Pizza, pilsner, and painting OR beer, bitching, and body paint?

Hola chicos!  Sam and I have had an eventful couple of weeks. Busy with work and life in general. But we don't let that stop us! However, I started off this post without Sam because she was away last weekend but the rest of the post has the complete duo. Well let's just jump right into it!

66. Visit Grounds for Sculpture

For those of you who aren't from this area, Grounds for Sculpture is a 35-acre sculpture park in Hamilton, NJ. It was founded by the American artist Seward Johnson. If you Google his work, I'm sure some of you would recognize it. Especially because he just installed a 3-story tall Marilyn Monroe in Chicago, so you might find news articles. I've always wanted to visit the Grounds and explore their collections and the perfect opportunity kind of just fell into my lap. Jamie actually just landed a pretty sweet job at the Johnson Atelier, which is where artists, particularly Seward Johnson, send their models to be made into their large scale counterparts. Once the molds are cast in bronze, steel, etc., the pieces are welded together. Which is where Jamie comes in! She's what they call a "chaser"; she goes over the seams and cleans up the welds and then creates the textures on the pieces.  One perk of having this awesome job is that she knows where all the secret gates are, so we didn't have to pay! Clearly I, being the cheap-ass that I am, couldn't resist the chance to do something fun for free. So, Eamonn, Jamie and I jumped in the car and cruised up the highway to Hamilton, with the top down of course! (We clearly needed to soak up some sun.)

Once we found our way inside the Grounds, we wandered around for an hour and a half-ish taking in all of the works and the beautiful landscapes that went along with them.

Jamie and the main man, Mr. J (Seward Johnson)

 

 All was going well until we accidentally left the accessible area and when we tried to get back in, we were denied. Because remember, we didn't have wrist bands because we were too busy cheating the system. They thought they were inconveniencing us, but little did they know they actually did us a favor. Besides the fact that we were lost in the Grounds, we were also dying of heat exhaustion. Luckily, the spot where they kicked us out at was equipped with misters for plants and effects for a sculpture. So, it was actually the nice little cool-down that we needed.

After wandering our way back into the Grounds, we swung on over to the Peacock Cafe, which was rightfully named, since the Grounds are crawling with peacocks!

Baby Peacocks!

 Once we refueled, we finished off the rest of the Grounds, clearly taking advantage of all of the "Kodak Moments!"

The middle guy is actually a sculpture

  It was a great time and I will surely be going back. It is a wonderful spot for a picnic/date/get together. Or if you're Jamie, it's the perfect spot for your afternoon nap during your break.

67. Paint a room

This one I found to be a bit strange. Some of us were over at Jamie and her boyfriend, Anthony's new apartment the other day to help them paint, when Sam let's us know that she's never painted a room, house, walls, nothing like that. This came to a shock to Jamie and I as our mother always seemed to use us as child slaves when it came time to paint a room in the house. So naturally, we put her to work!



















She picked it up in no time, even though I think she got more paint on her than on the walls!

 

68. Go to a beer tasting/pairing

As many of you may have figured out already, Sam and I love to eat out and try new restaurants/cuisines. The other day Sam sent me a link to an event happening at the World Cafe Live in Philadelphia. The World Cafe, in its own right, is an awesome place. It is a combination music venue/restaurant. And once she sent me this link, it got even more awesome! It was to a Grilled Cheese & Craft Beer Tasting Event!! Two of our favorite things celebrated together, and with music!! We didn't waste one minute: we bought our tickets, the vegetarian option of course, and got Jamie on board too. But I mean it's not that hard to convince someone to indulge in two of the best concoctions created by man! I was counting down the days for a week, and it had finally arrived!

 

We started off the evening with a "cocktail half-hour" with our first beer at the bar and a sampling of Stoudt's cheeses. Once we took our seats, their resident music man, Jonah Delso, started his serenades.

 

He played the whole night while we ate but took a short break to announce the raffle winners. Sadly, none us won anything. Typical. But that's okay because the food and beer were to die for!! Here's the pairings they put together. They were yummy!

