I haven't written nearly as much on this site in the last year or two in part because I "blog" less and in part because I'm just doing it in more specialized places. I realized that by writing about all sorts of different things on knaddison.com I was creating 1 site with no focus when instead I could create 12 sites each with singular focus. The latter form is, of course, more useful to readers.

Here's an introduction for one site Nikki and I have been working on that we really enjoy: Ice Cream Denver.

Denver Ice Cream Review & Photo blog

Nikki loves Ice Cream. I don't mind it ;) And especially with our little daughter we were looking for a new project that would be a fun weekend errand. We started the site in September of 2010 and immediately posted a bunch of store locations. Shortly after we started posting photos of the various shops.

A few of my favorites:

Chalk Board Menus

Chalk board menus are common in the restaurant industry and definitely deliver a cutesy feeling at ice cream shops. For liks south it's painted on and cutesy, but not so practical (in spite of their hundreds of flavors). At sweet action it seems purely practical: they are often adding and removing items from their menu. Menus are a popular item on the site, so popular I created a listing page.

Old Timey / Antique Ice Cream Decor

Plenty of shops in Denver have adopted an "antique" or old-timey style. This is either because they are historic like Bonnie Brae or just as a result of embracing the style of a freezer, like Pajama Baking Company

Retro Ice Cream Designs

Several of the locations have "retro" designs that incorporate early-mid 20th century design elements with more modern aesthetics.

Paying attention to this topic is kind of fun. It helps us notice odd developments like this University of Denver Ice Cream Corner where we have two frozen yogurt companies "coming soon" at the same time that Jamba Juice closes a location only to have Ben and Jerry's add smoothies to their menu.

This year has been all about ice cream. We feel like we've nearly exhausted the topic by visiting the best ice cream shops in Denver (though additional research never hurt!). Next year we think we'll move on to malts and smoothies - Nikki's real favorite.