Weekend Things

Thanksgiving Week!  It’s my favorite, in case you didn’t know.  And even though my brain is mostly focused on pie crust and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and getting to eat the stuffing my mom and I made together last weekend, I would be remiss not to mention that we (and basically the rest of the county) are supposed to get pummeled by snow, starting tonight!  I’ll believe it when I see it 🙂

88f3c979-6dfa-4483-a192-41b883338d34

Friday night, Joey, Adam, Lori and I had dinner at FNG — I managed to order something other than sliders and was WOWED by my meatloaf — then headed to our second home, the Alamo Drafthouse, to see A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.  What a touching tribute to Mr. Rogers that film is!  I do not mean this as a brag, but I’m just a bit too young to have been a real Mr. Rogers watcher as a child.  However, I’ve seen enough clips (plus that moving documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? from last year) to have a sense of who he was and how he conducted himself in the world and Tom Hanks and Marielle Heller got it so right in this film.  I also found the way they told this story and formatted the movie to be pretty inventive.  It’s lovely!

704ed2b2-6cc3-48dd-882f-a3d76dfdda30

Saturday morning, I made us some gingerbread waffles while Joey got us coffee.  It took me like 10 minutes to locate the molasses I bought what feels like 9 years ago, but I finally did it and these waffles were delicious!  We also watched Thanksgiving Live on Food Network and now I’m wondering if I should be cooking two smaller turkeys rather than one giant one for Christmas??

Afterward, I made some salted caramel sauce for the apple pie I’m making on Wednesday (it only took me one try, which is quite the improvement from the THREE tries it took me last time I made it!) and made, not one, but two pie crusts after the first one was not to my liking.

3608df9b-70a7-4121-a76d-4bf30068876a

Have I mentioned we live at the Alamo?  We were back there at 3:45 to see Ford v Ferrari and it was mostly a good time!  It’s definitely got a slick, big budget, Hollywood movie feel, but whatever because Damon and Bale are both great and the story (which I had literally zero knowledge of before seeing the movie) was really interesting.  Mostly, I hope that’s Christian Bale’s real accent because I love to imagine him saying “bloody hell!” all the time.

47308afe-ad43-4d31-94d3-7bf1ac93fdd9

Back at home, we made some one of our favorite salmon dinners and watched The Last Black Man in San Francisco.  I genuinely loved it.  I thought the style was unique, the story worked on both a micro and macro level and I really truly felt for the two main characters.  Meanwhile, Joey fell asleep.  We managed to stay up for SNL afterward and… it was somehow a dud.  Come on now, Will Ferrell.

5170314b-c349-4f33-b2d4-bdb0f2732a60

We had a vet appointment for our little pup bright and early Sunday morning and though we planned to drop him off, then go to breakfast, they managed to get him all checked out within 20 minutes.  This is much preferable!  We dropped him off at home and headed to Sassafras, which we hadn’t been to in a really long time.  They’ve even moved locations since!  It’s still an old house in Denver, just a bigger one 🙂  I went with their chicken fried eggs and bison hash, which they are known for, but WHY CAN’T THEY SEASON THE HASH??  I don’t understand.  Anyway, it was still pretty good and Joey seemed happy with his chicken pimento biscuits.

That afternoon, we headed to Jory and Betsy’s new house and it’s so nice!!  The Cowboys game was on, but there were buffalo chicken nachos and Elliott was on the move, so I was pleasantly distracted ♥  Back at home, I made granola while Joey watched the end of the game and then we made salads for the short week before plopping down on the couch with leftovers and The Peanut Butter Falcon.  My heart!  I managed to not cry, but if this movie doesn’t pull at your heartstrings, you’re probably dead inside.  I was really moved by it!

Happy Monday!

Weekend Things

It’s November, it’s the Denver Film Fest, it’s the end of Daylight Saving Time!  Even though I feel like we skipped right over fall and headed straight into winter — I feel so mentally unprepared for snow and darkness and holiday madness — it’s not ALL bad, because it also means Avs games, the Denver Film Fest and more light at the beginning of the day (for a little while at least).

63a32a1e-5938-4f70-80b2-eea781315551165e4248-4196-4035-8b89-243f15f935f5

We’ve been Instagram-stalking the Yuan Wonton food truck for a couple of months and were FINALLY able to make it to one of their stops on Friday!  They had quite the crowd at Strange Craft Beer Company, but it was worth the wait because those dumplings and wontons and soup were all so spicy good.  They were out of soup dumplings by the time we got there, so we are already planning to find them again soon.

52f2116e-edcc-4dcf-a6e6-04dd819d47e22184cadf-8b4a-4cea-833f-38a71d3dcd08

Afterward, we went to our first Avs game of the season and… they lost, so we must be bad luck 😦  Loss aside, it was a good time and I was only sort of distracted by the many groups of people wearing Where’s Waldo costumes??

689f9565-c468-4373-967c-c5f2304529c7095a8526-4223-42be-9135-63b42f702111

Saturday morning waffles!  I made these Whole Wheat Pumpkin Waffles while Joey picked up coffee beans and then I used them to make a pumpkin spice latte that was NOT GOOD.  Oh well, because the waffles were great!  Our pup is very loungey but also very protective of his ball 😛  Later on, I took a pair of boots to Dardano’s to get re-heeled (they do the best job!) and then we completely cleaned out and re-arranged our closet.  It seriously felt so good.  Fall/winter sweaters are out!

36d1029a-4920-428d-be9b-2b2b99891760

I just want to tell you that I was greatly frustrated by the Denver Film Festival this year.  Months ago, we bought a ticket package (6 tickets at a discounted price), then realized the tickets would go on sale while we were in Rome.  We walked all the way back to our hotel, so I could access the wifi and buy the tickets.  The lineup was so good but ALL the movies I wanted to see were “Special Presentations” that we could not use our ticket package for.  UGH!!!  We ended up having to pick movies we weren’t all that excited for instead and I was really bummed.  That being said, our first movie, Saint Frances, ended up being wonderful, so what do I know!  We both really loved it ♥

Afterward, we headed to Arvada to have dinner with Steve, Lorna, Nick and Adam at the Arvada Tavern.  I dug the speakeasy vibe and their cocktails are so good!  We made it back home in time for SNL and though I do not love Kristen Stewart, I laughed (way too hard) at that Ginuwine “Pony” skit.

5e543d22-57c7-45ea-9354-b708edcb3fb0810d2cb6-bb81-4e51-9818-72577ae10bd8

I know people talk about getting an extra hour of sleep when we “fall back,” but um, we just woke up at the same time, except the clock read an hour earlier.  Boo!  I got my hair cut a few hours later and when I got back home, I lightly suggested going out for lunch before DFF Round 2, to which Joey suggested Cart-Driver and SAY NO MORE!  It happened to be pretty nice weather, so we had our pizza out on the patio and it was all perfect.  We saw Sybil and it was just okay.  You can’t win em all, I guess.

8bdf9d35-480c-4eb9-900f-bf34b49cdcb4

Later on, we cooked this Seared Steak with Horseradish Cream Sauce and Crispy Brussels Sprouts and it was AMAZING!  That sauce though ♥  My sister got a Plated subscription, then generously gifted this meal to us so we could try it out and not only was it really quick and easy, but super delicious.  Not going to brag too much, but I cooked that steak perfectly 😛  Plus, my sister is just the best.  Oh and we watched The King, which is somehow long but covers such little ground?  Only Timotheé Chalamet could pull of that bowl cut.  He was really good but Robert Pattinson?  Not so much.

What did you do this weekend??