Just another thing we do...

I'm not sure if we've mentioned this yet, but I'd be surprised if Meg hasn't; we like good beer. A lot. We love trying new beers whenever we can. We like going to the Yardhouse because it has over 100 beers on tap. We'll skip the first pitch of a Red Sox game to try a new beer across the street at Beer Works. We've been hanging out with a brewery near our college since we could both drink, Newport Storm.

Newport Storm Brewery tour in the college days

Newport Storm also introduced us to our favorite yearly vacation spot, Block Island. They used to do a pub crawl on the island the weekend before the fourth of July. That has since stopped, but the beer is still being brewed and we still try to get to Block Island once a year. Most recently, this past weekend. We don't embrace the pub crawl the way we used to, but we still walk to the bars and visit as many as we can.

They rented a bus to take us to the Oar!

One of the best place we go to try new beers is brewfests. At the beginning of September, there is a big beer fest in Boston called the American Craft Beer Festival (ACBF). We've had the chance to witness this magnificent event twice so far, and hopefully we'll be attending again soon. This year looks a little booked, but maybe next year. Last time we were able to go with a couple of friends and we had a blast. With over 120 breweries and 550 beers, it's hard not to.

The most recent beer fest we attended was the Newburyport Beer Fest last month. Meg actually works with the coordinator, and her parents live in Newburyport,  so we had plenty of incentive to go. They had a lot of great beers, including Oskar Blues out of Colorado. We stopped by the brewery when we were on our Colorado beer trip. (What's that you ask? Well, looks like I have another blog post to write.) There was also live music and a raffle. I ended up winning the last raffle prize which was a bunch of swag from Ipswich Ale Brewery. Not bad at all.

In addition to enjoying good beer, we also enjoy brewing our own. I'll save that for another blog post too, but here's a sneak peek. Enjoy!

Matt's Areas

There are two areas that Meg left out of the house tour, she told me I'm in charge of blogging about them, so here we go, finally. We've only been in the house for 8 months...


I've got the basement and the garage. There isn't much to them except storage, and my AWESOME work bench(es). We also have a beverage fridge. It holds mostly beer, as well as soda and juice for when we have guests with kids. It started out as a full fridge/freezer that the previous home owners left, but that died 2 weeks after we bought the house. We were able to "donate" that to someone that was willing to take it to the scrap yard. It saved me the hassle of getting rid of it and he made a few bucks.

We had to buy a washer/dryer set before we moved in. We found a set on sale for half price and couldn't pass it up. We called our mortgage company to make sure a big purchase was OK, and got them. We couldn't be happier with them.

Somehow we were able to inherit a bunch of things for free. We got a bunch of stuff from Meg's parents that didn't make the move from their house to their new place. That included a drill press, table saw and a router with a table. We also got a bunch of cabinet pieces that we need to decide what to do with.

With our neighbor packing up and driving across the country, they're getting rid of a bunch of stuff too. So far, they have generously given us an old TV and stand as well as a bunch of stuff they put on the road for free, including a set of sawhorses. I ended up chopping the stand in half, putting the TV on the bottom half and using the top half in the garage to hide all the gasoline, motor oil and other home owner liquids. My office has also recently changed locations and got a whole bunch of new office furniture. Anything that wasn't going to the new space was up for grabs. Storage was a little confusing in the basement, so I grabbed what I thought would be useful. The first thing I put my name on was my new work bench. It's a huge table, 3'x7'. It's already been great. There was a sheet of glass on top that we'll show you in another post after we up cycle it.

The garage is a little tight, but we make it work. The lawn tools (including my reel mower!) are in the garage with the garden tools and other outdoor stuff while the workshop stuff is in the basement.

Eventually, and hopefully soon, we need to fit a 1970 El Camino in the garage. That will entail a lot more blogging from me, so stay tuned for that.