thursday's thought.

{photo cred: i have no idea. sorry kristin}

weekend highlights.

friday night i saw yacht rock revue play at visualite! i have seen them play a few times before when i lived in atlanta, and they absoultely rock. i hope they play my wedding someday (if they're still alive then).

 

{yacht rock}

 

{yacht rock}

 

 

saturday night, momma, lola & i headed up to cornelius for the bullie pageant! this was a fundraiser for a bulldog rescue group in the carolinas. our family friend's daughter has a bully too, so we met them up there at the lucky dog bark & brew for the pageant. lola & tonka didn't win any awards - but they had a great time with all the other bulldogs!

 

 

{bear - he weights 90 pounds!}

 

 

{baby bully!}

 

{me & my girl in her fake leather vest with a leopard fur collar!}

 

 

 

 





 



 

 



denver, co.

whenever i have more than 2 days off work, i have a hard time staying in charlotte. so with mlk weekend quickly approaching, i decided to take a little trip to denver. i emailed some family and a friend i have out there, and following andy’s snap advice, i booked a flight. 

i got to denver around 1pm on friday. my old roomie from atlanta, tiffany, who has since moved back home to denver picked me up. i hadn’t seen tiff since i moved back to charlotte in early 2011, so it has been awhile. man, i’ve missed that girl. when in atlanta, we spent a lot of time together, bonding over hating our jobs and being away from our families & friends. what this really means is that we ate out a lot and drank a lot of wine on our couch.

when you walk outside the airport, you can immediately see the rockies in the distance. tiffany thought it was so funny that i kept taking pictures of the mountains. i guess when you have a postcard-esque permanent background, you forget how beautiful it actually is.

our first stop in denver was to tiffany’s new house! she bought it earlier this month and is currently renovating it. it’s a great old victorian house originally built in 1906. i love old houses, so of course i fell in love and wondered when i’ll ever be able to afford my own house. next up, we drove all around the city. there are a ton of cool neighborhoods around denver, and i saw every last one of them on friday. we stopped for lunch in the highlands, or “lohi,” at ale house. lohi is over the river and has an amazing view of the city. i ordered a burger and soup as my side – it was beer & cheese soup – i had to.

{view from ale house}

after spending a few more hours exploring the city, we met tiff’s friend heather at denver beer company. this is the moment i fall in love with the city for two reasons: a. there are dogs allowed in this brewery/bar. there are like 15 dogs hanging out in this bar. b. i am not the only person wearing large, thick rimmed glasses. not even close. after a few brews, we headed to the infinite monkey theorem which is this new place in some random part of the city that makes their own wine. they also make canned wine, which is cool on it’s own, but even cooler because there is a monkey on it. after we enjoy eda can, we went to el diablo on colfax for a  late dinner. at this point, i have been awake for like 21 hours and i am exhausted. we left denver & headed to the burbs and i passed out faster than i can ever remember at my cousin's (well not really, but i don't feel like explaining) house where i stayed.

{view from denver brew}

{canned wine!}

i woke up saturday after an amazing sleep & tiff called to ask if she can come back and steal me for the day. of course i oblige and off we go. we explored the burbs, went to the mall, and hung out at her parent's BEAUTIFUL house for a few hours. once back at lauren & gary's, we left to go get lauren from the airport. she was in baton rouge for a week, so i actually hadn't seen her yet. we picked her up & went into downtown for dinner. they have two kids - both who i have known since they came home from the hospital. they're now 17 & 19, which makes me feel really old. we had a delicious dinner at brio with catherine & john and their significant others. i can't escape being the awkward "whatever odd number" wheel! after dinner we went back home  to parker and i again passed out faster than i can ever remember. sleep is good in colorado.

{this is the view from the mall... amazing!}

{view from tiff's parent's house}

{finally got to meet joey. he doesn't always wear those horns.}

sunday morning, lauren & i headed up to boulder to see catherine. she is a sophomore at colorado university. this is also where tiffany went to school, so i loved getting to finally see her alma mater! boulder is simply amazing. there is quite a lot of stuff there for only about 100,000 people living there. we had brunch at boulder cafe where i had the most amazing eggs benedict breakfast. we spent the afternoon walking around pearl street mall & exploring the town. lauren & i headed back into denver and spent a few hours driving around all the neighborhoods. once back in parker, we changed and went to a neighborhood cocktail party. normally this would be awkward, but i can talk to a wall. it was nice to talk to a lot of other people about denver! lauren & i watched revenge before hitting the hay. i spent all day monday traveling & also riding the skytrain in the dallas airport. that thing is sweet. it was an awesome weekend & i am thankful.

{pearl street. boulder.}

{pearl street. boulder.}

{delicious breakfast at boulder cafe}

{chi omega house at CU}

noteable denver things:

1.  the sun shines like 300+ days a year. and the sun shines REALLY bright. it's like your sunglasses aren't even on. it's amazing. it only rains 6" a year. it rained 2.38" last thursday in charlotte.

2. there's no humidity. everyday is a great hair day in colorado. there also aren't any bugs. no bugs are something i appreciate as a southerner. can you imagine a whole summer with no misquitos?

3. it's a really young & active city. there are a lot of  really awesome parks inside the city & lots of the bars have running clubs... how cool is that?

4. there are a lot of neighborhoods! charlotte has it's fair share too, but denver takes the cake. every city has it's own fancy neighborhood.  cherry creek is to denver  as southpark is to charlotte.

january 1-15.

i'm playing blog catch up. one of my goals this year (as was last year) to post 3 times a week. obviously, i've been slacking. so here are some noteworthy things i've been up since january showed up.

