All posts tagged July

A pretty good Saturday.

Good morning from Northside on this Saturday…

This morning we ran over to Lowe’s again to get more paint. After her success with painting our little half-bathroom, Genifer wanted to try painting our living room this weekend. While we were at Lowe’s, we also looked at some Pergo flooring for our third-floor bedroom. We really liked the color variations on this sample…

Pulling up the carpet on our third-floor and replacing it with wood might be our next, next project. After Lowe’s, we ran over to Kroger to get some groceries. They just had bee and sunflower balloons again today…

Have you ever tried Jack fruit? It looks like you’d get a lot of it for just $1.99…

I wonder if it’s any good? You know what IS good? These Ruffles chips…

Ohmigosh. They’re my new favorite! And this is the second time now that I’ve found them at Kroger! I was worried I would never find them again.

After we were done at Kroger, we stopped at Mad Llama for coffee…

When got home, Genifer started taping off the living room with painters tape…

And then she started priming,,,

And she did another really outstanding job with the primer…

And tomorrow she wants to paint the living room. She has a navy called Salty Dog that we think will look really nice in our living room. My job was to keep the dogs away from the paint while she was priming and tomorrow while she will be painting. And while she was priming, I got to watch the FA Cup semi-final between Manchester City and my Arsenal on ESPN+.

I don’t know why they relegated this match to ESPN+. They had a UFC behind-the-scenes show on ESPN and old X-Games highlights on ESPN2. It didn’t make much sense to me. But Arsenal defeated FA Cup holders Manchester City 2-0 to move onto the final at Wembley. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored both goals for the Gunners, finishing off an unbelievable 18-pass team move and then a swift counter-attack goal to finish off Manchester City. Come on you, Gunners!

Arsenal keeper Emi Martinez came up huge again for the Gunners especially with this save on City’s Riyad Mahrez. Watching the Mikel Arteta Bench Cam was also pretty entertaining. Arsenal’s head coach gets pretty animated on the sidelines. It’s been a week for The Arsenal. The Gunners beat newly-crowned Premier League champions Liverpool 2-1 on Wednesday and now FA Cup holders City 2-0 just three days later. Pretty darn unbelievable!

Arsenal will face Chelsea in the FA Cup final on August 1st…

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Chelsea beat Manchester United 3-1 in the other semi-final.

When the match was over and Genifer was done priming, we went out in the backyard with the dogs…

And while we were in the backyard, we fired up the grill…

First, we grilled some salmon burgers and chicken kabobs…

And then we grilled a couple of burgers and some jalapeno cheddar dogs…

The burgers were really good…

And the dogs were outstanding…

We’ve been buying this sweet Hawaiian bread at the grocery. Not King’s Hawaiian, but the Kroger equivalent. And I’ve been putting my hot dogs on that instead of buying hot dog buns too. It seemed like there were always hot dog buns leftover. The dogs taste awesome on the Hawaiian bread and now we don’t have a lot of extra hot dog buns going to waste. I think that’s what they call, a win-win.

This is Bear, the newest member of our family…

I like him. He’s fitting right into our family like he was meant to be here.

Good evening from Northside…

When we got home, we had some of this strawberry cake we got at the grocery…

It was really good. I’ve been on a strawberry kick lately. I can’t wait to see how our living room looks in its new Salty Dog blue…

When we got upstairs, we watched Louisville City lose 1-0 to St. Louis. And we watched more of the MLS is Back tournament. It was a pretty good Saturday. 😀🗓️❤️

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by Thadd F. on July 18, 2020 • Permalink

Posted in #SUMMERinCINCY, Northside, Odd & Ends, Suburbia

Posted by Thadd F. on July 18, 2020

https://tplusg.com/2020/07/18/a-pretty-good-saturday/

Cheers! It’s finally Friday.

Good morning from Northside…

This has felt like a really long week. But made it to Friday. And to celebrate this morning, we walked to Sidewinder to get coffee…

Cheers to Friday!

Our drinks were so good.

Genifer went with her sister to get pedicures. I cranked all day to get my work done.

And then we walked the dogs…

Good evening from Northside…

I stayed up to watch my Minnesota United play the 10:30pm late match to a 0-0 draw with Real Salt Lake. I’m probably going to be tired tomorrow. It’s a good thing we’re still in the middle of a pandemic and there really isn’t much of anything to do. 😀🌄☕️❤️

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by Thadd F. on July 17, 2020 • Permalink

Posted in #SUMMERinCINCY, Northside, Odd & Ends

Tagged 2020, Cincinnati, Clouds, Coffee, Good evening, Good morning, Home Sweet Home, Jul17, July, Look up in the sky, Minnesota United FC, MLS, MLS is BACK tournament, Northside, Odds&Ends, Ohio, Seen and noted, Sidewinder Coffee, Soccer

Posted by Thadd F. on July 17, 2020

https://tplusg.com/2020/07/17/cheers-its-finally-friday/

Over 30 million views.

