I recently ordered cabinets and they were shipped to me on a pallet, and I kept it just in case I could think of a way to upcycle it instead of throwing it away.

My mom sent me picture the other day of a pallet tree, and I just had to try making one for Christmas! You can make two trees from one pallet. Geometry for the win!

Thursday, August 6: Arrival and UVA

In August, Ashton and I made a trip to Charlottesville, Virginia. After about a nine-hour drive, we arrived Thursday evening. Ashton drove the first half when it was pouring down rain. I drove the second half when we got into the mountains. I'm used to driving on flat Indiana roads, so the mountains took some getting used to.


Right before we got to Charlottesville, we stopped at some scenic views along the route. It was beautiful! Now I understand why Ashton misses living in Virginia so much. The mountains are breathtaking.

Ashton's friends Lyndsey and Ryan so kindly let us stay at their house. They have the cutest dogs and cats: Rocky, Cody, Jasper and Oliver. 


That night, we went to Cafe Catura for dinner, then to the Biltmore for some drinks. The nightlife mostly consisted of frat brothers and girls dressed in weird outfits--which makes sense because it's a college town. A giant Jenga set was calling our name, so we played a couple games.


In the middle of them, a peculiar lady--in her mid forties, maybe--said she was new in town and she asked to watch us, and she joined us for a game or two. She gave me weird vibes, but she was nice. By the end of the night, we were exhausted so we headed back to the house.

Friday, August 7: Wineries, Wineries, Wineries

Friday began with a scrumptious--I love that word--breakfast at Hot Cakes. Ironically they didn't have pancakes, so we got some sandwiches.


This was the big wine tasting day we had been waiting for! We started out at Veritas, then made our way to Afton Mountain, Cardinal Pointe, Pollak, and Kings Family. I stocked up on some great wine.

October 3rd. Not only is it Mean Girls Day, but Mary and I went to the best concert! Joywave performed at the Hi-Fi in Fountain Square with Kopps and Grace Mitchell as their opening acts. The venue, a bar with a stage in the back, was intimate with a maximum occupancy of 195 people. The show was sold out.

Kopps was up first. The lead singer came out with a goblet full of who-knows-what and gold leggings. The whole band had a sports jersey thing going on with their wardrobe. I'm not quite sure what that theme was about, but it was funny to see the guitarists dance around in jerseys. They had choreography with the lead singer and everything.

They played about 8 or 9 songs, but I only knew one called "Dumb." I think it popped up on a playlist on Spotify when I was out running one day--great song to run to, by the way.



Kopps's lead singer was super energetic and interacted with the crowd--so energetic that I couldn't get a decent picture of her. At one point, she gave away a medal to whom she felt was the best dancer, which was actually just a little plastic thing you could pick up at the Dollar Store, but it was hilarious. She brought the winner up on stage and did a little booty shake on him after placing the medal on top of his head because it was too small to fit around it.

Of course, the band closed their set with "Dumb," and the crowd went crazy. I still have the tune stuck in my head.

Grace Mitchell performed next. I recognized three of her songs, "NoLo," "Raceday," and "Broken Over You"from listening to a radio station on Apple Music. I didn't know she was going to even be at the Joywave concert until we got there, but I'm sure glad she was.

Grace had a certain confidence about her, but not in an arrogant way. She sang with passion, and the lyrics were heartfelt. I could tell that she wrote the songs herself by her performances of them. She made a couple jokes--I can't remember exactly what about now, but that made her more personable and seem like she was enjoying herself.



After her set, Grace stood in the crowd to watch Joywave. She stood right next to me! I told her that her performance was awesome, and she seemed so humble about it. During the jumping up and down, we bumped into each other a couple times. As of now, she's the most famous person I've met and/or touched. That sounds kind of creepy as I'm typing it...but it's true!

Joywave was even better than when I saw them earlier this summer at the Alt103 Birthday Bash at White River State Park. Their songs are so catchy! I might not always know what their lyrics mean, but their songs just make me want to dance and jump around--which is exactly what everybody did at the concert.

Daniel, the lead singer, talked to the audience and told us a couple stories. I wish more artists did that. We were so close, I could have reached out and touched him!



Joywave played pretty much every song from their newest album, "How Do You Feel Now?" and a couple older songs from a previous record. The crowd's favorite song seemed to be "Destruction." A couple guys yelled out "Play 'Destruction' again!" after they performed it, and Daniel said something like, "We'll see what happens later." There's a break in "Tongues" after the bridge when Daniel had everyone get down low and get ready to jump up. When we jumped, the band switched to "Destruction" for the second time. It's a great song worth playing twice!

I wish I could relive that whole concert. From the venue to the performances, how close we got to the stage, and even the parking spot we found right in front of the building, everything was perfect!

Day nine of our trip was quite possibly one of my favorites.


We started off the day by taking a walk around Schaffhausen and looking at the shops. Wait, no, that's a lie. We started with breakfast at Cafe Vordergasse of course! That day they had Bircher Muesli, a Swiss oatmeal full of walnuts, fruit, and deliciousness.


After breakfast, we bought some flowers for Ladd and Caroline as a "Thank you" for letting us stay with them. The whole trip wouldn't have been the same without them.

Day eight—noooooo, this is almost the end of our trip—was full of more driving and sightseeing.