• getting back on the running & hot yoga train. needless to say, it's been awhile. thank goodness i have foursquare to remind me how lazy/busy i've been!

• one fun night and one beautiful afternoon at whiskey warehouse. i love that place so much.

• started reading clay travis' "dixieland delight." i'll do a review once i'm done - it is already hilarious.

• we watched the national championship game at jackalope jacks... and the SEC won the 7th straight title. roll tide!

• i saw zero dark thirty. wow.

• we went to the new 80s-90s bar uptown, the roxbury. who doesn't love a bar that plays nsync & hanson?

• after obsessively watching parenthood from episode 1, season 1, i'm finally caught up! what a show. i love joel.

• spending some good, quality, heart to heart time with a few of my oldest friends. it has been good for my soul.

the first 15 days of january have been pretty great. i'm headed to denver this weekend, i can't wait!

{rewind} happy new year!

last week i shared a post about our awesome vegas vacation, but this night was so special that it deserved it's own post. when we decided to go to vegas, my stepmom & dad started doing some research into what we wanted to do for NYE. we ended up buying tickets to an all you can drink/eat party at the wynn. oh. my. gosh. the party started at 9pm and upon arrival, we saw this....

yes, that is a woman hanging from a chandelier, pouring dom perignon. it was insane! every time she needed a new bottle, she flipped right side up and floated back up to the chandelier. probably one of the coolest things i have ever seen. seeing as how this was in the pre function space, i couldn't wait to see what was inside!

{derrick getting his glass}

{awesome seating chart - room was set for 1, 300 guests}

this was the giant dance floor that had four bars in the center - one on each side. there were also two other sets of double bars totaling eight bars!  the DJ was on top of the platform over the bars! there was also servers pouring free flowing dom perignon all night. i drank my weight in dom that night, because i will probably never have it again. i now understand why it is so expensive - it is delicious!

the tables were decorated beautifully! most people probably don't pay attention to things like this, but you know i do! they went all out - silver beaded chargers, linens, overlays, specialty napkins, florals, the works! the color scheme was orange, brown, and green, and it looked great!

onto the food - there were two sets of three different food stations. they picked some of the favorite restuarants from the wynn and each restaurant had it's own station.

{mizumi - sushi}

{mizumi - sushi}

{meat & pasta station}

{meat and pasta station}

ok so, i didn't do the seafood station justice with my pictures. there were raw oysters, platters of king crab legs, lobster tails, HUGE shrimp, and this amazing combo. when i imagine meals in heaven, this is what i see.

{HOLY PASTRIES}

{this was an ice sculpture made with holes for shooter glasses filled with ice cream - genius!}

{macaroon tree}

{bananas foster bar}

around 11pm, the servers came out with bags for each table that had been packed with NYE favors. this was an awesome touch - and we had a great time playing with all the props!

{party people}

{of course we started taking weird pictures}

{party}

{midnight!}

{my family post midnight}

it was an  AMAZING party - probably my all time favorite NYE. we are blessed. 

vegas vacation!

for the past few years, we go on a vacation the week after christmas. for a lot of varying reasons, we couldn't get away from the whole week this year. so we took a "long weekend" trip over new years to VEGAS!

we got there early on saturday morning, checked in, had lunch, and went shopping. 

{our fabulous room. we also connected with leigh & d which is always fun!}

because we've been to vegas a few times, we have tried out all the fabulous restaurants at the encore & the wynn. so my stepmom came up with the great idea for each of us to pick a restaurant off the strip. saturday night we went to me & court's pick - mundo! it was AWESOME. we drank a lot of margaritas, ate a lot of chips and fancy queso, and all had some ridiculously good entrees. after dinner we headed back to encore and hung out at the dueling piano bar until bedtime.

{swanky mexican}

{loved this wall}

{my chicken enchiladas}

court and i spent sunday in the ever-so-fabulous encore spa. we've only been to the wynn spa before - so this was a new experience. my oh my. we hung out in the pool size hot tub for awhile before our massages. my massage was amazing and just what i needed. i hadn't been relaxed like that in months. after the spa we got ready for leigh & d's pick for dinner - capos.  it had a whole "godfather" theme and was super delicious italian food. we loved that place too! 

after dinner we ventured over to fremont street . i had never been before... what an interesting place! someone had told us there was a zip line down fremont street, so of course we had to do it. we really love to zip line, but it's kind of scary after a few drinks! after fremont - we attempted to go see deadma5 at  xs at the wynn. after being there for about 10 minutes, i confirmed i am not a club person and went back to meet our parents. everyone else joined eventually - no one actually even got to hear deadma5! we made an executive decision we won't be going back to a club. ever. 

{post zip line}

{fremont street}

{outside xs at the wynn}

new years eve was so lazy and i loved every minute of it. i finally got out of bed around 4pm to go watch the clemson vs. lsu game with my dad in the sports book bar. new years even night gets it's own post because it was just that awesome. 

new years day was also very lazy. i woke up just in time to watch my gamecocks - what a game! between clowney knocking a guy's head off, and our 2nd string QB throwing a touchdown pass with 17 seconds left to win the game, i was a "jumping up and down on the bed" mess. after the game we went to ride the roller coaster at new york, new york. i ride it every time i go to vegas and i still love it like it's the first time. 

{on the way up!}

{pals}

our last night in vegas we went to the popular tao at the venetian. we had some delicious appetizers and i ordered the filet. however, this was not any old filet. they brought it to me raw, and i actually cooked it right in front of me! it was an early night because we had a early flight the next morning. 

{my mini grill}

it was another fabulous fowlkes family vacation! so thankful we can do things like this - i'm a lucky girl.