Weekend Things

Oh hey.

Doesn’t it feel like I just wrote one of these posts? Oh right, I haven’t written since last week’s “Weekend Things.” Oopsie. Life was busy happening instead. And I totally wish I could blame it on Hannah — the wedding is THIS SATURDAY!!!!! — but that girl is cool as a cucumber and has everything under control. Maybe we get along so well because we’re polar opposites in that regard. Since there were no last minute wedding duties to attend to, this weekend was totally free.

IMG_3022We kicked things off on Thursday by picking up our wedding invitations! We didn’t expect them to be ready until after the 4th, so it was a pleasant surprise when I got the call from our stationary shop. Yes, those are pink bubbles. Joey might like pink as much as I do.

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We declared Friday “Date Night” and lucked out weather-wise — the rain stopped and the sun came out minutes before we decided to walk to dinner — so we were able to grab a patio seat at Central Bistro. I’d been dying to go and the fact that we were within walking distance made me insanely happy.

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I let our waitress talk me into the soft shell crab and I think I made it through three bites before I decided I couldn’t do it. I’ve had soft shell crab before (more than once!) and I love seafood but, for some reason, this dish really turned me off. I think it was that squid ink drizzle that most definitely wasn’t in the menu description. Joey was happy to trade me, so I ended up with his steak. It was delicious. I don’t know why he puts up with me but I’m grateful.

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Oh and on the walk home, we passed an ice cream sandwich food truck that Joey couldn’t resist. It was super entertaining to watch him try to eat the thing while we walked. It was so messy! But I had a couple bites and yeah, totally delicious. He may or may not have washed his hands off in a sprinkler a few blocks after finishing the sandwich.

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So Boulder isn’t the shortest drive from our house, but my heart was longing for at least one trip to the Farmers’ Market, so I decided Saturday would be the one time I’d drag us there. Turns out they expanded the food tent area and man, that thing is so much more spacious and comfortable than it used to be. I got a thai iced coffee and a cheesy breakfast crepe, bought garlic scapes and cherries and was generally in my happy place. I need to fall in love with a Denver FM ASAP.

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Many failed errands later (more on that in a minute), we made our way back to D-town, with a pit stop at Cheesman. We were hoping to crash a wedding (only sort of kidding about that…), but we got the next best thing. A pavilion that was all set up with chairs, but no sign of any wedding attendees, so we were free to walk about and get a closer look at how they had things set up. I’m thinking we’ll do something pretty similar to this.

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So about those failed errands. We’re DIY-ing a bunch of stationary and signage stuff at our wedding (ahem someone went over budget on fancy pink bubble invitations…), so we’ve been on the hunt for some nice paper to use. We struck out at Staples, Michael’s, a scrapbooking store that turned out to be closed when we got there and a bunch of cyberstores (is that a real word?), but finally found exactly what we wanted online and everything should be here this week or next. I’m so excited!

Oh and dinner was gooood. Afterwards, we set up an invitation assembly line and got a big chunk of them put together. We have to adhere the actual invitation card to our folios ourselves and we ran out of double stick tape three quarters of the way through. Wah wah. We love how everything turned out though!

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I was up early(ish) on Sunday morning to fit in a quick run — have I mentioned that I’ve been loving morning runs lately?! The sun is up, the air feels cool, it frees up my evening schedule and it makes me feel so happy — then came home to breakfast! Joey made us omelettes and toast. I swear, I could just marry that guy. So good! And it was the perfect post-run/pre-shopping day fuel.

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Mom and I spent a majority of the day in Cherry Creek looking for wedding day shoes for me. I need some shorty heels — they need to be just high enough that I don’t need any expensive hemming done on my dress — and it turns out those are hard to come by. We seriously had the worst time finding anything that worked. I think we went to every shoe store in the mall (plus DSW) and I tried on one pair. ONE. And I didn’t even love them. I guess this is going to be harder than I thought. Shopping was a bust, but lunch was good at least. We grabbed some bar seats at True Food Kitchen and quenched our thirst while we waited for our food. It was definitely the highlight of our excursion.

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And then because Joey made me breakfast, I thought I’d repay the favor and make him dinner. Threw this pizza together with stuff we happened to have in the fridge — spinach, kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and some mozzarella. For something I just kind of tossed together, it turned out delicious! The night concluded with Big Brother (it’s back!!), Food Network Star and some reading. I’m a little over halfway through “Under the Wide and Starry Sky,” and I wish I could say I’m loving it, but it’s just kind of meh. I’m really tired of reading about how sick Robert Louis Stevenson was ALL.THE.TIME.

