Hello, friends! How was your weekend?
Here’s hoping it was filled with lots of love, family, friends, sunshine and oh yeah… moms. Although Scott and I weren’t able to spend yesterday with our mothers, I am glad I was able to spend the week in Orlando celebrating with family early. More Orlando highlights to come!
This weekend flew by just like most of them seem to do.
We departed from Tampa early Saturday morning and arrived back in Detroit just after lunch time. I was exhausted, but Scott was ready to go do something and claimed to be “bored” five minutes after getting in the door. I swear, it’s a full time job entertaining that one.
So, I put my big girl pants on (after a much needed cat nap and shower) and got ready to join our friends in Birmingham. I just love that area!
We arrived downtown just in time to catch the end of an Art Fair going on.
It’s a bummer we didn’t get there earlier. There were tons of cool pieces and things to see slash pretend to be able to afford.
We walked around for about a half an hour before heading over to our dinner reservation at Elie’s Mediterranean Grill/Bar.
The weather couldn’t have been more perfect to sit on the patio halfway inside, halfway out.
We enjoyed conversations over our mixed appetizer of hummus, taboulee, and baba ghannouge with a side of cosmos. I ordered a Detox cosmo with acai berry vodka and house made lemonade.
I’m always a little down in the dumps when we leave Florida after visiting for an extended amount of time, but this nice dinner out certainly made the transition a lot easier.
I ordered a cup of whole lentil bean soup and Alex ordered a cup of the crushed version. Mine was good, but hers definitely won.
As we waited for dinner to arrive, we saw a lot of cute puppies and even a bride and groom walk by! I was going to snap a photo, but then thought that might be awkward. Right?
Anyways, dinner arrived shortly after. Scott got shrimp lettuce wraps with a cilantro lime hummus (yum!) and I ordered the Mediterranean Chopped Salad with a giant Portabella.
It was delicious and surprisingly filling, so I ended up taking half of it home.
As we finished up dinner, someone mentioned ice cream and we were all for it. I mean, it was the end of our vacation week.
We pulled up to Dairy Mat and it instantly reminded me of an ice cream stop we always made in Florida on the way home from the beach. Those cone shaped stores with the little ordering windows are the best!
Although I was really tempted by the pumpkin and cheesecake flavors, I saw a s’more frozen yogurt option that included a mix-in of graham crackers, chocolate chips, and marshmallows. Sold.
We were embarrassingly excited about our selections.
With a full night ahead, we decided to catch a movie but had some time to kill beforehand. Clearly, an hour of playing in the park was the answer.
I posted a video on Instagram already, but in case you missed it, there is your answer if you’re one who wonders why we don’t have children yet.
(I already do.)
Eventually, we caved and join in on the fun too. We had to stalk these swings like back in the day and swooped in to take over when all of the little ones got off of them.
It’s a good thing Alex looks cute, because I look like a turd with my skirt tucked between my legs. Good times.
After about an hour of playground obstacles and turf surfing, we made our way over to Birmingham 8 Theater for a night time showing of Neighbors. It was so charming and cute!
The movie was funny, but definitely over exaggerated the conception of Greek life living. Seth Rogan was hilarious (as expected), and Zac Effron showed up shirtless in the majority of his scenes. So there’s that.
We got home well after midnight and I officially deemed Sunday a rest day.
We returned home from church and called our mothers, respectively. The rest of yesterday was spent catching up on life doing normal Sunday things.
I caught up on laundry and organizing while Scott made his forty-ninth attempt to install our new microwave. Seriously, it has been such a dramatic process. After ripping ours out and practically destroying it weeks ago, we went to hook up the new one only to find out we were missing a vital part. Two weeks later, the part finally came in, which is the wrapping Aspen is laying on.
I’m telling you. I thought this microwave installation was going to be the death of us. Every time we went to lift it up and wiggle it in, something wasn’t right. Scott made a trip to the store twice and finally got everything sized correctly for the final try.
There she is in all of her glory!
After a few weeks of not having a microwave, I am unusually excited about heating something up for lunch today.
Since the weather has been absolutely gorgeous (up until today… rainy and gloomy), I took my bloated vacation booty outside to test out a new HIIT workout for a guest post.
You’ll see exactly what that consisted of later this week!
After a shower, Scott and I both agreed that we need to put the brakes on dining out for a while. We were both craving vegetables, and with a scarce refrigerator this is what I came up with.
Green beans, mixed veggies, sweet potatoes, and a spicy Italian Qrunch quinoa burger topped in salsa.
It did the job and powered us through the rest of the night of more laundry, dishes, and playing with these guys.
It feels great to be back with them!
(And linking all of the marvelous weekend shenanigans up with Katie!)
SOYJOY Giveaway Winner
Thank you to all who entered in the SOYJOY Pairings Challenge + Giveaway last week. And for your patience in me announcing the winner!
Congratulations to: Allison T., You won by following @SOYJOYUS on twitter! Here’s what Allison said she would do with the bars:
Please email me at hwglamour@gmail.com with your mailing address to claim your prize.
I’m excited to see what you do with them. Feel free to send over a picture of your creations once you receive the package!
Okay, party people. Time to rock this Monday. See you all in a few!
Questions of the Day
• What’s the weather like for you today? Still chilly, unbearably hot, or somewhere in between and rainy (like ours!)?
• Any fun highlights about your weekend? Do share!

Is that an old picture? ‘Cause Roadie looks like a puppy! The weather here (Georgia) has been warm with some rainy/stormy days mixed in. I don’t mind the rain, but it does affect my mood sometimes – I just want to stay home and do nothing! Glad you had fun down in Florida.
Actually, no. I took it yesterday! He does look little though. It’s funny… he’s only 50 pounds but looks a lot bigger in photos! People who meet him in person after seeing photos always say they expect him to be bigger. Sorry to hear about the storms, I feel your pain!
Looks like a great weekend! It’s always nice to get settled at home after being away for a while.
Yes indeed. I got outdoors for a weekend of camping with friends in the redwoods. It was my first real camping trip, and it was a great experience. We hiked, chilled by the fire and even had a s’mores competition. So much fun! I definitely enjoyed showering once I got home too. 🙂
Looks like you had an eventful weekend too! My husband Scott & I drove to San Francisco to take some family selfies (timed with his camera lol) for our Thank You cards from our wedding in Dec. 🙂
It’s always so hard to come back after vacation, especially when you were having such a wonderful time visiting your family, but it sounds like it was still a fun weekend with your friends! That restaurant looks delish and I would have been way excited for that fro-yo too!
I was also at the birmingham art fair this weekend as I live so close to it 🙂 My friend and I took her dog and literally spent the majority of time petting other peoples’ dogs…lol. I do love going to downtown Birmingham though – they have some good restaurants like Social! Your pets are so SUPER cute btw!!!! Adorable 🙂
I love Social! I’ve only been there once though. I need to revisit now that the roof top is open!