Beer: Sly Fox Rt. 113 IPA

Sandwich: Sharp cheddar and omelet on sourdough bread

 

Beer: Roy Pitz Best Blonde

Sandwich: Buttercup brie w/ smoked strawberries and burnt onion jam on olive bread

 

Beer: Stoudts Heifer-In-Wheat

Sandwich: Smoked Lady Bel Swiss w/ portobello mushroom, Jersey tomatoes and fresh mayo on rye

 

Beer: Weyerbacher Merry Monks Ale

Sandwich: Birchrun Brie with fresh cherries and walnut butter on cinnamon raisin bread

 

Beer: Dogfishhead Festina Peche

Sandwich: Mascarpone and peach ice cream sandwich

Oh yeah, we also got interviewed for WHYY Radio.

It was a fun night and we will definitely be going to the next event. Can't wait!

So until next time, good luck exploring the infinite abyss.

xoxo
The Go Getters

I'm reading: Pizza, pilsner, and painting OR beer, bitching, and body paint?

Floating in the summer sky, 99 red balloons go by

Hello friends! Thank you so much for all of the new people who follow us and anonymous people who read our blog, we hope you've had as much fun as we're having! I want to do some plugs first: We have a Facebook page where you can follow our updates and see what we're up to! And you can see our full list on Bucketlist.org.


Okay, that's enough plugging, here we go!

64. Blow smoke rings

Well you all know that I smoked hookah for the first time not too long ago but you probably don't know that Jamie bought a hookah for us to enjoy!



Now, Jamie and Becky were already hookah pros so they could already blow some pretty impressive smoke rings. I don't know who taught them, but they've got it down.

I, however, need to find whoever taught them what they know because it took me a loooong time to get it. And then once I did get it, we unfortunately COULD NOT get a picture of it. Now trust me, I would never lie to our loyal readers. We don't have a picture of me actually blowing a smoke ring, but we do have an equally embarrassing picture of smoke coming out of my mouth in an attempt to make a ring. But Becky and Jamie will vouch for me, I really did blow smoke rings! I had the light-headedness and tight chest to prove it too!






Okay, so here is the part you've all been waiting for. We did something TOTALLY awesome yesterday for the first day of summer. And I don't know if I'll have much to say about it because the pictures will really show you how cool it was. And we took a million. So please enjoy.

65. Release 99 red balloons into the summer sky
I know! Don't tell me you haven't wanted to try it before! Since 8th grade we've been huge fans of the song 99 Red Balloons by Goldfinger. It wasn't until a few years later that we realized it was a cover of the original by Nena, equally as awesome. Way back in 9th grade we blew up 99 red balloons for our friend Kathleen's birthday to surprise her. Our latest attempt was much more successful because we learned that you needed more than one helium tank. So after work I headed right over to Becky's to get started.

Step 1: Blow up balloons


Step 2: Tie off balloon


Step 3: Get Becky and Jamie's little brother to do all of the work


Just kidding! But that's Cliff, our helper who only did the work and didn't come along to see the amazing end results. We wore him out.











I'm sure you're dying to know just what 99 balloons look like in one small space, don't worry we have plenty of photos:

When we were done they looked like little cherries!

Then we had to get them to our designated release site, which with helium balloons can be difficult, so we stuffed them up in body bags that were conveniently available at Becky's house. No questions asked.

Body bags.

Yes, I know they look like dead bodies. So let me prove that these bags were in fact not stuffed with bodies, because I wouldn't have been able to hold them like this:

So we stuffed them in the car


And headed to our super secret launch site


At this point it's easier to just post the photos without words. Jamie was a fabulous photographer and documented the wholeeee thing! We also took a pretty extensive photo shoot with the balloons, so bear with us! (You would have done it too) So here it is, the release of 99 red balloons into the summer sky.

At this point I had to remind Becky to stop cutting and actually look so that she wouldn't miss this:













It was so surreal. The balloons floated off pretty quickly, and in the pit of my stomach I was a little concerned they would end up causing a plane crash or at least unnerve some birds. But all was well afterward and it is definitely an image that I will never forget.

Well we hope you enjoyed this post guys. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that was one of the absolute coolest things we've ever done and I hope I can do it again some day. But until next time, good luck exploring the infinite abyss.

Love always,

The Go Getters

P.S. The Go Getters want to dedicate this post to Alice Pyne, because everyone deserves the chance to follow their dreams! She is a 15 year old with terminal cancer who is determined to complete her bucket list. Check out her blog at http://alicepyne.blogspot.com/ and support her on Twitter: @Alice_Pyne and #alicebucketlist

I'm reading: Floating in the summer sky, 99 red balloons go by