Bittersweet visit

I grew up in the smallest of towns in Upstate NY. About 45 mins north of Syracuse and about 15 min off Lake Ontario. My world was occupied mostly by my church and my family until at about 12 my father moved myself and my younger-older brother to NC. As much as it hurt at the time it was the single greatest thing for my development as an adult. And even though I've lived in my new home of NC for 16 years now there's a piece of my heart that remains in NY. 

When I was about 5 my parents bought land from my grandparents and built my family a home in the country. We were not even a quarter mile from my grandparents and we spent many hours at their house, on their farm and in their woods. My grandma always had a garden and for many years they would plant a couple acres of corn. It was never a huge production so they never had any of those fancy machines that tend the corn for you. Nope, they had grandchildren. We would all spend hours in the summer picking corn, shucking and then helping grandma can it. We would also help with the chickens, the cow and with grandma's vegetable garden. In the winter we'd help them collect sap from the massive maple trees on their property. 

It wasn't all work. They had the best hill for sledding and NY is never deprived of snow in the winter. We would sled for hours, build forts in the snow and have snowball fights. As a child, throughout any season I spent almost all of my time outdoors. I believe that is why I still prefer it. 

Needless to say, I have a lot of memories from my grandparents farm. Somewhere, hidden in that ancient house, the massive maples trees or the "deep woods" by the creek a piece of my heart remains. 

Recently my grandparents made the decision to leave their home of many years, sell the farm that has been in our family for generations and move to Idaho to be with their youngest son and their remaining young grandchildren. So last weekend my sister and I drove to NY for a quick weekend visit to say goodbye and take home our inheritance in furniture. 

That Friday night we walked through the house and talked about what we'd be taking home with us. They gave me a matching love seat and rocker that was my great grandmas on my grandmas side. It needs to be refinished and reupholstered but that will be a whole other blog post. My sister chose to take home a dresser, radio stand and several old books. My grandma also gave us a piece of the christmas cactus that her father grew from a snippet of his father's cactus. I also dug up a piece of the peonies my grandma grew from a plant her mom had. 

The first morning I got up early so I could see the morning sun over the hill and have some time alone with my thoughts and the farm like I always used to. I also managed to bring along my camera. 

I wanted to capture the pieces of the farm we all loved. The morning sun coming over hill would always greet us on mornings before Sunday School. 

 The dew is extra heavy here and would soak your pants as if you'd been swimming. 

You can actually see it shimmer on the grass in the morning. I looked for a spider web to really grasp the intensity of this dew but I didn't come across one. 

Never mind the logging trail (my grandparents sold some of the mature trees to a logger). The trees flanking the farmhouse are 5-6' in diameter Maples. They gave us some of the sweetest maple syrup I've ever had. I loved those winters. 

These are the trees on the right of the previous picture. 

This is in the shade of one of those trees. 

My grandma's brother (who died young) planted these pine trees at the top of the hill and they prosper to this day. They stand out like sentinels on the top of the hill. In winter when all the other trees have lost their leaves their deep green foliage stands out the most. 

It broke my heart to see the scars of the loggers.

At some point my grandfather decided to plant a Christmas tree farm. For most of my childhood, the trees were pretty small and they even sold a few from time to time. We would always get our Christmas tree there and we enjoyed picking the largest one that would make my father curse the most. I would even cut down a tiny one to bring to school for Christmas. In the cooler climates you can grow a type of tree called a Blue Spruce. The needles, as you can see in the pictures, have a blue tinge to them. They are so beautiful. 

Since we left, the Christmas trees have grown up! You  wouldn't be able to distinguish this from a pine tree forest today. 

The barn. The building that held the greatest toys a little girl was never supposed to play with. I remember spending many days painting this barn red with all my siblings and my cousins; getting paint everywhere. I used to love helping my grandma collect eggs from the chickens that were housed in the addition on the back. I have very vivid memories of walking into the barn at night after my father, grandfather and uncle had come back from hunting and seeing a deer hanging from a rafter, draining. Instead of being squeamish I was just thrilled we were going to have some venison! 

See! Great toys!

These tires used to be taller than me. I remember one spring I followed my grandpa in the garden picking up worms for fishing as he cut the soil for that years crop. Talk about massive earthworms.

