Weekend(s) recap: pizza, ice cream, and more ice cream.

Holy moly, the past week has been full of all sorts of things. Mostly buying fun things for little monies and some very-bad-for-me-but-oh-so-delicious foods! And lots and lots of pictures.

Last weekend we headed out to Goodwill, and Matt found a keyboard and some records, and I found a stripey yellow and grey t-shirt and a button-up shirt that I plan on dying another color. (Hopefully I can do that without making a horrible disaster of the shirt and the surrounding area.) Then we had Olive Garden for lunch, which I hadn't had since last October, and it was just as delicious as I remembered. I had a never ending pasta bowl, which ended at one bowl because I already knew I needed the apple pie and ice cream as soon as I saw the picture on the table. I wanted to take a picture, but I wolfed it down so fast, I didn't have a chance.

So instead, here's a picture Matt took of itty bitty kitty jammin' on the new Goodwill keyboard.


And here's a Cinderella picture I colored while my tummy was way too full of noodles and apple pie.


On Sunday, we made our weekly Baskin Robbins trip, and I had even more ice cream. (Multiple ice cream weekends make me feel like it's a holiday.) They had a flavor that I hadn't tried yet, and it is definitely my new favorite! It's reduced fat lemon cream pie with no sugar added, and it was low-cal and soooo good!


Throughout the week, I found a few cute little things for decorating that I'm really excited about. I got this cute little plushy owl, a wooden acorn, two white leaf dishes, and two yummy smelling candles. And it was all about $30!


And my favorite purchase of all, I bought my very first crock pot, and it was on sale for $21! And it's full of Matt's favorite soup.


I also found two yellow planters, a hello kitty shirt, two tank tops, and a stripey sweatshirt. And I spent maybe $30 total on that stuff too. I was all over some awesome deals this week.


Then, we started off this weekend by having sweets for breakfast! Matt really wanted donuts, and the Baskin Robbins is conveniently attached to the donut place, sooo I had ice cream for breakfast! Being an adult means making grown-up decisions like this.

Sugar-free chocolate overload!


And Matt's donuts! He got chocolate iced, chocolate cake with chocolate icing, and strawberry iced. I tried a bite of the strawberry, and they were so stinkin' good.


And then, Matt decided that we needed a dining room table. Eating at the table is something we have never done together. We always ate sitting on his couch at his old house, and we've always had to eat sitting in the floor here. So we were both super excited to go pick one out. We made a trip to Ikea, and we got this cute birch table and four chairs!


On Sunday, we decided to stay home and get some house stuff done. Matt worked in the kitchen, while I did some unpacking and went through the boxes in the bedroom. I found lots more stuff to sell on eBay and listed some more things. We didn't want to leave to go anywhere for dinner and nothing we had really sounded all that great, so we ended up ordering pizza and wings. I rarely eat pizza, and I never eat hot wings, so it was definitely a treat. I ate waaay too much Hawaiian pizza and ended up rolling around in the floor feeling full and fat for the rest of the night. (Good thing I got a little stretch cord exercise thingy last week, because I will be using the heck out of it this week thanks to all that pizza!)

I went to go review the place on Yelp because it was so yummy and we had such good service, and there were only a few good ones. I was really surprised! Everyone was complaining about how it wasn't that great and being really, really picky and honestly kind of rude. I feel so bad for really awesome places that end up getting crappy reviews because they aren't a five star restaurant. It's delivery pizza, so the expectations shouldn't be so dang high, you know? It was above and beyond big name chains like Dominos or Pizza Hut, but they still had so many people saying "nothing special" and "forgettable". It made me so sad, so I left a really nice review and gave them 4 stars. The only way I would ever leave a place a bad review is if the employees treated me badly, to be honest. My granny always taught me to live by the good ol' polite rule of not saying anything at all if you don't have something nice to say. I feel like the reviews were just so unnecessary and rude. It was delivered really quickly, it was still super hot when we got it, it was a good price, and it was really yummy. Why wouldn't I recommend it? Some people are just big ol' jerks. Hrmph.

So then I went on a reviewing spree and ended up writing one for the post office nearby and the Baskin Robbins that I go to every weekend! I love giving out kind words to places that get overlooked or that other people are too hoity-toity to appreciate. And it makes me feel good to think that someone might look up a place they weren't too sure about going, and they'll see my review about how sweet the employees were among a sea of "ehhh, not impressed" reviews, and they might try it out and love it as much as I do! :)

Labor Day weekend extravaganza!

