Category: 10 Things

10 Things to Love About Winter

LaurenLeave a comment

I don’t think it’s any secret that winter is not my favorite season.  Actually, it’s not my second of third favorite either.  As someone who is always cold — seriously don’t think my feet ever defrosted after getting into bed the other night — winter is my worst nightmare and I cope by keeping the heater on in my office 24/7 and declaring that “I hate it here!  I’m moving!” every time I have to go outside.  BUT, in an attempt to be more positive, I’ve come across a bunch of things that I actually do like about winter.  I think they’ll keep me going until April when spring weather finally shows up.

10 Things to Love About Winter

1. Award Shows!

Bet you didn’t see that one coming.  I’m sorry, but I love it all.  I love heading to the movie theater on a cold winter day.  I love talking Joey’s ear off about whatever movie we just saw.  I love reading what the critics and other moviegoers had to say.  I love a red carpet full of actors in crazy (sometimes good crazy, sometimes bad crazy) outfits.  I love rooting for the movies I liked and against the ones I didn’t.  And I love overzealously tweeting about it all.

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2. Comfort food.

Fact: winter makes hot oatmeal taste better, increased coffee consumption acceptable and constant soup-making totally normal.  Joey loves soup more than a normal human being probably should so this time of year is his jam.  I’m happy to oblige on the soup-eating spree because there’s no denying that nothing tastes better than hot soup on a cold night.

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3. Valentine’s Day.

Okay, call me a sucker but I love V-Day.  I think it probably has something to do with how I was raised to believe this was a big and important holiday. When my sister and I were little, my mom went all out with big helium balloons in our rooms when we woke up and Christmas-worthy presents — no joke, one year I got a car — so she’s pretty much ruined me for life 😛  I also seem to be impervious to bad moods on Valentine’s Day… knock on wood.

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4. Winter Birthdays.

I wonder if post-Christmas babies like having their birthdays in the dead of winter after all the holiday hoopla has passed.  I mean, I still enjoy celebrating them.  My dad and my nephew have birthdays in January and February, respectively and I definitely like the idea of having celebrations to look forward to once we’re finally back to that working-all-5-days-of-the-workweek thing.  We took my dad to True Food Kitchen on Monday night for his birthday and he loved it.  Who doesn’t?

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5. Denver Restaurant Week

I hate that DRW and Valentine’s Day can’t coincide, as it’s hard to justify going out for two expensive dinners two weeks in a row.  And yet, I somehow to manage justifying it every year.  I’m about to pop over to the DRW website now to stalk to the restaurant menus.  If you don’t have a restaurant week where you live, it’s 7 days where a bunch of restaurants offer a set multi-course menu for a set price (ours used to be $52.80, the altitude of Denver, for 2 people but it just changed to $30/person).  Picking just one (or 2 :D) restaurant out of the list is an agonizing decision every single year.

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6. Winter TV shows are back.

Season 3 of Girls premiered last Sunday.  Did you watch?  What did you think?  As much as I loved the first two seasons, I’m not so sure about this one.  Maybe my expectations were too high but I didn’t find it as funny as I usually do.  It’s a week later and I haven’t quoted a single line.  Shameless on the other hand, never disappoints.  Seriously love that show so much.

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7. The Super Bowl

Yeah, I really just said that.  I honestly couldn’t care less about the actual game — although I think I’m required to care if the Broncos make it — but the food, beer (or jello shots!), commercials and halftime show are what I live for.  The past two years we’ve thrown a party but this year’s shindig is still up in the air.  If worse comes to worse, I’ll make myself some game time snacks and watch with Joey.  Oh and actually be able to hear the commercials instead of listening to a room full of guys arguing about the game.

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8. Mardi Gras.

Okay, so Colorado Mardi Gras celebrations aren’t exactly like New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations (read: the only people celebrating are college kids who will use any excuse to get drunk), but I still look forward a surprise King Cake in the mail, watching live feed of Bourbon street online and cooking a Cajun meal in honor of the holiday.  Plus it’s the one time a year when I can wear a string of obnoxiously colored beads to work and feel cool.

