Jennifer's 365 Project

Headed to Rosa Parks Circle for my daily lunch to read and discovered two food trucks and The Outer Vibe putting on a concert.

That's cool too.

I took a stroll through the the skywalk today. There are a lot of Artprize entries up...
..including a massive wall of dogs running. Woof!

Walks after work can be a relaxing thing.

It's great that our house is situated near so many parks.

I pulled out the bread machine and got

So I rolled out the pizza dough I made in the bread machine and topped it with the traditional mozzarella and pepperoni toppings.

(Sometime I'm going to try a pesto and chicken roll. I think that would be delicious.)
Next I rolled the pizza dough into a log. I didn't split the dough in half, which probably would it made it easier to roll a tighter log.
I cut the log into one inch sections...
..and placed them on the a cookie sheet.

I then let them sit for about 20 minutes to rise.

After 20 minutes I popped them into the oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.
Just add a little cup of dipping sauce and you're ready to go!

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 pizza dough (fresh made or frozen)
• approx 1c mozzarella cheese
• pizza toppings of choice (pepperoni, mushrooms, etc)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Divide dough into two balls and roll out into two rectangles
• Top rectangles of dough with mozzarella and pizza toppings, leaving approx 1/4 inch border
• Roll each of the two rectangles into a log. Cut the log into 1 inch pieces and place on a greased cookie sheet. Allow dough to rise for 20 minutes
• Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.
• Serve with your preferred dipping sauce

Saturday has been an awesome day. I had a tasty dinner with Lori. We caught up on all kinds of things.

Then I cam home and Chris was Skyping with Comfort and Adam. So I got to catch up with them. Which was also awesome.

I'm not going to lie - I ate most of the bag (I was hungry!) but Kati was right - these pretzel M&Ms are nearly as tasty as you'd think.

I guess at least they weren't candy corn M&Ms. Ew.

Downtown is slowly being transformed for Artprize, which officially starts on 9/19/2012.

I have no idea if this seahorse is an Artprize entry (I dont see a sign up and a few of the other entries up do have signs) but it did show up recently so I can only assume.
They've also added a new (I think) thing to Artprize - walking tours. These may have existed in the two prior years, but I certainly didn't see any spray painted stencils leading you through downtown.

They have a three, six, and nine mile tour. I'll have to poke around and see if they have a map anywhere. I'd like to see how they're getting 9 miles out of downtown. I'm guessing by snaking up and down and back and forth through most of the blocks downtown.

So. Close. To. Home.

They moved the chairs for the museum normally up near the entrance down onto the brick patio by the road. I'm assuming this was done in anticipation of Artprize.

There's significantly less shade now, but on the upside I dont think people have realized these have moved so no one seems to be sitting here.

I can read in quiet again!

The grocery store had these little lunchable snack duos on sale and I thought I'd try them.

They're obviously not meant to be eaten as lunch alone (hence snack in the name) but they're not bad. Tasty cheese and crackers. And mini chocolate chip cookies of course.

Not bad.

Sunday has been a pretty good day. Quiet. Relaxing. We took a nice stroll at the park near us.
Plus I played a bunch of Guild Wars 2.

So yeah, good day.

Today was our first visit to Blandford Nature Center. It's an adorable small area in Grand Rapids that features trails, wildlife, and education
We managed to time our visit with the animal feeding time. I have to say, the meowing of a bobcat anticipating a meal is both adorable and heatbreaking. Especially after reading his story.

I don't even believe in declawing domestic cats (here's a good read on why), so I think declawing a bobcat is especially horrid.
They have several birds of prey as well, including an adorable Merlin who was carrying around a small mouse.

Mealtime for everyone!
We walked a few of their trails. Their largest trail, the Back Forty, is less than a mile long. Along the way we saw several deer but one in particular stuck out. This young one hung out on the path for a bit just looking at us...
..groomed for a bit, and didn't bound away very far when we did get close.
The wetlands they have listed on their map wasn't too wet. I guess that's what a dry summer will do.

Blandford was a nice place to spend a few hours enjoying nature. It's not a very far drive and it's certainly charming. We didn't explore everything - best to save some things for later visits.

We will certainly be back!