nature walk~ nice stroll or death trap? you decide.

So, my dad come up to visit this weekend. He got here Sunday morning and we went to Art on the Rocks/The Outback. Kind of a thing we do each year. Anyways, after that we grilled some brats and drank some beer, it was soo cotton-pickin hot that we stayed in the house for most of the day. When it finally began to cool down, my dad and I went for a walk with Perry. We just took a walk up the road by our house to Silver Creek (not even a mile away). So, we got to the creek and just kept walking up the hill (a paved and used road). THEN! Up to the left of us, we heard a rustling in the woods, less than 200 hundred feet away. I first thought it was just a deer coming through. My dad says "uh-oh, it's a bear! Look up in the tree, there's the cub. We'd better turn around." He was pretty calm as he said this so I wasn't totally alarmed with fear yet.
We had already turned around and took a few steps when the mother bear sounded like she was coming closer~ rustling through the trees. We had the puppy with us and I can't believe he didn't get a whiff of what was coming at us- he had no clue. Well, I turned around a few times to see if she came out of the woods charging. But luckily, she didn't. We made it home safe.

That's it, that's the story. Not as good an ending as you would think, right? But, I did a good job of building the suspense, don't ya think?

Write em a letter

One thing I've learned.
If you're not happy with a product you bought, go to their website and write them an email explaining why you're not pleased.

This past month I have been less than satisfied with three products.

• The first item: Dole's Salad in a bag
• Complaint: Huge dead swollen bug found in salad (it was the last salad I had from that bag so who knows if I ate any other debris.
• Compensated: Four free bags of salad (And they wrote an extremely nice letter saying they appreciated being made aware of the situation)
• The second item: Lean Pockets (2 pockets per package)
• Complaint: Only one pocket was packaged (what happened to the other pocket)
• Compensated: Not sure yet, but they assured me a letter of apology.
• UPDATE~ they sent a letter along with two coupons for free pockets.
• The third item: Glad Force Flex Bags
• Complaint: The tie handles break easily when I tie the bag up.
• Compensated: Haven't heard back from them yet.
• UPDATE~ These guys sent a letter and a coupon for free trash bags, any variety

It's not that I try to get free things, it's more that I demand satisfaction.

Who ever said...

Whoever said being in the U.P. meant you never need an air conditioner is way off.
The heat here has been unbearable for 2 weeks now, and to top it off, NO RAIN either!
It's been in the 90's and super high humidity. And to go the beach for a long amount of time is pretty much out of the question, unless you want to get burned to a crisp. LOL
It's hard to be active in this weather during the day hours. But this morning at 7am(and a few other mornings) I was able to get out for an hour walk/run along US41 with Perry. He jumped in the lake to get a quick cool off and I would've jumped in, but I had my new running shoes on and I'm still not ready to get them dirty.

Work has been slow around here lately. Stupid Michaels opened up a week ago and they're offering 50% off framing, but what people don't realize (yet) is that Michaels hikes their starting prices up ALOT and then acts like they're giving people a great price. When in all reality their 50% off is our regular price. So, if any of you shop at Michaels and we find out you have, your'e automatically out of the loop. LOL, just kidding... but seriously, don't do it.

Slapshot!

I'm sure there's a few of you out there that are familiar with the movie Slapshot.

Well, we had an unexpected visitor come into our shop a few weeks ago. It was the Stickboy from the movie. His real name is Woody Espy. He had one line in the movie, "He's not playing, he's suspended." Cool, huh?
What was he doing in Marquette? Since the movie and playing hockey for some time, Woody was diagnosed with joint problems. He had surgery on every major joint in his body, there went his hockey career. Now, he is an artist, painting Native American themed artwork on sandpaper. He was up here to find a business who took original art on consignment. We don't get into that, but he wanted us to frame his originals! So we did, he had 12 pieces done here. They are hanging for sale next door, at Art U.P. Style.

Before Woody left, I had him sign Tom's Chiefs jersey that we had framed in a shadowbox as an example for customers. will show a picture later on.

Art of Framing

Our shop, has gone thru lots of changes since we bought it 2 1/2 years ago.
We used to share the space with another business - Art U.P. Style. Then Carol, the owner, moved out and we acquired all this extra space... What to do with the space... We decided to get another loan and get a nice amount of art supplies to offer the town. We knew it would be difficult to compete with all the online DickBlick's and CheapJoe's, but went with it anyway!

Above, are before and after pictures of the shop. We had a lot of walls to break down and we (by we, I mean Tom) repainted the walls and ceiling.

our pets

We have one cat, one dog, and one fish.

Here's Perry. He is my first dog. Tom has had dogs his whole life and knew what they are all about. We adopted Perry from the Marquette Humane Society. http://www.upaws.org/ We are not sure what mix he is. Definately, he has some Collie, and probably some Springer. He is almost 5 months old now and he knows most of his commands like sit, stay, leave it. He's a good boy. And just as I write this, gloating what a good boy he is, he has chewed on Tom's new book he just got. LOL!

This is Indi. He is almost 3 years old. We got him from The Pet Stop. He is the best cat I have ever had. He's sooo easy going and loves to come outside with us. He doesn't even try to run away when he's outside. When the neighborhood dogs come by Indi wants to hang out with them.


The fish. His name is Goose and he's a sunfish that Tom caught out of Goose Lake. We've had him for three years. He is hilarious to watch when we feed him worms. Goose will make a BIG splash when he goes for the worm as it dangles in the water!

quick summary

This first post is going to be a short summary about how we met to where we're at now.
Tom and I met in Kalamazoo, Michigan in the year 2000. We met online, he IM'd me then i IM'd him back, we met for the first time at the Kmart parking lot before going to Applebee's for nachos and beer. We've been inseparable since.

After living in Kalamazoo for 6 months together, we moved to Harbor Springs and stayed with my mom for one year! Then Tom proposed to me. We got married in a matter of months and made the big move to da UP. Like I said, we had no jobs and after weeks of looking found an awesome place to live. But still, no jobs. So we lived on our wedding money for awhile.
Finally, after a couple-a months we found jobs. My first job was working as a receptionist at a beauty salon- yay free haircuts! Tom's first job was testing snowblowers, lol.

Almost one year later, we bought an existing custom picture framing business, Art of Framing.
Now, we work together. Making the perfect Ma n' Pa shop!