LOCAL LOVE: Lamplight Music Festival

It's Friday! It's finally here! Tonight, Lamplight Music Festival starts and I'm extra excited because I'm going to be volunteering. Lamplight is a house show concert series that takes place in the Eastown neighborhood of Grand Rapids, with three days of living room concerts and workshops and food and community and sharing and it's wonderful.

Tonight I'm really looking forward to seeing Backyard Songbook. A group of Grand Rapids songwriters spent a weekend together collaborating on an album that will be released this weekend through Lamplight. It's completely lovely and I can't wait to see it live tonight at midnight. 

Check it out, and I hope I'll see some of you there!

Opera GR: Carmen

The Opera in Grand Rapids is a special treat that only happens a few times a year. I wait all summer to take myself out for the Halloween show; they're always dramatic and suspenseful. This weekend, the show is Carmen, a French opera by Georges Bizet about a gypsy femme fatale and her lovers. And murder! Read the synopsis here. Listen to selections below.

I'll be there on Saturday, dressed to the nines and sipping red wine.

HEAR HERE: Halloween Mix

Look how cool my brother and I were when we were miniatures and my dad got us ready for Halloween in Texas in 1990! I think I chose the weird clown costume because of the sparkly wig, but Andrew's cowboy costume is pretty great. That mustache definitely foreshadowed great things to come...

Now listen to this amazing Halloween-themed playlist to fully understand how cool I was when I was a teenager. I think I made this one when I was 17 or 18. I like that I still like most of the music I listened to when I was younger. 

Classics never die.

Kinda like zombies!

(If you can't see the player click here to listen on Spotify. I don't have this playlist saved publicly anywhere else, so you should probably get Spotify. It's cool because the artists get paid. You could also come over and we can enjoy it together.)

LITERATURE: Halloween Favorites

I'm an avid reader, but it's been a while since I've written anything here about books!

It's October so I've been thinking about sharing some of my favorite Halloween themed literature.

My favorite spooky story is Dracula, but actually it's one of my favorite books of all time. I read it years ago and was surprised by how much I loved it. It doesn't rely on cheap thrills and explores much deeper and more satisfying themes than a lot of other horror stories. And the format was interesting, with letters and journal entries rather than normal chapters and structuring.

I'm currently reading the Harry Potter series. I put it off for a long, long time, but some friends of mine finally convinced me to read them this fall. I had been reading non-fiction for a long time and started to notice I was feeling a little burned out so I thought a nice young adult series might refresh me. It has been pretty fun to breeze through them and see the differences between the books and movies.

I read Frankenstein years ago and found it moving, but haven't reached for it since. Maybe next year? It's very interesting to see the different impressions I get rereading books after a few years, and I am looking forward to Frankenstein again, since I was barely twenty when I first read it.

What do you read this time of year?

WANDERLUST: Manistee National Forest

Last weekend I went hiking through Manistee National Forest with my dad and some close friends. We hiked for hours to secret spots and told stories of old times spent there. I absorb everything when I'm out there with them. They don't need the trails, and they're teaching me their ways.

One thing none of us are experts of is Mycology. I plan on spending this winter studying and hopefully by spring can head up north again for some foraging. There were mushrooms everywhere and it was so hard passing them by knowing plenty would have been great to take home for supper. Some were just lovely enough to look at; pretty as flowers.

It's not quite peak season there for the Autumn colors yet, but there were some gorgeous colors sprinkled through, especially the Sugar Maples. We'll probably be taking another trip up in a couple weeks to see the real color show.

Autumn is a really beautiful time in Michigan. Click here for a guide for peak color seasons throughout the different regions.

HEAR HERE: Where the Wild Things Are

Five years ago the film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are came out with a great soundtrack by Karen O, the brilliant front-woman of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The movie always makes me think of  Autumn, even though it's winter in some of the scenes. There's so much golden light, fallen leaves, and rich warm colors; it's definitely got a cozy, yet melancholy, vibe. 

Today is the Autumnal Equinox, so I'm sharing this soundtrack. It was mostly written by Karen O, and features a group of kids singing and howling along with her and a few sound clips from the movie. There's even a Daniel Johnston cover (Worried Shoes).

(If you're reading on your phone you might not be able to see the player. 
To listen to the album, click here for Spotify, or here for Grooveshark.)

happy halloweeeeeen!

more autumn festivities!

 A few weekends ago Tony and I took a trip up to Manistee National Forest to see the colors. (My second trip this year!) We meandered around and around stopping at a barn sale and general stores and found a nice little spot at Nichol Lake for a picnic. Right down by the lake, there was a clearing in the trees covered in plush green moss. Perfect for laying down the sheet and munching on Greek pasta salad and crackers and applesauce. Followed by a lovely nap in the dappled sunlight. What a perfect warm fall day for our trip.

Later we headed back to Tony's new apartment for root beer floats and pumpkin carving!

 Tony's is a mustachioed cyclops. Mine's pretty classic. What do you think?

-n

go play!

i guess this was our first dive into a pile of leaves.
we're so shiny and happy.

go enjoy the autumn before it's gone.

love, nicole

autumn in manistee, mi

My Dad and I went up north to Manistee to see the fall colors last weekend. I am so in love with Michigan! We live in a beautiful place. Dad showed me all of his hunting spots around there and we watched salmon swimming up the creeks. You can see one in the third and fourth pictures. The fifth is of him throwing rocks to get the fish moving past my camera. Can you identify the plant in my hair? I can't find a good website to look them up. The berries taste like Winterfresh gum. They were delicious! 

Go find a state park and watch the colors change! It's prime-time now. Especially with this gorgeous weather!!

love, nicole

cozy

i'm loving this weather. the chill in the air and the inescapable shift in life. the precious sun from a different angle, and maybe more golden than before. boots and sweaters and apple cider. today, i dream of it all from a cozy place, still and drowsy.

 with an endless repeat of bon iver's latest album lulling me and tempting my droopy lids...

 

there's only one thing more i could possibly want on a day like today: a good snuggle. but he's still working.

-n