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9. Colorado sunsets.

Fact: Colorado has the best sunsets.  I know you probably thought your state had the best, but you’re wrong.  Sorry.  Although I love summer and those sunsets are very pretty, they’ve got nothing on winter.  It probably also has something to do with the fact that daylight savings means the sun is setting as I’m driving home from work, so those vibrant blues, pinks and purples are just BAM! right in my face.  I went on Instagram yesterday to find 3 pictures of the sunset in a row.  It was pretty breathtaking though 🙂

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10. It makes spring feel that much better.

When the snow finally stops coming (although in Colorado, there could be snow all the way up to May…), warm weather becomes more the norm and bare trees are replaced by big colorful blossoms, it’s practically impossible to be in a bad mood.

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Happy Friday, all!

10 Things I’m Excited To Do In My New Denver Home

Lauren3 Comments

Well, we were all set to close on the 20th, but we got word that the very last piece of the puzzle, aka loan approval, had fallen into place, so our closing was moved up.  To Tuesday!  Commence seriously excited freak out.

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1. Knock down walls.

You can’t exactly do that living in an apartment.  One of the very first things we plan on doing after we get the keys, is knocking down the wall between the living room and the kitchen.  Open concept, baby!

2. Cook.

My mom had a gas stove when I was growing up and the whole “I can actually see a flame underneath my food!” thing is far superior to those ugly electric coils.  I didn’t do much cooking when I was still living at home so I can’t really say what the difference is between the two types of stoves, but I’m about to find out.

3. Check the mail.

Because my mailbox is attached to the front of my home.  No walking involved.  Okay, that sounds lazy.  When we first looked at our house, I noticed that the mailbox had a Fleur de Lis on the front.  I took it as a good sign.  Also, if anyone would like to be my snail mail pen pal, let me know.

4. Sit on the porch.

Please, Mother Nature, bring up some warm porch sitting weather so I can enjoy some weekend morning reading outdoors before that season that follows fall comes.

5. Have a housewarming party.

Again, please let there be enough warm weather in our future to host such an event.  Our house might be a tad on the small side… cough 877 square feet cough…but we have a big old back yard so unless we want to invite people over in 15 minute shifts, we’re gonna need some weather that allows people to be outside.

6. Decorate.

I do not have an eye for design.  Like none whatsoever.  But I am determined to try really hard to decorate our new home.  I have been obsessing over bedroom, kitchen and living room pictures on Pinterest for months.  Mostly in an attempt to keep myself motivated.  Lest I should be all gung ho when we move in, then fizzle out a month later and deem everything “good enough.”  Not that that’s ever happened before.

7. Greet trick or treaters and hang Christmas lights.

I’m crossing my fingers that our neighborhood is one where kids still go out trick or treating.  I mean, I don’t need hundreds of kids to stop by (I’ll leave that to my uncle’s neighborhood.  New Orleans just celebrates everything a little harder, don’t they?), but a few would be fun.  And wouldn’t you know, our front porch already has hooks for Christmas lights.  How perfect.

8. Garden.

Only half kidding when I keep saying I’m going to invite Joey’s mom over to take care of the veggie garden and my mom over to take care of the plants.  My whole life, I watched my mom tend to her garden religiously and vowed that I would never be a gardener, but now that we have a yard, I wanna garden so bad.  Go figure.

9. Park.

Two car garage, for the win!  Finding parking at an apartment complex is getting so old.  The previous owner had the roof of the garage fixed up before she sold it to us, so we’re good to go on adding a rooftop patio with a fabulous view of Denver, right?  Maybe one day 🙂

10. Leave it!

Okay, let me explain.  A lot of my desire to move to Denver was to enjoy all the things the city has to offer.  Restaurants, breweries, ice creameries and Coors Field!  I’m am beyond excited to leave behind the chain restaurants of the suburbs and explore a ton of unique restaurants that are minutes away.  We might even ride our scooter there.  Not even joking.

Closing, here we come!