Fall Fun

Happy (football) Sunday! Danny and I had a fun day so far.  We met friends at our local bar to watch our out of town football games.  The games aren't on TV in Cleveland because we all root for teams other than the Browns, so we have to go somewhere that has NFL Sunday Ticket to watch the game.  This Sunday Social is all about Fall, my favorite season!

1. What is your favorite fall activity? 

Honestly, I love staying home and watching football while smelling my amazing pumpkin candles.  I love to decorate for fall, so I can enjoy the fall colors and smells from inside the house.  I also love to carve pumpkins and other fall activities during the season.

2. Do you follow a football team? If so, which one and why? 

I am a HUGE football fan.  I am a Green Bay Packers fan.  I was born and raised in Ohio, but in Columbus where there isn't a professional football team.  When I was younger, I idolized Brett Favre, so that's when I became a Packers fan.  I've been to a number of Packers games, but by far my favorite time was going to Lambeau last year when my husband surprised me with tickets for my birthday! It was amazing and so great to see the legendary Lambeau Field! 

My husband and me at Lambeau Field last year.

3. What is something fun about fall in your area? 

Since moving to Cleveland a few years ago, there's nothing that comes to mind that is specific to the area (that I know about).  I am really excited to hand out candy this year since we actually have a house to participate!

4. What are your favorite fall staple outfits? 

I am a big scarf person, so I usually like to wear sweaters with a scarf and boots, much like I did in our fall engagement photo shoot last year.

Sweater (Target), scarf (Target), and boots (Steve Madden)

5. What things are you looking forward to most about this coming fall season? 

I am looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with our family.  Since we have a house, I wanted to host both families at our place this year.  Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and I love spending it with family, eating food, and watching football.

6. What is your favorite fall holiday? Tradition? 

As said in the last question, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  My favorite tradition is eating butterscotch buns Thanksgiving morning while watching the Macy's parade.  My mom has a tradition of making her famous butterscotch buns for breakfast only on Thanksgiving and Christmas ever since I was little.  Since I spent Thanksgiving morning at my in-laws last year, I tried to make the buns and failed miserably.  This year, I am hoping I can do it right this time!

Fall and Football

This Friday I am home getting the house ready for some guests that we will be hosting since our dear friends, Melissa and Doug are getting married on Saturday!! I can't wait to see Melissa come down that aisle because she is going to be a gorgeous bride!  Linking up with Lauren for High Five for Friday.

One.  Yogi graduated from Intermediate dog training class on Tuesday.  This set of classes was definitely harder than the beginner class and it really tested his patience (and ours!).  He made it through and we are so proud of the new things he has learned!  Hopefully we will sign him up for the next set of advanced classes in the next few months.  He is a smart pups and we want him to become a well-trained puppy dog.

two.  This week starts the first week of our plan to eat at home every night.  We had developed bad habits like eating out way too much and not grocery shopping everything at once, so we devised a plan to eat all of our meals at home starting this week.  Of course, we are giving each other the occasional break like date night twice a month on Fridays, but for the most part we hope this will teach us how to shop correctly from the beginning of the week so we can plan our meals out instead of resorting to eating out.  Check back to hear our progress!

three.  Last night was the official kickoff of FOOTBALL SEASON!!!  Can you tell I'm excited? Danny and I watched the home opener game last night and I am looking forward to my Packers playing on Sunday!  I bought this flag a few weeks ago and had to warn the neighbors where my loyalties lie.  Too bad Danny wants to take it down week three when the Bengals play the Packers (we will see about that).

four.  I caught Rosie snoozing away.  Every night this week she has cuddled with me at night which she rarely does anymore since the German Shepard puppy sleeps in our bed.  This was her way of saying she missed us while we were in Denver this past weekend.  I miss kitty cuddles from our pre-puppy days.

five.  Since Summer is sort of over, I have already decorated for fall!  Fall is my favorite season to decorate for because it includes things like my favorite color palette (reds, browns, oranges, and yellows), the best smelling candles (like I mention in my last High Five for Friday post), and adorable little pumpkins that I love to put everywhere.  When I moved up to Cleveland, my mom gave me a lot of her fall decorations since she knows how much I loved the season.  I got this adorable PartyLite candle holder from her.  Thanks, Mom!