The attic of the barn was always off limits for me as a child but I ventured up last weekend. There I found old treasures. A bike that I haven't a clue who rode, and hiding back there on the right...the old ice sled we used to ride!

And then I turned around...and saw my old buddy, the toboggan. Yeah sure, we had the plastic sleds that we would ride individually. But when you really wanted to go fast, my siblings and I or my cousins and I would all climb on the toboggan. You never wanted to be in front because you were literally the plow. I was pretty small still which inevitably meant my siblings would put me there. I did my best to tuck as far under that scoop as possible. There was also the obligatory "surfing" down the snow at times that usually ended in disaster. 

Side note: This is why when I first came to the south and heard people referring to hats as toboggans I was so confused. I was very perplexed why they wore a sled on their head. 

My great grandmothers Peonies that I am now trying to grow at home. I'm really testing my green thumb this year.

The clothes line (or what's left of it) that I would help my grandma hang clothes on daily (for the longest time I don't think they even used their clothes dryer).

The house...ever changing but always the same. I have never used that front door by the way. Ever. 

These stairs are the most notable feature of the house. They're just simple stairs but so many of my fondest memories have involved them. First of all, the curve in them is just beautiful. You don't see that in houses anymore. So many games of hide and seek were won under them (definitely the most terrifying hiding place). Most importantly was the challenge of sneaking down them on Christmas morning. I had the great fortune of spending most of my Christmases with my grandparents, cousins and youngest uncle in this house. We would all arrive on Christmas eve and have a big dinner. Then all the kids would try to go to sleep so the adults could wrap gifts. The game was whoever (kid) could wake up and sneak down the earliest won! What did we win? NOTHING except bragging rights for a year. But to be able to sneak down without anyone else knowing you had to do so quietly. That is no easy task on these stairs. They are by far the most creaky stairs ever built...I think they were designed that way. All of us kids would start practicing around Thanksgiving to make sure we could master the stairs by the time Christmas rolled around. I remember one year I won by waking up at 1am! Ha! My dad hated me that year.

My grandparents had a lot of older furniture and I found out on this trip that most of it was actually heirlooms from their parents. The two pieces I have now are almost 100 years old and this gem is probably not far behind them. This was always my favorite chair in the house. I loved the lion faces and the claw feet.

This year my grandparents have been married for 60 years. I can't even fathom how much of an accomplishment that is. Even beyond that they are some of the greatest, most genuine people I have ever known. 

It's so sad to see them leave the house and the farm. They've lived there for so long and we all grew up there. I will forever be grateful that I made the effort to go back one last time and took the time to say goodbye and I'm so glad I took bits of it with me. I know I'll see my grandparents again but I'll never walk that hill again. And maybe it's silly of me but dammit, I'm going to miss every. single. tree. 

I don't envy my grandparents and the next step in their life. Moving everything they've accumulated for so many years across the country. But I know they're going to be so happy in Idaho with a new batch of grandkids to cherish. 

Liz 

Happy Birthday Gunnar and Rhea!

On January 21st, my puppies turned 8. And thank god for that. 

2013 was a tough year for them. It started off with promise... In Feb, Rhea started a 3 month stint of no seizures. But that was followed with her spiraling into a seizure every 5 days or so. We were frantic to find her some help so we upped her meds, we tried new vets and then we tried new drugs. Unfortunately, one of the vets we visited suggested stepping her down from her main drug at a risky interval. Against our better judgement we did and that didn't go well for us. One morning she started seizing and just never stopped. She had somewhere around 15 legitimate seizures that day but she was never fully "back" from any of them. This was as close to Status that she's ever gotten. She ended up spending two days at the NC State Neurology department on a constant drip  of anti seizure drugs. Those were the saddest days. Walking two of my pups and not three..getting asked from neighbors where our pup was and explaining she's at NC State which usually means the worst. We thought we were going to lose her. The first time they tried weening her off the drip she seized again but on the second attempt she held it together. Now she's on different meds and careful watch. She's up to about 10+ days between seizures and that might be as good as we'll ever get. In conjunction with all this, Gunnar broke a 7-8 month seizure free stint. There's no winning with epilepsy. 

