Tag: July

Best of July

Lauren1 Comment

You guys. July, my favoritest of months, is coming to an abrupt end.  And I’m not ready.  Wah wah.  In an attempt to savor the time I have left with my favorite month (and that would be just this one last day), I thought it’d  be fun for me to do a little “Best of July” recap.

Things started off with a bang when the 4th of July, my best friend’s engagement announcement and my birthday all took place within the first 10 days of the month.  Whew!

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I’m usually pretty disappointed by the 4th of July, but this year was pretty darn good — must’ve been all the Great Divide Colette I drank… — plus a fun red velvet cake/friend-filled birthday and an upcoming wedding makes me think 24 is going to be a pretty good year.

July was also a good month for trips to Red Rocks.  I managed two trips in one week — back to back, no less! — and had the opportunity to see The Hunger Games and John Mayer is the world’s most beautiful entertainment venue.

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I know I should be used to how amazing the giant red rocks that make up the amphitheater are, or the fact that it’s a naturally occurring work of pure beauty, but I’m not.  Also not used to climbing the crazy amount of stairs to get into the amphitheater.  Can we get an escalator up here, please?

Being at the peak of summer, July can sometimes be miserably hot (and wildfire-y…), but this year has been pretty mild, making it perfect for fun weekend adventures.  My favorites being the wedding venue shopping I did with Hannah and Josh, a hike in Boulder and ice cream outings, naturally.

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This summer was almost a hiking bust, but we finally got a good one in.  Say what you will about Boulder, but there is no better view than those flatirons or what you can see from the top of those flatirons.  On the wedding venue front, I’m happy to report that a decision was made and I think they picked the perfect spot.  I know it’s not even my wedding, but I even feel a huge sense of relief now that the venue/date have been taken care of.  Celebratory ice cream for all!

I know I should probably enjoy my own birthday more than anyone else’s but I think my mom’s birthday took the [red velvet] cake this year.  Family, movies in the park, sangria, fabulous food and more sangria?  That just can’t be beat.

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I can’t think of a person more deserving of multiple birthday celebrations.  I truly hope she had as good of a time as I did, because I know I had a blast.  Now if only the red velvet cake I made for the occasion had been a little prettier…

Of course, there were a bunch of little things that A) didn’t make the blog and B) I can’t remember at this exact moment in time, but here’s one last hurrah for Farmers’ Market trips, weekend pancakes, sunny morning runs, CSA veggie dinners, Rockies games, beer drinking, and lots of laughter. 

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I, for one, am pretty excited to see what this next month has to bring.  Especially in terms of the house buying process.  Bring it on, August!

Weekend Things

Lauren6 Comments

Ahoy!

Oh, sorry.  Confession: every Sunday at 9 AM I sit down and watch Sandwich King on Food Network.  I watched Jeff Mauro win Next Food Network Star and I find him to be so much fun.  Plus his 4-year-old son Lorenzo (seriously, that’s his name)?  Adorable!  Anyways, I’m watching as I [start to] write this post and it’s all about seafood sandwiches (crab cake sliders, yes please!), hence the “ahoy.”

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Other highlights of the weekend included my second trip to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.  This time with my mom and my sister.  We planned on picnic-ing in the grass before the play started, but it started raining right as we parked, so a car picnic it was!  We all picked out our own dinners at the Boulder Whole Foods beforehand — oh hey, sister’s employee discount — and it was CA-RAZY in there!  I can’t believe how many people go grocery shopping on a Friday night.  Or maybe that’s just health-food-loving Boulderites.

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My mom forced me to get this soda and it was horrible!  It seriously tasted like carbonated cough medicine.

As luck would have it, the rain stopped right as we finished our picnic.  Sidenote: it rains every.single.time. I go to the Shakespeare Festival.  It’s usually just a sprinkle, but still, what are the odds of that?  We saw Macbeth and I was pretty excited as I’ve only ever seen comedies in the past.  I was ready to see how the CSF handled something darker.

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Look at the Koi and the cute little turtle swimming at University Pond.

My two cents: I really did not enjoy the new direction the CSF took this year by modernizing the plays.  All the lines stayed the same but Macbeth, for instance, was set in a more-modern-day Afghanistan.  I think they were trying to make the plays more relevant.  Well call me old-fashioned but I liked going to the CSF in the past so I could be transported back to Shakespeare’s time.

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About three-quarters of the way through the play, the wind really picked up and there was some crazy lightening.  I thought it was really adding to the play, but the CSF crew seemed to think it was a little unsafe so they sent us inside.  About 15 minutes later, they called it and we headed home 😦

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We had almost nothing planned on Saturday and I can honestly tell you, I couldn’t have been happier about it.  Instead, I got to lounge around and watch TV, enjoy a relaxing facial, go shopping and cook up a delicious homemade pizza.  We also happened upon a tiny (and pretty disappointing) Farmers’ Market right by our place.  I was hoping to find some good cherries, but instead I had to go to Whole Foods and spend much more than was probably necessary to get some Rainier cherries.  In my humble opinion, they are the best.

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Saturday ended with S’mores!  We had graham crackers, Hershey’s chocolate and marshmallows, we just didn’t have a campfire.  But you know, sometimes you just have to make do, so we may or may not have taken apart our grill to be able to toast the marshmallows.  Can we all agree that the charred marshmallow is the best part and the overwhelmingly chocolatey Hershey’s square is the worst?  I have a feeling any chocoholic readers out there are now questioning my sanity.

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This picture pretty much sums up Sunday — aside from me watching Sandwich King, of course.  When you purchase the warning track suite, they automatically give you 8 tickets for another game in one of the suites, so this was our view for the game.  Not too shabby, eh?  Unfortunately we lost — although our catcher didn’t seem to notice, as Joey just read a tweet he wrote about winning the game — but it was still a nice place to spend the day.  

One last thing: Happy July!  Can you believe it’s here already?

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What did you do this weekend?

What’s your favorite part of a S’more?

Do you have any 4th of July plans?