Sunday Funday: Exploring Houston

From time to time, Will and I jump in the car and explore our large city. We try to find attractions that cost little to no money because... 1) It's a challenge. 2) It fits the budget.  3) You can really find strange and unusual places off the beaten path.  So after being cooped up for a few days, due to a cold, it was a good time to stretch our legs and explore. 

On this trip, we hit 3 spots.  Our first stop was The Beer Can House.  Admission is $2. $5 for a guided tour. Since we got there 10 minutes before closing, we just walked up and snapped a few pictures.

This house was 18 years in the making and is covered with approximately  50,000 beer cans and bottles.  The owner is a retired upholster from Southern Pacific Railroad and one day he just decided to cover his house with aluminum cans. 

Our second stop was The Art Car Museum.  Every year, Houston has an Art Car parade and since I miss it every year, I figured this was the next best thing. Admission is free.

Here are the cars we saw. We weren't able to stay long because Cora was a little scared of these strange and eclectic cars.

Our last (and my favorite) stop was at The Blue Trees.

Artist, Konstantin Dimopoulos, was commissioned to recreate his outdoor living project to generate awareness to the many trees Houston lost to the 2011 drought and the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.  The trees were painted with biologically-safe, water-based ultramarine mineral pigments. When I accidentally  brushed up against the trees, the blue paint came off very easily and the texture resembled chalk. There's no telling how long these trees will stay blue, but for now, they do make a very striking statement.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Working at The Food Bank Feeds The Soul

Today Melissa, Cynthia (co-workers/friends), and I took today off to work at The Houston Food Bank. Our company gave us an opportunity to do volunteer work on company time. Since I knew we were going to be doing some manual labor, I figured I'd get in gear and wear some workout clothes. Here are the details...

Bitten green t-shirt - Steve & Barry's

Championship capri workout pants - Target

Bodybugg - 24 Hour Fitness

Asics Kayano Trainer shoes - Academy

Cans of peaches - Donated to The Houston Food Bank

So our morning started in the docks. We made an assembly line and loaded up the trucks. There are so many people there coming and going that after a while we a little in the way. We decided it was time to move to a new project. We spent the rest of our volunteer time making pantry packs for families of four. We spread 9 boxes over a pallet. Each box must contain 8-10 cans of veggies and fruit, 1 box of cereal, and 4 bottles of water. After those essentials, we were allowed to fill the boxes to the top with items like, peanut butter, jelly, cheese, chili, crackers, and even some candy. Pretty much whatever we could get our hands on. We packed aprox 60 boxes of food. We could have done more, but we started to run out of water and veggies and more volunteers were coming in. All in all, it was a great experience. I'm really glad we had this opportunity to help our community. Volunteering helps feed the soul and it was also a great workout. According to the Bodybugg, I burned 567 calories at The Food Bank! That's way better than the 1 calorie/minute I would normally burn sitting at my desk.