Erik and I went to an exhibit at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis last weekend. It’s called “Tomte: the Gnome, the Myth, the Legend.” And, it is delightful! A tomte, short for gårdstomte, is a spirit that watches over farmsteads in Sweden. They are often depicted as tiny old men with long beards and tall, pointy, red hats, though there have been some variations on their headwear. The tomte exhibit is spread throughout the…
Last month, Hubby and I had a free Saturday with nothing planned, which doesn’t happen real often. We decided to go out-and-about to wherever struck our fancy. Erik wanted to visit a site in Minneapolis that he had driven past many times without realizing it existed. Somehow he learned of it and thought I would like to see it. As we drove up to this striking landmark on a hill in a quiet Tangletown neighborhood,…
It has been too long since I’ve blogged. That’s what moving to a new home after 30 years will cause – upending-the-blog chaos. Hubby and I are in our new home, still working on getting settled. You know what? It feels an awful lot like the months we spent getting our old house ready to sell. That means I can continue using the image tag “House Excavations” at the top of this post for a…
Hubby and I have had a crazy-busy couple of months with getting the house ready to sell. So busy, in fact, that I haven’t had any time to blog. We’ve finally wrapped up all of our home renovations and are in the selling part of the process. I wanted to write a final post highlighting a few of the more interesting projects we finished. During September and October, we painted, and painted some more, and…
Denis P. Gardner was Minnesota’s National Register Historian. It was a role that was perfect for him because he was so passionate and particular about documenting Minnesota’s historic places. I had the honor of getting to know Denis by serving on the State Review Board, which reviews nominations of Minnesota properties to the National Register of Historic Places. The State Review Board and National Register Historian fall under the auspices of the State Historic Preservation…