My photos on Google Maps/Local Guides just went over 30 million views…

It’s a pretty big accomplishment to me. It’s nice to still be popular. And it’s pretty neat.

And my reviews now have over 250,000 views on Google Maps. And if you ask me, that’s pretty neat too. It’s quite the jump. I was at 170,000 views back at the end of March. I keep working hard on my Google Maps contributions. #LetsGuide

Thanks for giving me another way to share my photos, Google! 😀🗺📷❤

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by Thadd F. on July 17, 2020 • Permalink

Posted in #SUMMERinCINCY, Northside, Odd & Ends

Tagged 2020, 30 million views, Cincinnati, Ffffound, Google Maps, Home Sweet Home, Jul17, July, Local Guides, Northside, Odds&Ends, Ohio, Photos, Reviews, Seen and noted

Posted by Thadd F. on July 17, 2020

https://tplusg.com/2020/07/17/over-30-million-views/

A Thursday pizza party.

Good morning from Northside…

It was grey and overcast start to our Thursday.

While we were working this morning, we watched FC Cincinnati defeat a 9-man Atlanta United 1-0. FC|C was kind of gifted the win with two Atlanta players sent off, one in just the 26th minute for a second yellow and the second a straight red in stoppage time.

We made it through Thursday. And a reward, we had an NYPD Pizza party…

I wonder what happened to NYPD’s awning. I placed our order online at 5:45pm. And at 6:05pm, I was heading back to the Audi with our pizza…

And at 6:10pm, I’m back at home and we were starting our NYPD Pizza party…

Tonight, we had a large pepperoni and sausage with banana peppers…

This pepperoni had five sausages on it…

It was the best bite of pizza I had tonight. We also ordered some cheese curds…

NYPD’s boneless wings are so good but they recently decreased the quantities of their wings but the kept the prices the same and they’re just not a good value any more.

Good evening from Northside…

And good evening from our backyard…

And that was actually our Thursday. I feel like can see the light at the end of the tunnel for my work projects this week. One more day to go. 😀🌄🍕❤️

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by Thadd F. on July 16, 2020 • Permalink

Posted in #SUMMERinCINCY, Northside, Odd & Ends

Posted by Thadd F. on July 16, 2020

https://tplusg.com/2020/07/16/a-thursday-pizza-party/

Today was Thursday.

Today was ~~Thursday~~ Wednesday. Good morning from Northside…

Genifer put the shelves back up in our bathroom. She did an incredible job painting…

It looks so good. I love this shade of blue, especially with the blue floor tiles…

Speaking of good, we had baked sausages with sweet potatoes and apples for dinner…

It’s one of my favorite dinners. And good evening from Northside…

There was this weird little leaf dangling from a strand of spider web in our backyard…

Tonight, we watched more of the MLS is Back tournament. It’s been a lot of fun so far. There have been a lot of really entertaining matches. And it’s been great to have live sports every night again.

And that was our ~~Thursday~~ Wednesday. 😀🟦🍃❤️

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by Thadd F. on July 15, 2020 • Permalink

Posted in #SUMMERinCINCY, Northside, Odd & Ends

Posted by Thadd F. on July 15, 2020

https://tplusg.com/2020/07/15/today-was-thursday/

Skin in the game.

I’ve been working on this shopper in-store display project for Gillette Venus featuring four-time world surfing champion and US Olympic hopeful, Carissa Moore for almost a year now. And all the hard work is finally paying off because the displays are starting to show up in stores. We found the displays that I designed first in Walgreens and then Meijer. This afternoon the group creative director at Grey Midwest presented all the work we did on this project to the entire creative department. I snagged a few of the photos of the endcap he used is his presentation…

His photos were styled much better than mine. During his presentation, he had a bunch of really nice things to say about me. And after his presentation, he had some really nice things to say about me in a group chat with the creative department as well…

This display was inspired by an outdoor shower at the beach. After his presentation, I posted this end cap display to my design Instagram along with the initial design theme mood board, my concept sketch, the final rendering, and the photos…

Not long after I posted to Instagram, I noticed Carissa Moore liked my post…

And that makes the whole thing pretty dang cool. 😀💻🏄‍♀️❤️

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by Thadd F. on July 15, 2020 • Permalink

Posted in #SUMMERinCINCY, Odd & Ends

Tagged 2020, Carrisa Moore, Cincinnati, Design, Grey Midwest, Jul15, July, Odds&Ends, Ohio, Seen and noted, Taken with Instagram, Venus

Posted by Thadd F. on July 15, 2020

https://tplusg.com/2020/07/15/skin-in-the-game/

There were some really pretty clouds.

