Weekend Recap - Last Shopping Weekend before Christmas

This past weekend started busy. This past week has been filled with holiday parties, and Friday continued the trend. I had a Birthday/Christmas party over in the western burbs for a girlfriend from work. It was an interesting place. I say the 'i' word because it was kind of a local bar, and in fact if BF would've come, I'm sure he would've seen a lot of old high school peeps.

The Lodge was having 7th Heaven, a local Chicago band, playing. They pretty good cover and I've actually seen them before at Rib Fest.

Overall great evening.

I woke up Saturday morning to our first measurable snow fall of the season.

Saturday evening, BF took me on a bit of a date night. BF had gotten a groupon for Chen's up by Wrigleyville a while back and it expires over Christmas. We made our way on the LONGEST bus ride EVER, for a night dinner. I will forewarn anyone who thinks this would be a good place to go, they charge... A LOT... like unnecessarily so. I'm not a cheapskate by any means, but $4.50 for a hot tea is a bit much. Especially when they charged that per person.

Afterward we grabbed a cab to catch the zoo lights down at Lincoln Park zoo. Each year, ComEd (the electric company around here) puts on this free event for the Chicago area. It's really nice to just walk around and enjoy the music while admiring all the lights.

They set up colored light trees over the sea lion exhibit that change to music!

They even had an ice sculpting exhibit! Check out that cool Moose!

The evening was topped off by awesome Hot Chocolate and Christmas specials.

Sunday was a much more relaxing day. BF had to attend a baptism of a fraternity brother's new beautiful little girl. I had some errands to run including trying to locate a gloriously heinous holiday outfit for our office party on Tuesday. (Mel - I love you, but threatening people with paying for the party for not wearing an ugly sweater is somewhat unfair when our own company doesn't even SELL these things!). I spent the afternoon/evening doing laundry/ wrapping gifts/ cleaning/ and writing this blog.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

AND DON'T FORGET:

TODAY'S THE LAST DAY TO ENTER THE CHICAGO BELT GIVEAWAY!

Weekend Recap - FALL!

It is most definitely fall, as evident by the sharp decrease in temperatures over the weekend. Saturday was the first annual Junior League of Kane & Dupage Counties Readers on the Run. The race was held in Batavia, IL and ran along the river.

I was volunteering and was supposed to be running interference with any Press that showed up, being the PR Chair and all. As such, we had to be there at 6am, which required me leaving my apartment at 5am, which means I got up at 4am... yup...4am...

After setting up lots of tables and assisting in organizing, the 8:05am start quickly approached and I was a last minute back up for the 1 mile marker:

And darn it, I cheered my little heart out for all the runners!

We had 90 runners register and 30 kids. With it being so cold, I think maybe only 50 people showed up, but I think that's pretty good for a first year! And all proceeds went towards books for Smart Steps & Mooseheart. We also collected at least 2 laundry baskets overflowing with books!

BF ran and is sporting his AWESOME Knockaround sunglasses! (PS, thank you for all your support, you'll be getting more pictures soon!).

The goodie bags had amazing deals from tons of local sponsors, that well overvalued the cost of the entry, a rare thing with 5K's these days, at least those that I've experienced.

We had at least 30 volunteers outside of the Junior League show up, most of whom are wonderful students from NIU. We've been working with NIU on a special project revamping our website: www.jlkd.org.

These are the awesome kids who are working our website! They videoed all day to get some great PR footage.

After the run, BF made his way back into the city to catch the Purdue game (we won't even begin to start going into that depressing thing). I cleaned up at home before coming in to hang out with E.S.

We explored the Lincoln Park Zoo, boutiques around Lincoln, and worked up a bit of an appetite.

We stopped at the MeatLoaf Bakery:

BF had told me about this place before, but I haven't had a chance to go visit until yesterday. The basic synopsis is that they're meatloaves shaped like cupcakes and have mashed potatoes as icing!

They had these little baby ones that only cost $5 for 3, so E.S. and I split them so we could taste them.

Afterward we stopped by Molly's because got to thinking about cupcakes:

E.S. on the swings with our cupcakes.

Today we woke up to a raining morning, and grabbed a bite to eat at one of our fave restaurants, Wishbone. I headed out to the burbs, in the hopes of meeting some dude off craigslist to get my couch... no such luck. I'm DESPERATE now, as my furniture is getting delivered on Thursday.
BF & I made a stop at Kmart to purchase stuff for our Halloween costumes before heading to his parents for his dad's birthday dinner; he made incredible homemade pizza!
BF & I stopped at Mollys (I know... twice in the same weekend, don't judge) and got cupcakes for the celebration:

Overall it was a fabulous weekend, with the exception of not yet getting rid of my couch. I hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful weather!