Masi, bless her soul, is perfectly fine. 

To celebrate their life so far I thought I'd post a timeline of them growing up. It was so much fun going through my old photos and finding their puppy and adolescent photos. Made my heart go pitter patter. 

This was the day we brought them home from the farm in Hillsborough, NC. Just for scale, those tennis balls are about the size of a ping pong ball. 

Fluffy girl herself when she still had a pink nose, no name and all her ears. 

Look at that face. The tiny little blaze on his forehead. The ears!

This must have been a couple weeks later. Funny note - Rhea still sleeps next to the toilet. 

Fast forward a year. Just after our pups 1 yr birthday, we adopted Masi. Now we had 3 Border Collies in a 1500 square foot townhome with no yard. I believe that is considered constitutionally insane. (But no really, having no yard is no excuse to not have a dog. It actually forces you to go walk your dog for their exercise. If you don't want to do that to begin with, you don't need to have a dog). 

 This is sometime after their 1st birthday I believe. (Special note for K-man-Kato in the picture. The greatest Rottie I'll ever know). 

This was as close as I got to their second birthday. I wasn't very good at taking yearly photos in the beginning. Notice how Rhea's still pretty "smooth" in this picture. 

This is one of my all time favorite pictures of the pups. This is at the Scott Kerr Dam in Wilksboro NC where the Burn Race is held every year. We went in November and woke up to frost and a steaming lake. 

3 yrs old puppies! Rhea's finally starting to fill out now. At this point we're still in the townhome and Rhea had just started having seizures (Gunnar at this point had not). 

This is during the snow storm of 2010. We were in our second home at this point. Gunnar has started having seizures and we had a foster pup named Lucky (not picture). This was the first good snow the pups had seen. Man they loved it. Rhea still had all her ears at this point!

5th Birthday Photo! Rhea in her full plumage! We hadn't started buzzing her yearly yet. Oh man, her ear is lobbed off in the picture already. Not so funny story...don't trust box fans. I came home to check on the dogs at lunch one day to find the tip of Rhea's ear chopped off. The culprit was the box fan we'd left running to keep them cool. Now she has a U in the tip of her left ear. Poor girl....she's still cute though. 

6th Birthday Photo! I was getting good at doing this yearly now. This was the last year that Rhea and Gunnar had regular intervals between seizures. This was also the last year Rhea's right ear stood up at all (Masi bit it during one of Rhea's seizures and scarred the cartilage so it won't stand up now). 

 7th Birthday Photo! So yeah, this was last year and already featured on this blog but oh well. This was probably smack dab in the middle of Rhea's 3 month break from seizures and we had no idea how much we were about to go through with her. 

Rhea's haircut for 2013. She looks like she did before she went POOF with all the hair!

And then the pups turned 8 this month. It's so sad to know that considering their breed and their health issues they're already over the hill. It's also sad to see them slow down. They're Border Collies, so they've been going strong for 8 years without a hint of tempering their energy. Now all of a sudden they're slow to get up from laying down. They limp after hard runs, they fall a lot more easily and an injury takes a couple days to recovers. One thing remains the same though...the spark in their pretty brown eyes that is the calling card for their unrelenting spirit. Such good pups...

For their birthday cake this year the pups got gourmet (as in I bought them and didn't make them) doggy peanut butter cups! 

Rhea was very confused at first. It smells like chocolate...she knows she's not supposed to eat chocolate... Gunnar on the other hand wouldn't stop inching forward long enough for me to get a decent picture. 

I can haz chocolate? OK!

 Oh Gunnar and the awkward "don't look at the camera" face. 

He was pretty thrilled with the birthday cake option this year.  

Masi's birthday is just around the corner! At which point it will be time for moar doggy photos! 

Liz 

Awww FUDGE!

Anyone growing up in an even moderately conservative household might recognize the title of this blog post as a rather "offensive" curse word. I remember getting in all heaps of trouble using the word "fudge" in the wrong context. 

In this case I'm using the word most appropriately because I'm about to share with you my undeniably delicious and easy fudge recipe. I know this may seem out of season since we're all full into "lose the holiday weight" mode. But when you think a bout it, there's never a bad time for fudge. Ever. 

