Weekend Things

Two nights out with friends, a trip to the Farmers’ Market, much Saturday relaxation, beer brewing on Sunday morning, seeing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again with my mom and sister late Sunday afternoon and to cap it all off, Joey making me dinner.  So even though I think I was feeling sort of crabby on Saturday afternoon, I’ve all but permanently deleted that memory from my mind because the rest of the weekend was too good!

Oh and I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and only cried like five times 😛

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Friday afternoon, we met Hannah and Josh at Community for some happy hour action and oh my gosh, has a cuter baby dino ever existed??  I spend a lot of time thinking “Mason is growing so fast, where is the time going?!” but when I saw him sitting in the restaurant high chair, he looked positively teensy.  He can now do things like feed himself cereal pieces and pull himself up to standing!  Also, we ordered approximately a million plates of food and it was all really good.  We had to grab gelato up the street afterward, because there was no AC in the restaurant and it was SO HOT so we needed a way to cool off 🙂

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We woke up Saturday and headed straight to the Farmers’ Market and it was blissfully the opposite of what the last visit was like, THANK GOD.  We left caffeinated — first stop is ALWAYS Pig Train for nitro iced coffees! — and with peaches and thee fluffiest pita that I am so excited to try.

Not going to lie, much lounging happened during the rest of the day and it was perfectly wonderful.  We watched Ant-Man for the first time and I’ve gotta be honest, it was sorta dorky.  If Paul Rudd wasn’t in it, I probably would not have been interested.  Someone could have warned me about close up shots of ants!  I still have PTSD from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.  

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I cracked open my “Melonilla” kombucha and I think it’s one of the best I’ve ever made!  I absolutely love the vanilla flavor and it’s perfectly carbonated.  Unlike the lime-ginger I made last week that I keep making Joey open for me because it’s explosively carbonated… Oh and we made a trip to our homebrew store for ingredients and got the trim and door painted on my little library.  Just needs to stencil work and it’s ready to go in the ground!

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We met Bobby and Becca at The Source later on for dinner at Comida.  That taco platter is a beaut and all of the tacos were good, but for me, the grilled taco still reigns supreme so I’m probably only ordering those from here on out!  Since we were so close to a handful of breweries, — but can you really be anyplace that’s NOT close to a handful of breweries these days? — we walked over to the Great Divide Barrel Bar for a beer.  There, we reminisced about how perfect the wedding was and I kept hearing myself say stuff like “I remember, at our wedding…” and felt like a real old married person.

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We woke up Sunday and, while Joey got our beer brewing, I made us pancakes and then we had like four hours to kill while we brewed.  I posted a few Sunday clips on my Instagram story and told Joey “it looks like I’ve done a million things today but I’ve really just done like 5 minutes of all of them!”  Those things being garden harvest/upkeep, black bean pressure cooking, reading, a little workout/yoga session and watching the OG Mamma Mia! because I needed to prep for sequel time later.  I was incredibly embarrassing dancing around to “Dancing Queen” but I can’t help it!  Also, that synth sound at the beginning of “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” gives me life!

As for the sequel, as my mom said afterward, “it’s not a good movie but it’s so much fun!”  That fleet of ships carrying dancers performing “Dancing Queen” made me the happiest I’d ever been.  Also, Lily James is a knockout, Jessica Keenan Wynn is a dead ringer for Christine Baranski and I was very very thankful for far fewer musical numbers by the three, ahem old mature men.  Cher doesn’t have a huge role or much screen time but she is a LEGEND, so we should feel lucky any time she graces us with a performance.

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I came home to this stunning dinner that tasted even better than it looked and most importantly, didn’t involve me lifting a finger, except the one I used to swipe my credit card when I bought the salmon on my way home.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s nothing better than having a homemade dinner prepared for you!

What did you do this weekend?!

The 3rd of July

Right now, my brain is a jumble of thoughts like, “wait, what day is it??”  “Which member of the family has a teeth cleaning today??”  “Will I have this headache forever??”  “Were the past three days real or just a perfect dream??”  We spent two days in a tiny house village and it was the most entertaining!  Bobby and Becca got married and the wedding was SO perfect!   The 4th of July was low key, with spur of the moment dessert plans and our dog didn’t give a $&!% about firework noises.  So despite how discombobulated I feel, everything is actually very fine and good.

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The wedding was in Lyons, so Joey and I decided to make a mini-vacation of it and spend a few nights up there.  We headed up Monday night, where we proceeded to check into our tiny house and were SO delighted by it!  I think we’d been there all of two minutes when I proclaimed “I live here now!”  In all seriousness, staying here was the most fun… but only for two nights 😛

Afterwards, we walked to dinner.  We had our hearts SET on this taqueria for WEEKS but found out that morning that it’s closed on Mondays!  WHY?!  But it was okay because Oskar Blues was our back up and despite it’s mediocre star rating on Yelp, it was actually really great.  I loved my beer and the fish tacos were perfectly fried and had an amazing buttermilk sauce.  Only acted slightly like children when we got back to our tiny house but to be fair, any space with a ladder, is a space not to take yourself too seriously in.

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Saturday morning, we walked over to The Stone Cup and had an impressive-for-a-coffee-shop breakfast of Huevos Rancheros x2 then did a little bit of exploring at the LaVern M. Johnson Park.  That water was FRIGID, but it was very hot outside and we could not bear the thought of walking all the way back to our village so we forded the river, like the true adventurers we are.  We also walked into town so Joey could eat a triple scoop of ice cream (“you only let me have three scoops yesterday!” is a real thing he said to me the next day…) but mostly the day was really low-key and I even finished Order of the Phoenix and moved onto Half-Blood Prince!

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The wedding started at 4 PM and what can I say except that it was PERFECT ♥  So well organized, so pretty (The Lyons Farmette is just lovely!) and just so full of love.  Not to be too sappy, but witnessing this couple’s love for each other and all their family and friends’ love for them was truly incredible.  I felt so honored to be a part of it and just so happy for the two of them.  Also drank approximately 50 glasses of wine, danced to Backstreet Boys, petted an alpaca and just had thee most fun.

Also, Marriage Advice: Find someone who wants to act a fool on the dance floor as much as you do!

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Honestly, this 4th of July felt so weird!  Everyone on was out celebrating and I just felt like “but the big celebration was yesterday!”  Our 4th of July felt like a haphazardly thrown together afterthought, but that being said, it was actually really great.  A couple of weeks ago I was considering prepping some ribs ahead of time so we could grill but then Joey told me he’d round up a few meal options and we could just decide day-of what we felt like.  HE’S A GODSEND.

We ended up feeling like pizza so, after picking up breakfast burritos for the road, retrieving Andi from my parents, inspecting our garden (snap peas looking good!) and resting for a bit, we headed to Whole Foods for pizza ingredients and made the spontaneous decision to try no-churn ice cream for dessert.  It all turned out even better than expected!  We did one red sauce/mozzarella/roasted garlic/black olive/basil pizza and one olive oil/mozzarella/fig/goat cheese/arugula/walnut pizza (+ shishitos grilled to perfection) and I loved both so much.  Plus, the ice cream turned out SO GOOD.  It was MEGA-CREAMY and we threw some peppermint extract (1 teaspoon) and mini chocolate chips in.  This feels life-changing!  Also, our neighbors set off fireworks late into the night but Andi didn’t even lift his head at any of them.  THANK GOD.

I hope you all had the best 4th of July but for me, it was all about the 3rd 🙂