I hope everyone had a good week!  

Labor Day in Denver

I'm finally getting around to writing about our fun weekend in Denver this past weekend over Labor Day.  Since Danny doesn't have a lot of vacation time left because of the wedding this year, we wanted to take a mini weekend trip without having to take a lot of time off work.  It turned out that we only needed to take off one day each. I broke down our activities by each day since we packed so many activities in each day.

On Friday, we woke up super early (3 am to be exact) to get to the airport in time for our early flight.  Luckily, we didn't have any issues like our honeymoon traveling nightmare just 5 months before.  After we landed in Denver, we traveled to our hotel to check in before our first activity of the weekend, a brewery tour.  I didn't know before going to Denver that they are the king of Breweries.  On our brewery tour, we visited Breckenridge Brewery, Falling Rock Brewery, Rock Bottom Brewery, and Wynkoop Brewery.  The tour was great and we got to try two or three samples from each place.  Since Danny loves interesting and unique tasting beer, I could tell he was in heaven the whole weekend.  The brewery tour was the perfect introduction to Denver and gave us wonderful places to visit the rest of the weekend.  Not only was the brewery tour good for trying new beer, it was good for getting to know people too.  We ended up meeting so many nice people including two guys from Cleveland.  After talking with them, we found out they live within 20 minutes of us and knew a lot of people we knew including one of our good friends.  After this weekend, we realized it is such a small world!


Our Brewery tour card to keep track of our samples.

At Falling Rock Brewery.

Our nice friends we met from Cleveland!

After the tour we headed to the Yard house restaurant for dinner.  I discovered they had an amazing menu including a section called, "Gardein".  This product tastes and looks like chicken, but is made out of some type of soy product.  I choose the Gardein Mac and Cheese and I will say by the end of it, I felt like I was eating real chicken.  It was so real to me, that it freaked me out and I couldn't eat any more of the chicken.  It was an interesting experience.



Yard House.

The next day we got up and went to a breakfast restuarant.  After breakfast, Danny decided it would be neat to check out Molly Brown's house.  Margaret Brown was more famously known for traveling on the Titanic and surviving giving her the nickname, "The Unsinkable Molly Brown".  She lived in Denver and after some time (1970 to be exact) the city of Denver bought her house and restored it to the original condition from when Margaret Brown and her family lived there.  Danny and I are both history buffs and we found the house and the tour very interesting.  What was also interesting was the amazing tour guide.  We found out at the end of the tour that after 11 years, this was her very last tour.  She was great and knew so much about Margaret Brown's life and the house.


Waiting for the Molly Brown tour to begin.

Molly Brown's house.

After the tour, we headed back to the hotel to change into our Cincinnati Reds gear.  It was the first official Saturday of college football so we headed to one of our favorite places we found on the Brewery tour, Wyncoop brewery to watch some football.  They have a Chile beer that is made from jalapenos and it was amazing!  After some time, we headed to the Reds/Rockies game.  The game was great especially since the Reds won!  We spent most of the time hanging out at the Blue Moon bar, where Blue Moon was actually invented.  Our seats were nice, but the people around our seats were not so much.



At the game on Saturday.

Coors Field.

After the game, we heard about an improv comedy club called, Impulse Theatre.  They just happened to have a deal that night for a FREE ticket with an out of state license.  It was such an amazing show and was so funny! The actors are so talented and came up with some really great things!

The next and last full day in Denver we started the day off with breakfast again at a downtown Denver cafe called Paramount Cafe.  It was an inside joke that every breakfast meal, Danny got a breakfast Burrito and the one at Paramount was HUGE (picture below).


Breakfast Burrito.

After breakfast we decided to walk around downtown for a bit and decided to wander off to see the Broncos stadium and Pepsi Center where the Denver Nuggets and the Colorado Avalanche hockey team play.  By the time we got done seeing the sights, it was time to head back to see the last game of the series between the Rockies and the Reds.  Unfortunately, the Reds did not pull off a win, but we did get to see Todd Helton hit his 2,500 career hit.  The rest of the night was spent checking out more places around town and then heading back to the hotel for an early flight home the next day.



At Pepsi Center.

At the Red/Rockies game.

Coors Field.