Date Weekend

With tons of holiday plans, baby showers, and knowing that once January hits we'll be staying put waiting for Pop's arrival, a short pre-baby trip was just not panning out. So instead, we decided to take one of our last free weekends of the year and do a staycation of sorts. Here are some highlights (and one low point mixed in)....

The biggest highlight? All weekend with just this guy!

 A local eatery we've been wanting to try for awhile. Loved the atmosphere. Loved the food. Great service and overall delightful dining experience!

 We started with the spring roll appetizer which may have been my favorite part of the meal. For our entrees, Devin went with the Wahoo over rice and cabbage with a balsamic reduction. I went with the filet which was covered in a date and ale marmalade and served over asparagus risotto. Both dishes were amazing. Ironically, half way through we switched meals because we each preferred the other's.

 We skipped dessert at the restaurant and went out for our favorite splurge dessert...

The DeBrand peanut butter and raspberry sundae!

Saturday we did some Christmas shopping (yep - ahead of the game!) and bought our tree, lights, and decor. We had so much fun setting up the tree, hanging outdoor lights, and creating our Christmas house. We also had stopped at a nearby bakery for some of their cupcakes. While decorating, we split the most amazing snickerdoodle cupcake ever made!

We opted for a fake tree...less hassle and next year we'll be good to go.

Christmas house is so cozy...we find ourselves not wanting to leave!

We also hit up a hockey game. Unfortunately the beloved Komets failed to perform. It's not quite as fun having good seats when your team gets shut out. 

It can hardly be called a 'low point' because it was amusing and fun to talk about the rest of the day...but if I had to pick a low point of the weekend it would definitely be this Christmas warehouse we went to. Maybe it's our own fault for venturing into a warehouse that pops up for a few months over Christmastime. We should have known better.  But it's by Devin's work and he said it's always packed so we thought we'd try it out.

The Darlington Holiday Warehouse. Photo for you - Belv! :)

We were smiling as we entered...not so much as we left.

The woman's face on the bottom right should tell you everything you need to know about this place.

Basically this place is a holiday nightmare. Crowded, dingy, and isles chock-full of $1.59 crap. They don't even have trees or lights. Just tons of cheap, break the next day, stocking stuffers, ugly holiday cards, and what I'm assuming are disgusting packaged holiday candy and cookies. As Devin put it, "this place epitomizes why people hate the holidays". Amen.

We quickly realized this was not the place we wanted to be. I did see a couple things that we could use, and Devin grabbed a Diet Coke and we got the heck out. Never again.

Overall, the weekend was so fun and it wasn't as hard to see it end since we were both entering 2.5 day work weeks and fun Thanksgiving/Chicago plans coming up! More on that later...