Oh, man. The past few days have been all kinds of enjoyable! I was a little unsure of what this three day weekend would consist of since I'm used to spending Labor Day running around with my mom looking for sales, or eating burgers at a family member or friend's get together. Being so far away from both friends and family, I wasn't sure what I'd do. But we ended up filling our weekend with all sorts of fun stuff!

On Friday, I was crazy productive and unpacked and organized my half of the office. I hung my note board, put away all of my art supplies, coloring books, and sketch books, and threw a few of my stuffed animals in some of the empty areas on the shelf. (Yep, I still buy stuffed animals. I loved them when I was a kid, and I still do. I had that huge pink and white pet net hanging in the corner above my bed. And some nights while I was sleeping, a random teddy bear or fluffy puppy would fall out of the net and smack me right in the face. Did anyone else have that problem?)

Here's how it all turned out! Click each one for a larger view!



On Saturday, we ran a few errands, and I finally found a Disney princess coloring book. I've been talking about getting one for a good 2 months, and just so happened to spot one while picking up eBay packaging supplies. Then we made our first trip to the Goodwill nearby, and I found a cute pink lamp and an old chair that had been painted white. It has a "Property of the U.S. Government" stamp on the bottom, so I'm really curious about its history. (They're both in the pictures up above!)

Afterwards, we headed to a new Indian restaurant near the house that was the best! I've only been to maybe 3 or 4, but this one is definitely my new favorite. I had never had Indian food until Matt took me. It's definitely not something I expected to enjoy. I refuse to let my foods touch each other, and I use separated plates if I'm eating anything in a juice or sauce. So the idea of all these runny things mixing all up made me very, very nervous. But most all Indian dishes have some sort of creamy, runny sauce, and when they mix together, it's the perfect mix of yum. It is the one kink in my perfectly constructed food logic, but I'll allow it based on pure deliciousness!

After lunch, we came home and walked around the cemetery at the end of our street. I love that place so much. There are areas that are completely canopied by huge trees, so moss has started covering the headstones. It's gorgeous! And the grass in those shaded areas is so soft and smushy that we'll walk barefoot. I love seeing all of the cute old names like Mabel, Fannie, and Woodrow. I love reading the inscriptions and learning a little bit about each person and remembering people who probably haven't had visitors in years.

Then we made our weekend Baskin Robbins trip (part one) where I had some yummy Wild "N Reckless sherbet.


On Sunday, we made a trip to the Carkeek park beach. We walked up and down the shore looking for rocks to add to our collection, and I rolled my jeans up and waded through the water. Matt found a jellyfish and a completely intact crab that had washed up and some smooth black stones covered in barnacles. It was so breezy and nice. The lakes and waterfront areas here are completely different than the ones back home. The shores here are covered in rocks, and the water is ice cold. It's a completely different climate, but it's still so much fun to explore.

After our beach adventure, we decided since it was a holiday weekend, we should make another ice cream trip! So we made another Baskin Robbins run, and this time I had Peanut Butter Brownie Frozen Yogurt. I usually try to stick with the lower calorie options, and I was super excited about this one because they had never had it before. It was excellent!


Today, we got up super early to make it to the Goodwill Labor Day sale in hopes of finding a dining room table and a desk for Matt. But apparently, everyone else was just as excited about the sale as we were. The place was packed, and we had a hard time looking for anything with the crazy amount of people everywhere. And since I'm so dang polite, I wouldn't step in front of anyone or get it anyone's way, so I pretty much just stood around overwhelmed by everything! We browsed through the furniture as best we could, but we didn't find anything we needed.

We took a break and came home to rest since we got up so early. Matt flew his remote control helicopter around the living room while the cats chased it, ran away confused, swatted at it, and chased it again. After our silly kitty time, we had a yummy lunch at Qdoba, and we drove around to two more Goodwills that weren't too far away. We still didn't find any furniture at those either. But I did come across a grey stripey sweater that I had a few years ago and absolutely loved but lost when my house got hit by the Nashville flood. And it just so happened to be $3 and part of the 40% pink tag sale! I also found an American Eagle stripey button up shirt and an H&M plaid tunic as well. And Matt ended up finding a handful of really neat old records, two of which are homemade recordings of a college concert from 1950! So we did find a few little treasures!


I forgot how much fun Goodwilling is! My mom and I used to go all the time on the weekends when I'd get off work or on days I didn't have school, and we loved it. I hate that there were just too many people to be able to look around as much as I would have liked, so I'm going to go back sometime this week and take my sweet, sweet time. Hopefully, I'll find something spectacular!

This weekend might not have been the typical ones I'm used to having back home, but it was super eventful and lots of fun. I hope everyone had an awesome Labor Day weekend and did something fun and fancy!