Weekend Things

Lauren2 Comments

If I was a normal Coloradan, I would start this post with something like…

BRONCOS!!! OH MY GOD!!! SUPER BOWL!!! OH MY GOD!!!

But I’m not a normal Coloradan so instead I’ll just say hi, hope your weekend is going well!  Despite the fact that our whole house is yet again covered in a layer of dust, it’s been a great weekend around here.  The perfect mix of being productive and being totally lazy.  Friday started with dinner and a movie.

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We finally got around to cooking up some of those steaks we’ve had in the freezer.  Turns out our meat thermometer considers medium rare to be more like well done, but they were delicious nevertheless.

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We went to a new (to us) Denver movie theater and it was so cool.  It’s a tiny place with only a few theaters but there’s two floors and one has a full-service bar.  We saw 12 Years a Slave in a theater that probably sat 150 people tops.  It felt very Denver.  The movie was incredible but so hard to watch.  At the end, I realized my entire body had been tensed up through the whole thing.

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On Saturday I was up bright and early for some bridesmaid dress shopping.  This is me pretending to not know Hannah was taking a picture of the dress I decided on.  She gave us all the option of getting any style dress as long as they were all the same length and color but we all ended up liking the same one.  I’m so excited to stand next to my best friend in this dress come July!

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I came home to Joey working on our exposed brick wall so I took myself to the grocery store in an attempt to not go crazy from the noise and dust.  I’ve been going to the Sprouts near our house and I’m not really sure how I like it. On the one hand, it’s nice to shop at a more Whole Foods-like store (bulk bins galore and a Toms toothpaste section that I thought only existed in my dreams), but it’s also A) crowded and B) catered towards people who probably make 3-4 trips to the grocery store a week.  Can I get a full-sized cart please?  I bought myself this treat as a reward for braving the Saturday afternoon crowd.

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Lookie!  We still have to figure out how to make a better looking transition from corner of wall to brick, but I LOVE how this looks!  I apologized to Joey for having almost no faith in this project but he was right and it looks great!  We were going to pull some leftovers from the fridge, but my parents called me around 5 and invited us to dinner and that sounded like a much better plan 🙂

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We went to a new place — Jonesy’s Eat Bar — and were severely disappointed.  We got a free order of truffle fries for checking in on Yelp! (which gave this place 4/5 stars?!) and they were delicious but it all went downhill from there.  No one was wowed by their food and my mom was served a po boy on a HAMBURGER BUN.  That’s sacrilegious.  It also wasn’t cheap so I think it’s safe to say we won’t be going back there.

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Did I mention I lost my ID at the mall last weekend?  I swear the 20-year-old American Eagle employee I gave it to for a return never gave it back to me and she’s now out enjoying life as a 24-year-old.  We had planned on going out to see a band but instead we spent the night trying to locate our passports, which we found underneath an old laptop at the bottom of a box of DVDs.  By that point, we were over going anywhere else that night.  Instead I ate this piece of King Cake and watched SNL.

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Today has been half productive, half relaxing .  We staked out at the breakfast joint in our neighborhood and got some wedding planning taken care of — according to our wedding book, there’s lots to do in the 8-6 month period — then came home for football and an at-home manicure.  I feel uncomfortable every time I take a manicure picture, I swear I’m not trying to show off my ring I’m just right handed!

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Now I’m scrolling through the millions of Broncos-related Facebook statuses and wondering if we’d be expected to put up Broncos decorations if we threw a Super Bowl party.

Happy Sunday!

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!