It’s been a year since we launched Borealis! We created Borealis in January, meeting for lunches and after-kids-bedtime Google chats, figuring out how to edit PHP and writing up a few starter posts. Some close and very honest friends reviewed it for us in March, we tweaked and tested some more, and finally went public […]
Walking in a winter wonderland
December 17, 2012 by
Last year in Minnesota there was no winter. No, really. None. I went for a run in short sleeves on a sunny 50 degree Christmas day. It rained all day on New Year’s. The grass was green and the garden growing by March, and for a region in which snow in May is commonplace, spring […]
Backpacking with a toddler — Lake Maria State Park, take 2
December 12, 2012 by
My very first post for Borealis was recapping a backpack-in-to-a-cabin trip to Lake Maria State Park that my husband and I took with then 9-month-old Beatrice. It was one of those trips that barely tipped the scales into the “worth it” category. We had ran around beforehand scrambling to pack everything up. When we arrived […]
Borealis Holiday: Trip to the tree farm
December 4, 2012 by
Every year for the last four years we’ve gotten our Christmas tree from a tree farm. This is something I’d always wanted to do, but when we had babies and were both working we just opted for the greenhouse, where it is warm, quick, and they shake, bag, and tie your tree to your car […]
Borealis goes glam at Macy’s Lancome Beauty Event for Bloggers
November 5, 2012 by
Jen’s makeup routine was in a rut before becoming a stay-at-home-mom, and that status change hardly improved matters. Breanne needs to look like the professional she is and feel great in five minutes flat, since her toddler and soon-to-be newborn don’t exactly leave a lot of time for fussy routines. So when we were invited […]
Afternoon at the pumpkin patch
October 22, 2012 by
It is one of our family traditions: an October afternoon at the pumpkin patch. In the car on the way to Afton Apple Orchard today, the boys were counting up how many times they’d been there: Owen figured nine times, Noah had seven (counting his kindergarten field trip a month ago, of which he is […]
Marathon in progress
October 10, 2012 by
In 2005, a few years after we graduated college, my husband Adam decided to train for the Twin Cities Marathon. I didn’t think much of it and it didn’t affect our lives too much — he did some long runs, and I grudging cut some weekend gatherings short to get him home early enough to […]
Flour made fun: Mill City Museum
August 3, 2012 by
Minneapolis is Mill City, dontcha know? For fifty years, Minneapolis was the largest producer of flour in the world, and the Washburn A mill along the Mississippi river was the world’s biggest mill. It closed in 1965 and nearly burned down in 1991. The Minnesota Historical Society’s Mill City Museum is built into its ruins. […]