Good morning from Northside. There were some really pretty clouds this morning…

Mack and Bear crashed out all day in the office…

Oscar usually hangs out in our front bedroom during the day. I made Taco Tuesday tacos for lunch today…

They were delicious. I love tacos. Especially on Tuesdays for Taco Tuesday. And Genifer made chicken ramen stir-fry for dinner…

It was delicious as well. She always finds the best recipes. It was a pretty evening…

Good evening from Northside…

We made it through another Tuesday. At least there were some pretty clouds today.
😀☁️🐾🌮🐔❤️

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by Thadd F. on July 14, 2020 • Permalink

Posted in #SUMMERinCINCY, Northside, Odd & Ends

Posted by Thadd F. on July 14, 2020

https://tplusg.com/2020/07/14/there-were-some-pretty-clouds/

Timehopping.

Five years ago today was the MLB All-Star Game live from Great American Ballpark in beautiful downtown Cincinnati…

Five years on and it’s still one of the most incredible sporting events I’ve ever attended. But it wasn’t just the All-Star Game, it was all the build-up to the game, all the months of excitement around Cincinnati and all the events of All-Star Week that made it such a memorable event. That, and getting to snap a photo of these guys…

We’ve done some pretty incredible stuff in Cincinnati.

Thanks for all the wonderful memories, Timehop. 😀🦕⚾️❤️

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by Thadd F. on July 14, 2020 • Permalink

Posted in #SUMMERinCINCY, Central Business District, Odd & Ends, Reds baseball, Sports

Tagged #Timehop, 2020, All-Star Game, Baseball, Cincinnati, Five years ago, GABP, Great American BallPark, Jul14, July, MLB, Odds&Ends, Ohio, Seen and noted, Sports

Posted by Thadd F. on July 14, 2020

https://tplusg.com/2020/07/14/timehopping-15/

Some BBQ chicken and a new bear.

Good Monday morning from Northside…

We rescued a dog over the weekend. We got him from people we know that didn’t want him anymore. They would leave him outside all day, if he was inside he was trapped in his crate. They wouldn’t give any love or attention and overfeed him. His name is Bear. And he’s the newest member of our family…

He slept right next to me in the office all day today. We’ve already become really good friends. I hope him and Mack will become good friends too…

I haven’t had a chance to take many photos of him yet. And the ones I’ve taken haven’t been good. Hopefully, I’ll get some good photos of him in the evening this week or next weekend. I don’t understand how you could be mean to him. He’s just a big sweetheart and is really well-behaved and mild-mannered.

After working for a bit, I noticed Mack wasn’t in the office with us. I went to look for him around the house and found him just chillin’ up in our bedroom…

I came back to check on him a little bit later and he was sleeping on our bed…

We had another one of the Kroger Prep+Pared Home Chef Express meals for dinner tonight. I forgot to take a photo of the label like I usually do. But this one was tortilla crusted BBQ chicken with cheesy potatoes and corn or something like that…

Whatever it was called, it sure was good…

It was another really delicious dinner. We really like the Kroger Prep+Pared Home Chef Express meal kits a lot.

UPDATE: We found the meal at Kroger again…

I wasn’t far off on the name at all.

Good evening from Northside…

It was another good Monday. This week is going to be a busy one. 😀🗓️🐻🐾🐔❤️

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by Thadd F. on July 13, 2020 • Permalink

Posted in #SUMMERinCINCY, Northside, Odd & Ends

Posted by Thadd F. on July 13, 2020

https://tplusg.com/2020/07/13/a-new-bear-and-some-bbq-chicken/

Painting and pizza party.

Good morning from Northside…

While I was having my epic soccer Sunday, Genifer decided she wanted to paint our first floor half bath. We got a gallon of paint while we were at Lowe’s yesterday…

She’s getting tired of all the grey in our house. This is the before photo…

We took the shelf down and removed the outlet and vent covers…

Then she painter taped it all off…

And then she got to painting…

And now our bathroom is a very pretty sky blue to go with our pretty blue tile floor…

Genifer did an amazing job of painting! The bathroom looks so good! Oscar and I did a good job of supervising…

And later before the start of the Louisville City match, I ran over to NYPD to pick up some pizza for dinner. An NYPD Pizza party reward for painting and epic soccer watching…

I wonder what happened to NYPD’s awning? Our pizza and wings were all set when I got to NYPD. It’s pretty amazing that you can order online from NYPD and 15 minutes later, you’re heading home with a pizza…

We were so ready for our NYPD Pizza party that we just dug right in and didn’t even take a photo before we started eating…

Mmmmm, Station House with banana peppers…

NYPD changed their boneless wing count while keeping the price the same. You used to get 10 wings, now you only get six. Time to find another side to order with our pizza. But we still love having NYPD right around the corner…

And good evening from Northside.