Best meal I have had in a while.

I treated my parents to an extended DFW/KRLD Restaurant Week dinner at The Place at Perry’s tonight. I had high expectations since my experience at Stephan Pyles last weekend was not so good (Long story short, it did not live up to my expectations, I tweeted about it and then heard from two people there, including the general manager. I am waiting to hear back from him about going back for another meal. We’ll see…).

Tonight I had:

• Wedge salad with blue cheese, grape tomatoes and bacon
• Mac & Cheese
• Coffee-rubbed filet with blueberry chipotle sauce
• Green beans
• Banana rolls (basically fried bananas with ice cream)
• A few glasses of Malbec

This was the best meal I have had in a while. And I had a great time with my parents too. Kudos to The Place at Perry’s for an awesome restaurant week experience. Happy Saturday night!

My mom has wanted a dog for as long as I can remember. But my family, we have always been cat people. My parents have five cats (yeah, I know), my grandma has three and I have two.

Until today. My parents got a puppy! Meet Nugget. My dad named him. I am pretty sure my mom drugged my dad or something to get him to agree to bringing a dog into the family.

*Note: I will always be a cat person. Not that I don’t like dogs…but I don’t like dogs.

Saturday trip to the parents house.

All of my friends seem to be away or busy this weekend, so I made a trip to visit my parents, who I haven’t seen in a few weeks. It was a beautiful day and we sat outside on their deck, ate lunch and talked for a long time. I did a little shopping with my mom and got a new pair of shoes (I had a coupon for DSW!) and a couple of cilantro plants from the garden store. My dad made me a necklace holder, which is basically a wood frame with some tiny hooks on it, and I plan to decorate it up a little this weekend. We walked down the street to an estate sale one of their neighbors was having…I didn’t buy anything. My mom gave me a couple of bottles of wine from their wine rack (score!). I came home with a full belly from the fajitas and sangria my mom made for dinner.

It was a really great day. Sometimes I forget that it can be so enjoyable to spend the day with my parents.

Some thoughts from the weekend.

• - Coming home from NJ late on Friday night, I left 30 degree temps to step off the plane into 70 degree temps…in January! This weekend was unseasonably warm. I drove around on Saturday with the windows down, wearing a t-shirt. I opened the windows in my house. I sat on my patio and read a magazine. It was wonderful, short-lived, but wonderful.
• - tumblr friends are awesome. I had a great time playing videos games, trivia and bowling at Main Event on Saturday. Looking forward to the next meetup already!
• - I burned the Katy Perry CD from my mom. She surprises me sometimes with her music selections. I also played Wii bowling and Just Dance with my mom and her friends. They can actually be a lot of fun.
• - My hobby of making feather headbands, pins and barrettes, has turned into a little side business. I made a whole bunch of pins this weekend after some ladies my mom met at a luncheon last week asked where she got the pin she was wearing. I even designed some cards to display the pins and barrettes on. I sold two headbands to my moms’ friends’ daughter, who owns her own hair salon. She bought two for herself and took a few to sell in her store. My aunt bought a pin too. 
• - I made my breakfast and lunch for tomorrow and even planned out my dinner for tomorrow night. Planning out meals and having them ready to go makes it much easier to stay on track with WW. I basically have the rest of the week’s meals planned out too.
• - One more day off would be nice, but oh well.

It’s gonna be a GOOD weekend!

• - Friday: Half day at work! Kicked off the weekend by visiting Baby Hudson and my friends Makenzie and Chris (See previous post). Tonight, I am staying in, catching up on some missed TV shows, making a grocery list and sleeping.
• - Saturday: Grocery shopping. Maybe yoga. Cleaning. Shopping for a birthday gift for my grandma and possibly the Michael Kors bag I’ve been eying. Dinner at Bolsa and seeing Lovefool - The Quintessential 90’s Cover Band at HOB Dallas.
• - Sunday: Heading to my parents house for a visit and birthday dinner with my grandma. She’s 88!
• - Monday: Making a trip to Maydelle, TX…which looks like it is in the middle of nowhere…to visit Lenora before she embarks on her journey. I see picture taking, pottery making and board games in my future and I am sooo looking forward to it!
• - Tuesday: Vacation day! Driving home and relaxing.

Weekend recap (a day late).

Last weekend was a good one. It’s been a while since I have had a really good, blog-worthy weekend in Dallas, so I thought I would recap it.