My Mom had several talents. One of those was being a fantastic baker. There may not have been any ceremony but I feel as though I've taken the proverbial torch from her and am now running. For the most part I've simply adopted her go to recipes and recipe books (I pilfered her Better Homes and Gardens book after my parents' divorce...the one in which she wrote in the margins...yeah I only just gave that back a year ago...) and this recipe in no exception. When I first moved here from NY I couldn't make this recipe because I was missing a key ingredient. Fluff. Fluff is the magic stuff. This is also a recipe direct of the container of fluff. So...there is that. 

Here's the line up...

You can be cheap and get the discounted evaporated milk and butter but do not skimp on the chocolate and for the love of all that is good and holy...don't get the store brand marshmallow creme thinking the recipe still works...

 Yeah I did that at first. But I was so awfully wrong. Years ago, I'd smuggle Fluff to the south from my northern visits. Now you can find it in many of your local groceries stores. I got this particular jar in Harris Teeter. Get the Fluff. That is all. 

 Before you begin I would suggest getting everything out that you'll need. If you've never made candy before then let me let you in on a secret, it goes from not ready to over done in 1.2 milliseconds. Be prepared. If you read the recipe (on the Fluff jar) it tells you to test via soft ball stage. Google that. Then set out a cold bowl of water. And if you have a candy thermometer, get that too. I use the biggest pot I can because one time I double this recipe and the fudge started boiling over. Talk about a mess! 

 There's the recipe, Never Fail Fudge. It doesn't lie. If you follow the instructions you will have beautifully smooth, delicious, calorie heavy fudge for all to enjoy. 

 Start by filling your pot with sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. 

 Follow the recipe and add your butter, milk and Fluff. I try to mix as much as I can while it warms up then I let it rest and do the dirty deed.

Oh yeah...greasing the pans. This was my favorite part as a kid. I loved getting my hands all goopy from the butter or shortening. 

 You shouldn't do this with rings on but I forgot they were there and by this point I'd gone too far. My grandma used to tell me to use a paper towel to spread the goop. But I, like my mother, enjoyed getting my hands dirty. Spread this stuff all over the inside of the pans in a nice thin layer. You don't need a lot and if you use too much it ends up melting and then solidifying on your fudge and that's just gross. 

 Once your pans are all greased, return to your candy. At this point it should just be coming together. Keep on mixing now, you want it to be consistent. 

 At this point you're all mixed together and you're no longer allowed to step away from your fudge because it's about to get hot. Start looking for signs of boiling. It's a lot harder to see when a candy is boiling if your'e not used to it. You see the little air bubbles in this pic? Those ARE NOT boiling bubbles. At best it's simmering now. Keep stirring. 

At this point the candy is  actively boiling and I'm mixing my little heart out. you have no idea how hard it was to take this picture without burning my candy. At this stage my candy tends to brown a little because I can't mix fast enough. It doesn't ruin the taste of the fudge so long as you don't burn it. As soon as you see this stage, start your timer. Also have your cold water and spoon ready for the soft ball stage test. 

I couldn't take pictures of the next few steps but here's how they went. Once the timer went off I did a soft ball stage test and my candy was not quite there so I boiled another min or less and tested again at which point my candy made a soft ball and I removed it from the eye. Once it's removed from the heat, I added my chocolate chips and vanilla and stirred vigorously. The goal is to get all the chocolate melted and mixed in before the fudge starts to harden and you have maybe a minute and a half to complete this. Once the fudge was all mixed together I haphazardly poured it into my prepared pans. It's rather helpful to have an extra pair of hands for that step (someone to hold the pot while you scrape the fudge out).   

TADA! (This is half of the final product) You can smooth out your fudge with a warm wet spatula but in my opinion is tastes just as good like this. 

And that ladies and gentlemen is how you make the easiest, smoothest, best tasting fudge of your life. You can change the flavor of this fudge by switching up the chocolate chips with other flavors. I've tried the Reese's peanut butter chips and they make a very delicious lightly peanut butter flavored fudge. 

Go forth and impress people with your candy making skills!

