Hi!  It’s Monday, I’m feeling inexplicably out of it (I even went to bed on time!) and my thoughts on the weekend are swimming around unorganized in my brain.  Can I still blame the time change or are we past that point?

This weekend was a mix of highs and weird irritability on my part.  Sometimes the sun is shining and you have nothing to stress about, but you can still be in a bad mood for no apparent reason.  I’m not going to worry about it too much.  Especially since there are far more happy pieces to focus on.

Friday night, I had my heart set on dinner and a movie so we headed to Avanti, followed by The Florida Project and I was fully in my happy place.  We tried out Kaya Kitchen for the first time, and if eating dumplings off a cardboard plate is wrong, I don’t want to be right.  I was also really into those shrimp tacos.  They were generously drizzled in an avocado créma that I want to drizzle on everything from here on out.

Look, I had heard really good things about The Florida Project and I did like it but I wouldn’t say I loved it.  The kids in it are either incredibly natural actors or a lot of this movie was just candid, I’m not sure which.  There are a lot of funny moments but underneath all the antics, this movie is SAD.  For what it’s worth, no matter how much I do or don’t like a movie, settling into our seats at the Mayan and feeling like it’s finally “movie season” is what I live for ♥

Saturday in a nutshell: pumpkin pancakes (MAJOR YUM), grocery shopping, chilling at home for lunch, new kombucha carbonation perfection, walking at Cheesman and filling up on those fall vibes with 3 PM shadows, a coolness in the air and just a few trees with red leaves left.  We were thisclose to taking a spontaneous trip to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science but it was A) too nice outside to spend the day inside and B) we wanted to be able to spend a good chunk of time there without feeling rushed, so we’ll save that for another day.  I still wanna go though!

Saturday night was Fakesgiving!  If you’ve been reading for a while, go ahead and skip this redundant explanation, but for everyone else, Fakesgiving is that day when I test out a bunch of potential Thanksgiving side dishes then we eat them all for dinner.  It’s sort of my favorite and it’s been a tradition going on seven years now!  Can you even believe it?!  Joey made those little squash plates and his presentation gets a gold star from me.  I think the cauliflower gratin may have been my favorite but the glazed shallots are pretty incredible too.

We popped in er, on(?) a movie called The Invitation and I’ll just tell you it was really freaking strange.  Joey loves horror and thriller films but I do NOT, so I was on edge the entire time, just waiting something to happen.   A little over halfway through, we paused to make a quick dessert for two.  Hasselback Apples with vanilla ice cream hit the spot and though I had to get up from the couch every ten minutes to take it in or out of the oven, it’s actually really easy to make.  SNL afterwards and look, I’m really trying to put out positive and supportive vibes for my fellow women but Taylor Swift is making it REALLY difficult.  Her second performance was way more tolerable but yikes, that first one was so cringe-worthy.

By now you know the Sunday drill, right?  Starts with breakfast, progresses to alone time while Joey heads out to watch football and somewhere in there is meal prep and if I’m behaving, sitting down to read instead of just scrolling on my phone until I’ve melted my brain enough for one day.  I read this article over lunch and tried to make a promise to myself NOT to let my addiction to stress get the best of me this holiday season.  I should probably expel on this in a future post.

On Saturday, when we got home from the grocery, I took a few minutes to wash/chop all our herbs and greens and it’s really making dinnertime way less stressful.  For instance, when 6 PM rolled around on Sunday, all I had to do for dinner was bake some tofu and make a quick dressing.  It was seriously so nice!

Hope you all had a nice weekend!