A good weekend

Now that I'm done remembering 9/11 I'm back to your regularly schedule ramblin' gal!

And today I thought I'd ramble a bit about the weekend.  We had a good weekend full of good things!  It was a bit warmer out at times than I like, but otherwise I really enjoyed the things we did.

Saturday I indulged myself a little bit in having my own Stella and Dot party.  I will be able to get a few pretty new things that will help me totally rock 30 in a couple of months. I made a couple of new appetizers that turned out really well too and that was awesome!

Saturday night found me stepping out of my shell just a little - I went to a women's homebrewing group.  Yep.  I thought I'd give it a try.  Long story short, there's another women's beer group I found on Facebook that just got started here in the Twin Cities called Barley's Angels.  It's a group that meets monthly at various bars to do beer tastings and educate women on beer - and help them foster an appreciation for it.  I've been meaning to go to one of their meetings, but I just haven't had the time yet when they've had them, but I still "liked" their Facebook page so I could keep up just in case.  Another woman who is in that group then contacted me when she noticed that we homebrew - she has a group called Bitches Brew Crew and they brew beer monthly at her house in New Brighton - not far from us at all.  I decided to give it a try, figuring it was close to home if I hated it but otherwise, would be interesting to see what other homebrewers do.  It ended up being pretty neat - about three other women came, and the option is there to purchase a share of what is brewed, so it's divided up by about four of us.  We brewed a Pumpkin Ale and I'm excited to give it a try when it's done.  I don't know how many of their events I'll be able to make it to with our busy schedule, but I'm kind of proud of myself for stepping out of my comfort zone and trying this out.  Nate's excited too because the woman in charge of this group does all grain brewing with her husband and we might get to learn about that sometime (we currently do what is called "Extract brewing").  I was home early enough to still unwind with Nate for a bit on Saturday night too, so you can't beat that!

Sunday we slept in and that felt really good.  Then we got up and tried the brunch at our favorite restaurant Brasa in NE Minneapolis.  I had a feeling we'd end up loving it as we have everything else we have tried there and I was correct.  It was amazing.  I had french toast, Nate had a ham and egg hash and we shared these prawn cheese grits.  Yummmm.....

Then we went home and both just vegged for awhile - I honestly don't know the last time we were able to just do that on a Sunday afternoon.  Nate played video games while I took a nap!  I loved that!  Ha!  Then we decided to be crazy and take our afternoon walk by going up to Cub to pick up things for dinner - man was it HOT.  We kind of regretted that decision later, but hey, we got our exercise for the day, that's for sure!  Then my in-laws came over and enjoyed chili dogs with us and then we wrapped up the weekend with a couple of TV shows.

Now we're on to a short week, we're cabin bound at the end of this week which I am looking forward to!  Gonna be chilly up north and that's just how I like it!