• Friday - After work, I went shopping with my friend Ashley and then we sat at Time Out Tavern, a total dive bar on Lovers and Inwood, with a few drinks and caught up. We complained about work, she bitched out her ex (literally) and then we deleted him from her phone and I talked about how I hate the dating scene.
• Saturday - My parents came down for the day. My mom and I went to see The Color Purple at Music Hall at Fair Park (amazing!) and then had dinner at Fireside Pies. Yum! My dad stayed at my condo and put shelves up in my closets. His loss. Later that night, I went to see my coworker, Jenny, sing with the band Bricks in the Wall, a Pink Floyd cover band, at House of Blues. A bunch of friends and coworkers and came out and after the show we went to The Bank downtown. After paying $20 (seriously?!) to valet, it was quite the interesting scene. Downtown is so much more diverse than Uptown or Knox-Henderson. It’s a refreshing change of scenery (especially since I hate the Uptown scene lately), but you also run into a very strange mix of people…like a strange, extremely short chick who decided she wanted to dance with me in a completely inappropriate way. We spent a couple of hours getting bumped into and drinking overpriced booze and on the way out, ran into a friend of a friend which led to a late-night gathering at a friend of that friends’ condo, which happened to be 18 floors above the club. I finally got home at 3:30am.
• Sunday - Wished I could have slept past 7:30am. Grocery shopped, ran errands, vacuumed, sat on my couch, napped and made soup. It was a nice, relaxing way to end the weekend.

Reading the Signs

Sign that you’ve gotten old: Your parents wait until the morning to stuff your Christmas stocking, because you’re no longer the first person awake.

Sign that you’re an only child: You still get a stocking.

(via joyengel)

SO TRUE! My stocking always has some surprises in it. And my parents always give me scratch-off lottery tickets in my stocking. This year, I won $22.

Good weekend…except for Sunday.

This weekend was one of the best I have had in a long time.

On Friday, I spent the afternoon with my friend Ashley. It’s been a while since we have had some good girl time and shopping was the perfect idea! She was on the hunt for shoes and I ended up buying a sweet pair of Rock & Republic jeans at Nordstrom Rack for $65. Good deal! We ended up going to happy hour at Park, a new bar on Henderson, which looks like a backyard beach bar in California. I think it is our new fave place. We plan to make it our regular spot. We sat and talked for way longer than happy hour lasted and had a great time. After Park, we ended up at the Sick Puppies concert at House of Blues and thanks to our fave marketing guy, Scott, we got some All Access passes and had some drinks with the band.

On Saturday, I went condo shopping…again…with my parents. I am trying to be open to the thought of not living in Uptown and after Saturday, I think I am OK with that. I may not be ready to consider Addison, but I found an AWESOME place in White Rock Lake. Keeping my fingers crossed because there are some things that need to be addressed with the condo, but also trying not get my hopes up too much. Saturday night, I had some drinks with Ashley and saw a guy I didn’t think I would hang out with again. I am not saying any more than that.

On Sunday, I was actually sick as dog. My stomach was in knots all day and I seriously saw spots while I was taking a shower and thought I was going to faint. I spent the whole day in bed and feel MUCH better today.

Overall, it was a great weekend!

Weekend to do/wish list.

• Clean my apartment
• Give myself a pedi
• Buy sunscreen
• Lay out by the pool with my new book
• Visit the rents garage sale to see what my mom will give me for free
• Go to Paramore/No Doubt concert
• Sleep in
• Go to Half-Price Books
• Hit up the farmer’s market
• Try a new recipe

UPDATE: I didn’t make it to Half-Price Books or go to the farmer’s market, but I made it to the grocery store, made a new recipe tonight (Garlic Shrimp Stir Fry with Whole Wheat noodles) and have two new recipes planned for this week (Chicken/Bean Burritos and Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes and Cannellini Beans) and I took a two hour nap on my couch this afternoon.

Good weekend.

The fam.

I know the mean well and I should have more patience with them. I am trying. Really.

My parents: My condo hunt continues and since my dad has his real estate license (for the last few years), I am relying on his expertise with properties, loans, the handy-work associated with buying a home, etc. I sent him an e-mail with eight condos that caught my eye so he could take a look. He couldn’t figure out the links, put my mom on the phone, she couldn’t figure it out and got annoyed. After I hung up on them, I called back and walked them through how to look up the properties on Realtor.com. My dad said he would look at all of them tomorrow. I know he will call me at work. Maybe I should sign them up for computer classes for their upcoming 35^th anniversary…

My aunt: She is on the hunt to find me a man. Most of the guys she has introduced me to have been closer to 40 than 30, short, bald, weird, have issues…the list goes on. I knew she had ulterior motives inviting me to Germanfest over the weekend and I was right. She introduced me to a 28 year old, super nice guy. I was shocked that he was normal (from what I can tell). Now she wants us to go out this week. With her. Like she is the chaperone. She gave me his number and told me to call him, but I wussed out and sent him a text. I have a funny feeling he won’t write back. I guess we’ll see.