The Oberles

Here are a few photos I took of our good friends Marit and Tim earlier this fall. They are fellow St. Olaf '06 grads, got engaged the day after us, were married two weeks before us, and live 1.5 miles away from our new house in Minneapolis! Needless to say, we've enjoyed sharing in each others' lives, through dinner parties, coffee dates, cross country skiing outings, relaxing at the lake, and spontaneous pop-ins! They are wonderful friends and a fantastic couple (with the cutest house imaginable!). Here's a peak into the lives of the Oberles:

(I am still working out the kinks to incorporating a little logo with my photos, so please excuse any imperfections you may notice... like blurry and pixelated text. I also made a slideshow with a selection of some of my favorite photos and am in the process of figuring out how best to show that -- for free. So more updates may be coming soon!)

To view all of the photos from this shoot, check out my shutterfly site!

Gingerbread Houses

We hosted a small gingerbread house party this weekend with a few college friends. I spent the week making the houses from scratch and baking them in a mold we bought from the Pampered Chef. Turns out this mold is quite the novelty item as we discovered it was only made in 1992. I guess we were pretty lucky to find one on good ol' ebay!

From left to right, top to bottom, we have:

Marit & Tim Oberle - very cute house, complete with smoke in the chimney! Tim added fun lawn details, like a patio, a pond with swedish fish, a lamp post and a junk pile!

Mitch and Colleen - most candy-bedecked house of them all with nice patterns on the roof! Unique use of chimney as a walkway, and surprisingly sturdy for all the slanting walls!

Evan & Carolyn Pierson - interesting combination of precision and wild creativity.... C tended to the house while E made room for the dog in the backyard (note the doghouse at the right). Mailbox and gate complete the front of this snow-gabled cottage.

Dub (Andrew) - the first eco-friendly gingerbread house on the block! The solar panels are the highlight of this one, but the slide down to the patio is a great feature too! Note the gingerbread man pegged by a snowball. What a happy gingerbread community!

**You may need to click on the collage to view each house up close**

Prior Lake

I am trying to figure out this whole slideshow thing. This isn't exactly what I want, but it will do for now...

We spent Friday night at Marit's family lake cabin eating grilled chicken and sweet potatoes (we take advantage of grilled food whenever we can since we can't have a grill at our apartment), relaxing in adirondack chairs by a bonfire, and playing intense games of Sequence into the night. Saturday was a beautiful morning so we took a spin out on the boat. The lake was only half an hour from our house, but we were so relaxed when we came home we felt like we'd been up north!

UM YA YA!

Evan and I spent a glorious Saturday on St. Olaf campus cheering on the Oles and checking out the new science center. We also went apple picking with Marit and Tim and ended up with 27 apples AFTER baking 2 batches of apple crisp (2 different recipes because E and I both like what we grew up with). Checked out sister Sarah's HUGE quad suite dorm room (Rand) and hung out for a bit. We miss being students on campus, but I guess it is nice being adults too ; )