4th of July Weekend Things

The top 5 moments of the 4th of July weekend, in order of importance:

#5 Mini Sopapilla Pancakes.

IMG_4007

After a much-too-long hiatus, Pancake Sunday is back.  For this one week at least.  I dished up some of these pancakes for Joey and I after finally getting out of bed and limping to the kitchen (see below…) and they were A) ADORABLE and B) DELICIOUS.  They truly tasted like sopapillas, which makes this sopapilla-loving girl pretty happy.

#4 Putting Joey’s house up for sale!

IMG_3985

We spent all day Friday and Saturday at Joey’s house, fixing holes, touching up paint, fixing counter tops and pulling weeds so it would be ready to put on the market.  Don’t misunderstand me, the actual work that went into doing all this was horrible.  I am so not cut out for yard work.  My hamstrings are so sore from bending over to pull weeds that I basically can’t walk today.  Is that normal?!  What I am happy about however is that selling Joey’s house means buying one of our own together! 🙂 🙂

#3 The actual 4th of July.

IMG_3968

IMG_3966

Joey and I put in extra hours on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday just so we could sneak out early on Thursday and enjoy a fun holiday dinner before heading to the Rockies game for baseball and fireworks.  Little did we know so many restaurants would be closed that day!  Eventually, we found an open restaurant — Highland Tap & Burger — that we’d actually been talking about wanting to go to for a few months.  I ordered the Great Divide Colette and was in love.  Also, BEST ONION RINGS OF MY LIFE.

IMG_3978

Plus, a Rockies win and a great fireworks show.  Serious question though.  Why do songs about America have to be so cheesy?

#2 Starting birthday celebrations a couple days early.

IMG_4015

IMG_4017

My birthday isn’t technically until Tuesday, but why not stretch the celebration out as long as possible, right?  My family went to Vine Street Pub for an early dinner last night to celebrate.  There was good food, beer, laughs and perfect outdoor patio dining weather.  Say whatever you want, people with spring, fall or winter birthdays, but summer birthdays are where it’s at.

IMG_4020

Afterwards, ice cream at Little Man’s of course.  This picture right here is proof that ice cream trumps froyo.  Have you ever seen a line like this outside a froyo place?  Also, my dear sweet mother picked out a shiny red Kitchen Aid mixer for me.  I could not be more excited about it.  I hope Joey doesn’t mind cake, muffins and bread for dinner every night for a while.

Psst, you know something really exciting is coming if my birthday comes in second place!

#1 An engagement!!!

Not mine…sorry 😛 My best friend, Hannah’s!  Josh proposed to her while they were on a trip to Steamboat this weekend and I was beyond shocked.  I mean they’ve been together for 8 years so I had a pretty good idea they’d be getting married I just had NO idea it’d be now!  I am elated for them 🙂  The four of us grabbed some celebratory drinks on Saturday night, where they asked us both to be part of the wedding party.  Guess who grabbed that Maid of Honor title?  This girl!

IMG_3992

In true Lauren fashion, one of my first questions was “When do we get to do the cake tasting??”

Yeah, I guess you could say it was a pretty good weekend 🙂

************************

How was your 4th of July?  What’d you do?

Have you ever been part of a wedding party?

When is your birthday?  And is that coincidentally” also your favorite month?

Weekend Things & Boulder International Film Fest

Spoiler Alert: I will be talking about two movies that you will probably never see, but if you seek out depressing films, stop reading this post and go see Easy Rider and Lore.

Good morning!  Is it really Monday again?  Please say no.  Just kidding, I don’t actually hate the work week and I had a pretty exciting and eventful weekend, full of lazy mornings, family, food, film and some lovely Colorado weather.  And before you start hating me for bragging about having good weather, please know that snow is all over our forecast for this week.  *Shudder*  

Anyways, in no particular order, highlights of this weekend included:

IMG_2485

IMG_2489

IMG_2491

IMG_2492

IMG_2496

1. A late Saturday morning breakfast, followed by an outdoor run that was so windy I wanted to scream but that was perfectly lovely when we turned around and ran with the wind.

2. Happy Hour at SALT on the Pearl Street Mall.  I ate two sliders and my weight in roasted cauliflower covered in some cream sauce.  Afterwards, Joey and I both wondered why we don’t eat more cauliflower.

3. An exciting (albeit sadly ended) CU basketball game.  This was my Christmas gift to Joey and being the horribly uninvolved student that I was, I never once attended a game while I actually went to CU, so it was way fun to see all the school spirit.  And to sing the CU fight song literally every 3 minutes…

4. Strawberry Pancakes on Sunday morning.  I made a strawberry simple syrup last week and saved all the leftover sugary strawberry pieces, so I blended them up and added them to the pancake batter and they were divine.  A pleasant hint of strawberry sweetness, plus we had buttermilk on hand and buttermilk always makes pancakes better.

5. A simple Sunday evening where I attended yoga with my mom, ate a delicious dinner that I completely avoided helping make and some mature movie viewing.  For the record, we picked Peter Pan.  Neither of us had seen it in years and it was so great.  I swear you have a whole new appreciation for Disney movies when you watch them as an adult.

And finally…

6. Boulder International Film Fest!

IMG_2480

This was the 9th year that Boulder hosted a slew of mostly unknown films, documentaries and shorts, some of which have gone on to be Academy Award nominees.  I don’t know how we’ve never been, but this was totally up our alley and believe me when I say it was so hard to narrow the list of films we wanted to see down to a reasonable number.  The films are shown at 4 different locations.  We ended up seeing one at the Boulder Theater and one at the First Methodist Church across the street.

Friday night we saw Easy Rider.  This movie actually came out in 1969 and while I’d never even heard of it, both my parents assured me that it was a classic.  Just picture Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper riding down the highway on big ol’ choppers, with long hair and giant bug-eye sunglasses.  Total hippies.  Oh and Jack Nicholson looks about 20 years old in the movie.  Although I loved the soundtrack, the fact that they travel down to New Orleans and the whole free love vibe the main characters had going on, I won’t lie, the end of the movie was seriously depressing.  They all die!  Actually, they are all murdered by southerners.  My mom was not feeling proud to be a southerner by the end of the movie.

On Saturday afternoon Joey and I saw Lore, which was a sold out showing.  It was a beautifully filmed and strikingly sad depiction of the harsh realities of being a Nazi family in Germany just as WWII has come to an end.  I always find films about WWII to be so fascinating and moving.  How could an event like that not be?  For me, the movie was interesting in that it showed things from a German family’s side.  I found myself both hating and pitying them.  Such a tricky subject to film and I really applaud the makers of Lore for doing such an amazing job.

Okay okay, I’ve talked enough.  Happy Monday!

*****************************

What was the highlight of your weekend?

Have you ever been to a film festival?

What is your favorite Disney movie?