Liz 

Breckenridge, Breckenridge, Breckenridge

This story isn't so very domesticated but I have no other place to showcase my "non-SOR" photography which makes this blog somewhat of a catch all. Hopefully you'll enjoy the pretty pictures and not hate me for recanting an undomesticated story. 

I always thought I wanted to move west. I love the mountains in North Carolina and I thought that the Rockies would be that much better. So for our honeymoon, when Steven suggested Colorado as a destination, I was on board. That was the first time I visited Breckenridge (October of 2010). If you're never been, let me tell you, it's adorable. A cute little main street surrounded by quaint shops and good eats. Dogs are allowed pretty much everywhere and most people are charming. Especially if you're buying something. But you know what didn't charm me? 

The mountains. 

I KNOW! String me up and beat me. How dare I say such nasty things about the Rockies. I must be crazy. I'm not, I swear I have legitimate reasons. For one, my least favorite tree (yes I have a least favorite tree) is pine. Which grows all over the mountains. Yay. Secondly, without snow on the peaks they're just kinda...gray. Bleh. Thirdly, we were there in fall, and it was supposed to be glorious. You know what it was? Yellow. Yellow, green and gray. How can that compare to the vast array of color you get in the Appalachians/Smokies/Adirondacks?! Granted, the mountains are beautiful in their own right and I did enjoy watching the sun slowly creep over their peaks every morning (that's glorious). But I did not swoon.  

Regardless when someone suggested a skiing trip in Colorado (that might have been me actually) and Breckenridge was brought up as an option, I was all for it. I wanted to see those mountains in winter. This time I was not disappointed. The mountains were breathtaking. This was the second time I visited Brekcnridge (February of 2013). The town was just as quaint and lovely. I may have seriously damaged my tailbone while learning to snowboard but it was a blast and I want to go back. 

The third and most recent time I've been to Breckenridge was a few weeks ago. Unfortunately Steven was not able to join me for this trip. It felt almost wrong to go to Breck without him. I was there to attend a class on stream restoration taught by Dave Rosgen. I'd been looking forward to this class for over a year. As usual, the class kept us very busy but they gave us one day to enjoy Breck and I managed to convince a few guys (the majority of the class was guys. I was one of three women) in my class to join me on the Mohawk Lakes hike so I could finally reach the upper lake.

It had snowed a few days before and it wasn't necessarily warm in the shade but we managed and we made it! I really enjoyed seeing the mountains a little differently. With the snow peaks and the ice. It was nice that everything wasn't exactly the same as before. Onto the pictures!

Here's 3 of the 4 guys that I was able to convince to join me. Don't get the wrong impression from the shorts and t-shirts. It was cold. They're just crazy. This was Adam, Graydon and Jace.  

 Old mining relics. This one actually had some stuff left in it. It was also at this point that our old friendly birds start to join us. At one point Adam from Tennessee was sitting eating almond butter from a spoon and had rested his hand on his knee while chatting with us. One of those birds actually inched up and took a bite of almond butter from his spoon! Crazy birds!

 I give you, Lower Mohawk Lake. Semi frozen. 

Like I said, my goal was to get to the Upper Mohawk Lake. Unfortunately, we'd lost the trail. So we thought, like any educated people would think, the water for the lower lake must be coming from the upper lake, so let's just follow the water to find the upper lake. There was no trail that way...we scaled the friggin mountain. We're idiots. But after some heart pounding accents and too close of calls, we managed to find this guy. This is the upper most Mohawk Lake. 

 This lake was completely frozen over. It was easily in the teens and the wind was howling, I was frozen. We didn't linger long. On our way back down we stumbled upon the actual trail. Yeah...there was a trail. I told you we were idiots. Oh something neat about the trail...it had snow on it so we could see the tracks of the people who'd also made it this far. There was one set of shoe tracks and one set of dog tracks. We all thought it was very cool to know we were among the very few that actually make the effort to get to the upper lakes. 

 This wasn't on the trail but it was worth the short detour. The view up here was amazing. The bigger lake below me is the Lower Mohawk Lake. 

A little farther on down the trail we rounded the corner and saw this. This is the Upper Mohawk lake. In our mountain scaling, we completely missed it! If we hadn't found the trail on the way down, we never would have seen it. Somehow this lake remained unfrozen. It was so clear and so blue. It was amazing. 

