the most magical treehouse.

you know how sometimes you're scrolling through buzzfeed and you see a list of coolest places to stay around the world or something like that and you click on it and basically start drooling over all these really pretty places that have giant fluffy beds and amazing views and you can practically picture yourself sitting on that balcony drinking a coffee watching the sun rise? 

no? i'm the only one without a life. okay. 

anyway, the other day i was scrolling through my instagram feed and stumbled on a picture that made me wish i could teleport. 

did you know that seth bolt, of needtobreathe fame, help design and build a luxury treehouse on his parent's farm?! because i didn't until i saw that picture and got curious and found myself following a link that took me to airbnb. YEAH, YOU CAN RENT THIS GORGEOUS TREEHOUSE. 

so "stay in seth bolt's treehouse" has skyrocketed to the near top of my bucket list. so who wants to join me in the most magical treehouse? we can sip coffee out of those adorable china cups and play games sitting by the giant windows overlooking the forest. and if we aren't married (which is likely since i'm not married nor am i even close) we can switch out beds. one night you can have the rope bed and the other night the big king bed inside. 

i promise this isn't a sponsored post, i just think it's the bees knees. who's coming to south carolina with me? 

xo

300.

in honor of my 300^th post: an open letter to any band who comes to play in minnesota. 

dear you,

first off, i just want to start by saying that we love you and we are so excited that you are here. thank you for coming up here! just so you know, we genuinely LOVE live music and we get into shows, no just standing there with our arms crossed in this great state.

i’m just going to toss a couple of pointers to make your time and show here a real top shelf experience. so hop on the bus as we cross the principalizing bridge to minnesota culture. (that last sentence is mostly because i paid many thousands of dollars to get a degree in intercultural studies that i don’t use but i feel like i should hold on to some of the concepts.)

U\unless you’ve had a bus break down or a flight come in late or the venue itself is experiencing some sort of problem, open your doors on time and start your show on time. often there is a line winding around the block at doors and when you say the show starts at 8pm we will politely be there by 7:50pm (if, as individuals, we aren’t the sort to get there at doors) to be fully engaged in the entire show. we feel like we are doing our part to respect your time and simply ask the same in return. if you know you aren’t going to start playing until 10pm, put that on the ticket…we’ll show up then.  if you are late getting on stage, either come out with both guns blazing and make us forget that we were annoyed we’ve been standing around for an hour and a half doing nothing or apologize for the delay. doesn’t have to be long or even all that heartfelt, just a “sorry about the wait, guys” will be more than enough for us. i can’t even explain why we need it, but we do.

and speaking of guns blazing, we go all out at concerts. we love it. we aren’t cooler than thou; we clap and sing along at the top of our lungs. depending on the show there is even jumping and dancing involved. i know you feed off the crowd and you’ll eventually get there but if it’s possible for you to just come out of the gate like you’re ready to have the time of your life we will meet you there immediately. despite our stoic exterior we are an excitable people.

if you love our state (or even better, our city) you should tell us. we are all slightly obsessed with our cities and we all have a great sense of pride in living in minnesota. if for no other reason than we know we’re tough for surviving our winters. which, by the way, if you are here in winter and you mention how painfully cold it is and question how we handle it, we eat that ish up. we’ll all chuckle and think to ourselves, “it’s not even that terrible out today!” and then probably turn to our neighbor and say that exact same thing out loud. even if we ourselves have been complaining for the past two months straight about how chilled to the bone we are and earlier that day said we were done with being cold we will still say it’s not that bad. it’s part of our charm.

have some sort of cold weather merch. again, especially helpful if you are here in the winter months, but we love it when bands have a really great soft long-sleeve of some sort. whether it’s a hoodie or a zip-up or a long-sleeve-tee we are pretty much fans of it all because at some point we will wear it. we have months and months of weather that requires us to wear clothing that covers our extremities. make a cool design on a well-fitting shirt and we will promote your band regularly.  besides, i know you make your money on merch so selling a couple of $35+ articles of clothing makes your sales for the night look really good.  

finally, here are some personal nuggets of wisdom for how you can spend your time off in minnesota. i know that the mall of america seems like the logical choice of attraction to visit (it’s free, indoors, has accessibility to food, you can ride a roller coaster, etc) but once you’ve seen it once there is really no need to visit again. 

