.

First up, we tackled the two homemade soda recipes:

25. Lemon-Lime Soda Syrup

and  Number 55: Italian sodas with homemade syrup

First we made a mess:

We used a 2L bottle of sparkling water for both of these recipes:

(We also ate TimBits!)

We made a pomegranate syrup for the Italian sodas, but it wasn't a very syrupy syrup.  And it took a lot of syrup to make it taste good.  We'll probably try again in the summer with strawberries.

Next up was Number 57: Try a new thrift store.  We actually tried 3, and I'll share more about them in another post.  It's a rather lengthy review, and if you're not local, you probably don't care at all.

Number 59 was to make homemade English muffins.  The particular recipe I have pinned to my board is apparently super secret since you need special permission to access that blog.  Instead, we used this recipe:

To be honest, we didn't follow the recipe exactly.  Our butter and milk were not at room temperature, which is probably why after an hour of sitting in a warm place, the dough had not risen at all.  We turned the oven to warm for a few minutes and then let the dough sit in there for a while, which helped, but Caleb did mention that while these were tasty, they have a very different texture from store-bought English muffins.  I'd like to try again properly and see if that changes the texture.

68. Go to the Butterflies are Blooming exhibit at the Frederik Meijer Gardens.

We happened to go on the 2nd Saturday after this event had started, so it was crazy busy.  I took some more pictures that I'll share later this week, but we're thinking of going again during the week when it's not so busy.  Here's one picture I took through some lens fog. :)

Love and Flour,

Leah Joy

Meijer Gardens: Some Close Ups

I've been having fun with macro photography lately.  It's neat to find an interesting texture and then zoom in so I can't tell what it originally was.  Here are some from the Gardens.

The bark of a tree.

Palm leaf.

Bark of a giant palm tree.

A leaf.

My favorite leaf!

Love and Potatoes,

Leah Joy

Meijer Gardens: The Tropical Conservatory

Chloe and I recently sat in the Tropical Conservatory (the big glass room) for over an hour, talking and smelling and taking pictures.  There were more orchids in this room, along with, of course, the hundreds of tropical plants.

It almost had us convinced it was summer, until we looked out the glass and saw this:

And now our local schools are on their 3rd snow day in a row! 

Love and Bananas,

Leah Joy

Meijer Gardens: The Orchid Show

Number 67 on my 101 Things in 2014 list was to go to the Meijer Gardens orchid show with my sister.  It took place this past weekend, and here are some shots I got of the winners:

Sorry they're not all fabulous pictures; my camera had low batteries.

Love and Orchids,

Leah Joy

Meijer Gardens: Christmas Trees

If you've ever lived in West Michigan, you've probably at least heard of the Frederik Meijer Gardens.  They have beautiful gardens, art exhibits, and a sculpture park.  I went a lot as a kid with my grandparents and my parents (I even got engaged there!), and this year for Christmas, my sister got a membership for the next year with an add-a-guest pass on it.  She got it on December 30 when she went with our mom, and the very next day, she took me there, too. 

At that point, they still had the whole place decorated for Christmas.  In their giant greenhouse, they had beautiful lights strung on all the trees:

There are always gorgeous flowers, too.

Their most popular Christmas tradition, though, is their Christmas and Holiday Traditions Around the World exhibit.  They have trees (or the equivalent) decorated in the style of 41 different cultures, and it is always beautiful.  

I loved the rainbow ball garland on this tree.  I think it was from Peru.

But, of course our favorite tree was from the Netherlands.  We took a lot of pictures of the ornaments on this tree.

Chloe has already gotten the dollar value out of the membership, and she's not even one month in yet.  I'm sure we'll be going a lot more this year!

Love and Lights,

Leah Joy