L:R Jason (MN), Jace (LA), me (NC), Adam (TN) and Graydon (NY)

It took us somewhere around 6 hours to do that hike (a bit long but we did lose the trail...). Oddly though, even though I was exhausted I still couldn't sleep that night. Stupid altitude. 

By the end of my week and a half course. I was ready to go back east. I never would have guessed it...but I actually missed humidity.

If you're like to read about my first climb to the Mohawk Lakes, check out my old blog here: http://stizoutwest.blogspot.com/2010/10/day-5-and-6-hiking-in-rockies.html 

I hope everyone has an awesome weekend!

-Liz

Three Falls Hike

FINALLY! We were able to relax in Asheville a bit. We spent the second weekend of July in our cozy little mountain house and between painting a second coat on the living room and kitchen, hanging a bunch of pictures and installing a fire pit, we went for a hike. 

I'd wanted to go see Rainbow falls but decided it was too far away for a quick afternoon trip. So I looked around on the interwebs and found a falls called Bridal Veil Falls in Dupont Forest. The description said you could WALK UNDER THE FALLS. Holy hell I've always wanted to do that. It was kind of far too but I insisted on this one. 

Instead of just hiking the Bridal Veil Falls, we (I) decided to do the 3 falls hike that starts from the Triple Falls trail head and parking lot. It seemed like a good idea at the time. 

The parking lot was rather full and the trail was pretty busy so we couldn't let the dogs off leash. That was kind of a bummer but we had fun anyways. The first falls we got to was, you guessed it, Triple Falls. It was so beautiful and breathtaking.  

From this look out area you can then walk down the never ending staircase and reach the second falls. I believe, this was the falls used in The Hunger Games. Looks familiar, right?

Ok, there's a bit more water on the falls than there was during filming but I'm 99.9% sure these are the right falls.

The next falls we got to were High Falls and they were aptly named. Wowza. 

We stopped here and had a bit of lunch. This is when we we discovered that you could actually drive to all of these falls. They all had parking areas with pavilions with portajohns and everything...that's either lazy or ingenious, I'm not quite sure which. (just had an epic idea....the triple falls area would make an awesome bridal shoot/trash the dress location. ooooooooo)

We labored on across the covered bridge and over about 2 miles of the most boring gravel road I've ever walked on. I swear Umstead is more exhilarating. I kept telling myself that it was all worth it because I was going to be able to walk  under a waterfall! So we trudged on. 

Finally, after my feet were beaten up (I'd worn my Fivefingers), we made it to Bridal Veil Falls. The bottom of the falls was a large expanse of sloping rock with tons and tons of rushing water. 

It roared like it wanted to eat your babies. Very neat. However, we could not plainly see how we were supposed to get to the upper falls and thus walk underneath the falls. I asked a local who was leading a group of kids on a tour and she told us that because of the high waters, the falls weren't reachable. Normally, the lower falls didn't cover the entire rock and you could just walk up it. But at this time there was at least an inch of rushing water along the whole expanse of rock. We decided to try anyways. It was only an inch right? What's the worst that could happen? <-- Famous last words

The worst that could happen is that you slip on that inch of water that's hydrated the super slippery algae and fall into a waiting rock or pool. Either one, very bad for people carrying cameras...like myself. 

The dogs did fine, they got to the top, turned around, and came back down to get in our faces to "help" us along. Which inevitably made Steven slip, then I slipped because I was worried about Steven slipping. Steven slid about 5 feet till he was able to grab a sapling that was growing out of the rock and then he swung out his arm and grabbed me. My husband saved me. Yep. No harm to the camera, just a wet rump. We eventually scrambled our way to the top. We attempted to find a path around to walk under the falls but between slippery rocks and not wanting the dogs to accidentally slip and die in the falls, we decided it was best left to another day. 

There it is, the Bridal Veil Falls. Once the rains have died down in Asheville, we'll go again so I can get the epic picture I so desire. 

So many fun and amazing adventures in the mountains of North Carolina. So many things to see and always changing according to the seasons. I sure do love my fuzzy mountains. 

Taking your dogs on a walk is domesticated. Taking your dogs on walk up a waterfall, that's Awesomely Domesticated. 

Liz