so here are a few other options of places to visit:

if you’re looking for top tier coffee: five watt, urban bean, spyhouse, butter, and dogwood are all stellar.

if you’re looking for a food experience (i’m not a foodie so these are really more experiences you have while eating than food you’d stab someone over): the weinery, chatterbox pub, psycho suzi’s, and brit’s pub all have interesting atmosphere’s in addition to the cuisine.

if you’re looking for some free entertainment: como zoo and conservatory, “hiking” minnehaha falls, ice skating in rice park, checking out the minneapolis institute of arts, the sculpture gardens or exploring the skyway system if you’re needing a shopping fix all kill a couple of hours in the afternoon before a show.

if you’re looking for entertainment and are willing to spend a few bucks: we have some great museums (the science museum, the Swedish American institute, and even the little museum at the top of the foshay tower are incredible), indoor ice skating at the old train depot, renting stand up paddle boards and taking them on one of our 10,000 lakes (this only works if it’s not freezing outside), or going to riverview theater (it’s a second run theater that only costs a couple of bucks and has the best popcorn).

i just really want you to have a great time here because then you will come back.

all my love,

xo

can we break the spell of the typical?

mutemath kicked off their intimate tour last night at a teensy little club in my city and it was so good. there were a lot of hits (they played some new songs that sound killer, paul meany joined the audience on more than one occasion, his vocals were spot on all night, they played almost all of the songs i really hoped they would play, there wasn't one overly obnoxious person in the club that everyone hated, the lights show was spot on, darren king slayed on the drums as per usual, and roy mitchell was looking trim and i think i even saw him smile a couple times) and a couple of misses (doors were almost an hour late and the sound mixing wasn't my favorite...i almost always want more vocals) but the amazing definitely outweighed the less-than-stellar.

there's just something about getting to see a band that can sell out a larger venue in a space that only holds a couple hundred. the audience is usually the die-hards that have been fans for years and bought their tickets the moment they went on sale. the band is typically a little more candid, reminds them of their first tours when those were the only clubs that they could even have a prayer of getting into, and reconnects them to the fans that have been with them their entire careers.

i didn't have my camera with so here are a couple of crappy phone pics that don't do the experience justice at all:

xo

the stories we tell ourselves.

“she never responded to my text, she must be mad at me.”

“he said he appreciated me, obviously he’s in love with me.”

“they were talking, they must have been talking about me behind my back. and they are purposefully leaving me out.”

the stories we tell ourselves. we can convince ourselves of all sorts of things without having any of it based in facts. one of my college professors always said, “perception is reality,” meaning what we believe to be true is true for ourselves. or is it?

that first example actually happened to me. my phone broke on tour and it took me 10 days to get a new phone. at some point in those 10 days a friend of mine texted me; i never texted her back (because I couldn’t) and she assumed that i was mad at her. she wasted time and energy and made herself worried for literally no reason at all.

funnily enough the second example happened to me as well.  maybe I didn’t immediately jump to “he’s in love with me” but you get what i’m saying, right?  and you know what, he wasn’t in love with me, he just appreciated me. shocker.

you guys, the third example happened to me too! i don’t know why we think that we are important enough for people to talk about us but we all do. we all assume that other people are talking about us and we assume that they are speaking of us negatively. and, of course, if they are talking about us behind our back they are also leaving us out of things on purpose. 

in every circumstance we think we know what’s going on. we think we have it all figured out. we think we have read the situation or the other person or that text message or social media comment correctly. notice a theme?….we think. and then once we start, it snowballs and we can’t stop.  we read tone into every message, good or bad. we interpret what people say as condescending or assume they wish the worst for us.

the biggest problem with this is it generally causes needless hurt, confusion, and bitterness. we get so wrapped up in our own heads that we don’t even realize we’re dragging our crap (emotions, past experiences, etc) into present situations where it doesn’t apply. i’m not sure what it is about our human existence that causes us to err on the side of the negative but we do. and almost always it has to do with our own problems, our lack of confidence or our need to be right.