First, Laura's family, Ashton, Stephen, and I went to Gabriella's, a pizzeria, in Landstuhl. The pizza was better than Paradox, and they gave us little chocolates in the shape of bugs when we payed—again with the chocolate bugs! Maybe that trend will work it's way over to America soon.


We took the Autobahn back to Schaffhausen, making a couple stops in the Black Forest on the way. The mountains were beautiful. Photos don't do them justice.

Even the breakfast in hotels is delicious in Europe! That's how we started our seventh day at Hotel Europa.


Ashton, Stephen and I ventured off to Bad Dürkheim, home of the the largest barrel in the world, Dürkheimer Fass. Instead of holding wine, though, this barrel has a restaurant inside!


Naturally, we had to start the day with some wine tasting, so we got some flights with a light lunch. As usual, the food and wine were tasty.

The sixth day was all about going to Germany! Of course, first, we had to start out our day by having breakfast at Café Vordergasse. I'm craving it as I type this. So good! I had a brioche and my first 4-minute egg!


Ashton's friend from Alabama, Laura lives on an Air Base in Ramstein, so we made a trip to go see her and her family.

The Autobahn was fun! Stephen drove the rental car and at one point I think we were moving at 120 mph, which is the fastest I've ever travelled in a car. Most of the Autobahn doesn't have a speed limit, so cars were going a lot faster than we're used to in America. There are some sections with speed limits, but we only ran into a couple of those. I drive like a grandpa, so the speed was as thrilling as it was scary. I slept in the backseat for most of the trip—ha ha.

On our fifth day, we took a boat ride to Zürichorn for some sightseeing. We walked around to get a feel for what our options were for lunch and ended up getting China Garten Take Away.


We walked around downtown Zürich and stopped by Gröss-Munster, Fraumünster, and St. Peter's Church. St Peter’s has the largest clock face on a tower in Europe.


I splurged on souvenirs at Teddy’s Souvenir shop and bought a bunch of keepsakes to take home for family and friends—of course this included Swiss chocolate! We stopped at Teuscher, a chocolatier, and they had very ornate chocolates, a lot in the shape of bugs. For some reason we saw this trend a lot at most of the chocolatiers.

Of course, as any other day we spent in Switzerland, we began our day with breakfast at Café Vordergasse. The rest of the day was a little different because we ventured out of Schaffhausen to Zürich, where Ladd and Caroline have an apartment.


The apartments in Zurich are so much different than the Unite States. They’re compact, yet functional, and they don’t waste space that isn’t used. I plan on living like this when I have a house of my own.


We took a tram to Pardeplatz and ate at the Zeughausekeller. I forget exactly what I ordered, but it was some kind of sausage and warm potato salad. Either way, it was delicious!

On the third day, we ate breakfast at Café Vordergasse—do you see a trend occurring here? There are reasons we ate there every morning. The staff is so friendly, the food incomparably delicious, and the atmosphere is just plain magical.


After breakfast, the trio (Ashton, Stephen and I) drove to Zürich to meet Morten. Then, we drove to Arth to catch a train to the top of Rigi. By then we were all hungry, so we had some bratwurst, goulash, and fries amongst other things at Rigi Pic—of course we had to have some wine with it, too!

We began our second day with yet another delicious breakfast from Café Vordergasse. To this day, I still crave the croissant and nut bread in the morning.


On Tuesdays, Schaffhausen has a local market, almost like a farmer’s market. Ashton and I walked around downtown to take a look at what the vendors had to offer, and then we visited the Information Center to see if they could provide us with any info on the local wineries. They said it was a little early in the season for wine tasting, and most require reservations and a group of 3 would be too small. They were wrong, but I’ll tell you about that later.


Ashton, Stephen, and I (the trio) went for a walk along the Rhein until we got to Rhein Falls.

Ashton, Stephen, and I took a trip to Europe! I've taken a while to write about it, considering we got back in April, but we had such a great time!


The first day was by far the longest. We drove to Chicago, then we flew from Chicago to Berlin and from Berlin to Zürich on AirBerlin. The flights were long and I didn't sleep for more than an hour. Luckily, we had empty seats on our 8-hour flight and we could spread out. I had two seats to stretch out in, but it's almost impossible to get comfortable enough to sleep restfully on a plane. Luckily there were monitors on the back of the headrests, so we played games and watched movies to occupy our time.


In Zürich, we met Stephen's cousin, Morten, who showed us to the train station. We had about a 45 minute train ride to Schaffhausen, where we stayed the majority of the trip. Morten’s parents, Ladd and Caroline, own Café Vodergasse in downtown Schaffhausen and so graciously allowed us to stay in their apartment above it.


We had the most delicious lunch at the café around noon with Morten and Jane, Morten’s sister. The zucchini and tomato quiche with a garden salad was so fresh, and a much needed pick-me-up after the long flight. We were thrown off by the time difference, but we decided to power through until the end of the day to adjust to Swiss time. That wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

I couldn't possible fit all these photos in my blog posts, so I decided to upload a slideshow of them below.

After posting a couple photos on Facebook of lamps I created out of iron pipe fittings, I received a variety of positive feedback. I decided, since I enjoyed making the lamps so much, to create an Etsy page!

You can check out the lamps and details at etsy.com/shop/EricVanDyke