Aaaand, I just realized that 99% of those pictures were of food. What can I say? In other non-food-related weekend news, we spent a good chunk of time researching hotels and train tickets for our honeymoon and I think we’re about to do some actual booking. SO EXCITED!

Happy Monday!

Memorial Day Weekend Things

Gosh, I love Memorial Day Weekend.  Because A) 3-day weekend, duh B) I consider it the unofficial kick off to summer and C) the annual running of the Bolder Boulder!  What isn’t there to love about any of those things?  Despite the scary thunderstorm we had every.single.afternoon. all weekend, it just felt so damn summery and my happiness was at an all time high as a result.

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Confession: I’m obsessed with Yelp.  I don’t visit a restaurant without first consulting my fellow Yelpers’ reviews and I don’t go to a restaurant without adding my own review afterwards.  I was recently granted Elite status on Yelp, which turns out, means I get invited to a ton of cool events, including shows at the Buell.

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We got two tickets to American Idiot in the orchestra section (right up front!!) and it was AMAZING!  I should preface by saying I thought this show looked so stupid and I’m not a Green Day fan, but my opinion on something has never done a complete 180 quite a quickly as it did after seeing this!  I seriously loved it and now I have 5 Green Day CDs on my iPod.  Send help.

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So in other words, I was wrong about American Idiot, I was wrong about Green Day but I was right about thinking drinking mixed drinks from a cup with a lid and a straw would be fun.  It is!  Also, Yelp is even better than I thought it was.  I just don’t think I can ever go to the Buell again and not sit in the orchestra section.  I’ve been ruined forever! 🙂

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Saturday morning started like this.  This is the third pair of running shoes I’ve purchased this month.  I started with a size 6 1/2 and by the third pair I was at a 7 1/2.  I was bad and brought my debit card, you know, just in case we decided to stop our run short and grab coffee.  Or maybe I planned to do it that way?…

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The afternoon was filled with a facial, an amazing fajita salad and our invitation design meeting.  We should be seeing proofs by the end of this week and I’m so incredibly excited!  I felt like we were ahead of time on the invitation stuff but our stationary gal made me feel like we were in a rush to get these printed, ahh!

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We planned on heading downtown to hit up a food truck for dinner, but we were driving right into this cloud and it was making me seriously nervous.  It was looking a little tornado-y for my liking so we promptly turned around and headed home.

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Sunday was all about yard work.  I mowed the lawn!  Confession #2: I’d seriously never used a lawn mower before Sunday.  I know… Now you know the spoiled childhood I lived.  But I fully intend on acting like an adult and helping with the mowing at our own house from now on.  After that and some weed pulling our yard looked 100x better.

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Rounded out Sunday night with homemade chicken nuggets, compliments of Chef Joey.  Ketchup for me, BBQ sauce for him.  He used this recipe, which is actually for fish nuggets (that we’ve also made and loved), but used chicken instead and they turned out fabulously.  The chef and that recipe are the best!  Dinner always tastes better when someone else cooks for you 🙂

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Doesn’t the drive into Boulder look fake?!  Those happy little cows, those flatirons, that snow way back there in the background.  It’s breathtaking.  And it was also perfect weather for the Bolder Boulder, aka my favorite race ever.  Not going to lie, this was the most unprepared I’d ever felt for the race, but I ended up running the whole thing pretty easily.  Extremely slowly, but still pretty easily.  And in a pair of shoes that I’d only run in once before.  That’s a serious racing no-no but I like to live dangerously.

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Much lounging was required afterwards.  Also, seriously can’t get over how blue the sky is in Colorado.  I may or may not have just stared up at it for half an hour while Joey was hard at work cleaning off our grill.  Couldn’t help it, I was mesmerized.

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Oh, and I bought this “Salad Bowl” at Whole Foods after the race and am so excited to cut me some fresh greens for big summer salads.  Let’s not discuss the price of the doormat that was the real reason I even went to Whole Foods.  Needless to say, I did not end up buying one.

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We ended Memorial Day with a little family BBQ at our place!  My mom not only supplied, but made all the food — except that apple pie 🙂 — which I think means she’s either a saint or Super Woman.  Possibly both.  Joey manned the grill, I frantically washed dishes, when I realized we had zero paper plates or plastic silverware and half our dishes were dirty, and my niece and nephew got into any and everything, as kids do 😛  I think it was an overall success.

Weekend Events that Went Uncaptured: our second go at kegging (my hefeweizen is on its way and thank god because we just ran out of Joey’s IPA!), Joey chasing a moth around our kitchen while I hysterically ran from the moth, booking an officiant (!!) and a billion episodes of Mad Men.

And now, let summer commence!