it’s not easy but the best thing to do when you find yourself heading down this path is to step back and ask yourself, “is this rational? would this person actually mean to make me feel bad or is the fact that i slept through my alarm, dropped my coffee on the floor, and forgot to send that email that i promised to send really what’s causing me to be on edge?” or if you’re feeling slighted (and it’s justified) maybe say something instead of stewing in your own pot of anger? super difficult but would probably make you feel better, right? a lot of times just feeling like you’ve been heard is enough.

i’m not pointing any fingers here, i’m just as guilty as the next person (if not more so) but maybe the next time we start to jump to a conclusion we should plant our feet firmly on the ground and ask a couple questions before throwing ourselves into the abyss.

xo

because i love them.

disclaimer: if you don't want to read another entry about jon foreman and switchfoot this is your chance to get out now. just click the little "x" or the little red circle and you're home free. i won't even know so no worries about offending me. i get it, not everyone is as obsessed as i am. 

last weekend i spent a good chunk of time in a dusty cornfield in south dakota. it was the annual labor day weekend music festival just south of sioux falls and i went because i had to drive the RV out there for work. i stayed because my fellas were playing. not only were they scheduled to close out the night on the mainstage but the only man that i've never really met who sends my heart into a tizzy was playing a solo set on the tiny coffee house stage.

saturday morning came quickly...friday was a late night and i slept poorly because i was incredibly hot for some unknown reason and i drank an entire bottle of water before i went to bed and i had to pee like a racehorse. after visiting a mostly clean porta-potty and laying outside in a beautiful morning breeze i got ready for the day. there was still time before i needed to be at the merch table so i decided to stroll the festival grounds. as i stepped off the RV i heard some very familiar faint notes coming from across the field. i'm not going to lie to you all, i walked as fast as i could to the mainstage without actually running. there they were...checking their sound. beautiful.

it was time to head to the table by the time they were done and the countdown of hours until jon's solo set began. in no time it was time to grab lunch and then make my way to the triple shot cafe stage. it was packed. the festival director came out to introduce jon and said it was the fullest she had ever seen the coffee house stage. his entire set was made up of requests. he brought up a guy to play guitar at one point. he brought up two girls to sing with him on "house of God forever" at a different point. he was right there and my heart was full.

later that night the boys closed out the mainstage. a friend of mine had a backstage pass and when she left she gave it to me so i could stand in the media/fanzone area between the stage and the pit. i only got to hang out for a few songs (i had to leave the festival by 10:30 and they got a late start) but those few songs were absolutely stunning. there's something about being in the middle of a crowd singing along with everyone else but there's something entirely different about being so close that you forget about the 40,000 people behind you.

i need to figure out how to use my camera better but i wouldn't hate if these were always the dudes in front of the camera.
xo

but you gotta keep your head up.

my first day at the minnesota state fair was hot, humid, and full of food. between my friend and i we managed to kill off cheese curds, totchos (nachos made with tater-tots instead of chips), deep fried pickles, dessert nachos (cinnamon pastry chips covered in strawberries, blueberries, whipped cream with a lemon glaze), a milkshake, diet coke (obvi), and more water than you can shake a stick at. and the amount of time we were at the fair where we were walking around eating was a grand total of 4.5 hours. 

the other hours that were spent at the great minnesota get together were spent at the leiny lodge waiting for andy grammer. we posted up early to get good seats so we also saw the entire semi-finals for the talent competition in the kid and teen categories. there was this adorable little girl who sang "where were you when the world stopped turning" and she was the most precious act of the whole night. she had this tiny little lisp that was coupled with a twang that made the whole crowd fall in love with her. 

so that was fun. but then AG took the stage and i didn't care at all about that little girl anymore. he killed it. there were some technical difficulties and it was hot as blazes (pretty sure his keyboardist's shirt was d.r.i.p.p.i.n.g. with sweat) but that didn't stop him from going 100%. he played guitar, keyboard, trumpet, and beatboxed...dude is a beast. he not only played his own songs but he covered a bunch of songs, and we all know how much i love a cover! 

i don't really do concert reviews here on the blog but that was probably the worst i have ever described a concert in my life. sorry, it really was awesome. here are some pictures!

 xo