Mini-vacation

4th of July weekend = a vacation at home. It's been a beautiful weekend, complete with indulgences. If you're thinking of visiting Colorado, this is why it's awesome (especially for those who like to eat...):

1. Cherry Creek Arts Festival (Friday afternoon): ART, not craft... there were so many different varieties of painting, sculpting, drawing, printmaking, and clay making to see. Of course I couldn't afford to buy anything, but it was inspiring and beautiful nonetheless. To retreat from the heat of the afternoon we wandered around Room and Board to check out more beautiful things we can't afford - fancy furniture.

2. The Huckleberry (Saturday morning): an amazing restaurant in Louisville with a beautiful ambiance, wonderful service, and the most delicious food and tea I've tasted. They have the BEST vegetarian gravy. If only they could team up with Lucile's Creole Cafe to get their biscuit recipe, you would have the most amazing biscuits and gravy in the world. mmmm...

3. Lucile's Creole Cafe (Sunday morning): an amazing cajun restaurant in Longmont (or Boulder & Ft Collins) with delightfully filling portions of delicious cajun-style food. Their homemade ketchup is the best I've ever had, good on the already flavorful and tasty Hanks Eggs - peppers, onions, tomatoes, potatoes and eggs all scrambled up with spices and topped with avocado... and ketchup. Friggin tasty. Always come home with a plate of leftovers when I get Hanks Eggs, which is almost more delicious than the first time because I'm not growing uncomfortably stuffed after eating half a giant bisquit and a begneit (sort of like a donut, but more delicious).

4. Sweet Action (Sunday evening): this is what Twitter is good for - indy ice cream shops announcing their daily flavors and making us drool. So we make a 1/2 hour drive to get ice cream. Between the two of us we had 5 different flavors; in order of my favorites:
1. Baklava, honey ice cream with real pieces of baklava; 2. Boysenberry cheesecake, with real pieces of cheesecake; 3. After Dinner Mint, mint ice cream with those little pink, green, & yellow mint chips with the teeny white sprinkles on the bottom; 4. Apple Streudel; apple cinnamon ice cream? or something tasty like that; 5. Maple Walnut - took home a pint of this and was disappointed by the lack of flavor. I had some delicious maple ice cream in New Hampshire last summer at an amazing bakery & ice creamery called Umpleby's... I'm sure they have the upper hand being in New Hampshire, but nonetheless, this maple ice cream was lacking some maple flavor. I'm tempted to add my own syrup to it. Maybe I'll continue the indulgences tomorrow morning & make some pancakes topped with ice cream & real maple syrup. That's a good way to start the week, right?

To add to the weekend vacation we checked out the community swimming pool, played a silly game called Luck of the Draw, lounged around doing nothing (i.e. watching a car race), watched a lot of stuff blow up (woo! hooray for America!), and listened to my dad tell stories of him & his friends being retards when they were younger (while repeating lines from The Hangover). Good times. How was your holiday?