Monday, February 27, 2017

Scenes From Our Weekend

We made a quick trip to Dallas for the weekend, to visit Allie and also to do some shopping at the big city stores.  While I like the fact that our version of traffic and congestion is nothing compared to Dallas or Houston, I do miss the fact that we just don't have certain stores nearby, so whenever we find ourselves in a big city, we try to fit in some shopping as well.

We took Paco for this trip - he's become a good little car-dog as long as we're not heading to the vet (and don't ask me how he can tell the difference, but he can).  We tried to leave early enough on Friday to avoid hitting Dallas at rush hour, but no such luck - we hit the city just before 5:00 pm and naturally, there was a fender-bender on the freeway that had us crawling along.  Just for reference, our drive there took four hours, while the drive home was slightly over three hours.  All worth it to see our daughter, though.

Once we'd arrived and carried all of our stuff up the three flights to Allie's apartment, we settled Paco in and went out to Scotty P's for dinner - home of my favorite chili cheeseburger:
We were all hungry, we all got fries, we all did not come close to finishing our fries.  Someday we will learn to share.

We also made a quick trip to Target (yes, we DO have Targets - two of 'em - in our town) to get some coffee and gift cards for a donation that I was participating in; my sweet kadult decided to contribute as well:
Gift cards to help out teenagers in need.

Dallas traffic, Saturday afternoon.  At least my immediate view was a Mini Cooper!

Saturday morning found us lazing around, watching Allie's favorite episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which were pretty entertaining.  Eventually we got ourselves moving and went to the mall - but first, a running store, just because.  It was a really nice store called Run On, in Frisco, and I found a bright pink Nike top on sale for $14; as I've been trying to replace some of my really grody running shirts, this one came home with me.  The mall was right across the street, so we went there where we got Jeff a new pair of shoes at the Clarks store.  He was done after that and people-watched while Allie and I went to James Avery to choose some earrings for her - she'd pierced her ears over Christmastime and was ready to remove the starter earrings for something more fun.  She bought a couple of cute pairs and even treated me to one of the same pairs - tiny arrows:
Discovering that it's pretty challenging to take an earring selfie!  We are earring twins now. 

I bought some makeup at Nordstrom - I love shopping there because the salespeople are always so helpful, and I needed extra help as the foundation shade I've been using and was pretty much out of?  Discontinued.  Argh.  My salesperson got me set up with a new shade, but why oh why do companies do this?

Then we were off to The Container Store!  I could spend hours there.  Unfortunately, I was with two people who couldn't, so we got what we all needed (I was looking for a better traveling toiletry/make up bag than the one I've been using - finally reached my breaking point on our trip to San Antonio with not fitting everything into my old one) and moved on to a quick dinner at Smashburger (no picture, but their grilled chicken Smash with avocado and bacon is delicious), and then we were off to Ikea.

Ahhh, Ikea.  I really love that store.  I found slipcovers that I liked to make my two loveseats match, but they are not in the budget right now, which is too bad as the color is being discontinued.  See my make up rant above about WHY???  Hopefully I won't regret passing on them, but I only have so much flexible spending money each month and we needed other things, like curtains.  The window shade in our bedroom has been in the process of breaking its strings (two out of three have snapped) and I haven't been able to raise and lower it each day like I used to, so in the interest of economy (it's a huge window), going the curtain route was the way to go.  You can get a curtain rod for $4.99 at Ikea, and the brackets are $1.99 - for my 95-inch window, you can't get a better deal than that!  Of course I choose more expensive curtains - they are blackout curtains, which I'm hoping will help with sleeping better - but hey, they are from Ikea, so they still weren't crazy expensive.  I also found some cute pots for plants and to hold yarn...that and a new bathmat and I was done.  Hopefully we'll get the curtains hung next weekend and I can show you a dramatic reveal.

Hey, guess what we did Sunday?  If you said "laze around and watch more Sunny" you would be correct!  Paco had the right idea:
Sleepy puppy!

Eventually we packed everything up, but before we left, we went to downtown Plano to a really good pizza place for a late lunch:
The underside of the eaves are old pressed tin tiles - kind of hard to see in this picture.  

The restaurant was housed in an old building and was really charming, as well as delicious.  We ended up sitting on the rooftop, but it was enclosed and they had heaters running because a cold front had moved in over the weekend.  Still, there were some good views of the area - I could only get a shot of one side because people were sitting where I'd have taken additional views, but you get the idea:
Downtown Plano - I'll have to come back and explore when we have more time.

The food was great.  They brought out some cut up pizza dough and dips - one was an olive tapenade and the other was a savory tomato-based dip; both were so good:
I could have just had this and would have been pretty satisfied!

We shared a Heart of Plano salad (it had artichoke hearts, hearts of palm, and romaine hearts in it, along with bleu cheese and bacon bits) and then shared two pizzas:
Margherita pizza
Black and Blue pizza (pesto, steak, baby portabello mushrooms, bleu cheese, caramelized onions)

Obviously I forgot to take pictures until we'd plowed through most of the pizza.  I guess I don't have to say that they were also delicious?

If it's possible to pack a lot of stuff into a weekend and still have a lot of relaxing time, we managed to do just that; as always, it's nice to spend time with our kadults and it's equally nice that they like to have us around.  Plus, as I was saying to Jeff while we drove home, this makes the third big city trip we've made this year - Houston, San Antonio, and now Dallas.  It's a lot of traveling, but it's always fun.

17 comments:

  1. Isn't it funny how the pups know they're going to the vet or the groomer as opposed to on a trip?

    Sounds like a fun weekend!

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    1. Paco knows. Even when I take him for a McDonald's cheeseburger after a vet appointment, he still doesn't relax for that car ride compared to a trip car ride.

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  2. My lab also knows when she's headed to the vet!

    I too enjoy shopping when I visit new places. I can relate on the window blind. We have one in the bedroom were the cord is always snapping. We've been able to thread it back through a couple of times. As much as I want to take them down and be done with it, I leave it up and keep fixing it because I know they were custom blinds and the original owner of the house spent a lot of money on them.

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    1. That's exactly the deal with this window shade - it was a custom size and a very nice brand, but the window is so wide that the strings break every couple of years. My window guy retired and now I can't get him out to restring the shade any more, boo!

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  3. So much fun in this post Shelley!

    Saturday as I carried my running clothes to the washing machine, I determined I need to get new winter running shirts. I seriously cannot stand the funk anymore. You got a great deal!

    Yes to high end department store makeup and fragrance counters. The folks who work those are always well trained and make you feel so pampered. I'm totally 100% behind you on discontinued shades. My favorite lipstick was discontinued and I have no more - wah!

    We have a Smashburger right down the road from us and have never been. I'll have to see if they have that same chicken sandwich on the menu, it sounds delicious. Oh, and we rarely share, even though I wish we would.

    I have had blackout curtains in my bedroom for years. I'm really not sure how anyone sleeps without them. I never sleep as well when I stay in rooms without them. I think you'll really like them. Looking forward to the dramatic reveal.





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    1. I have my favorite running shirts, and then I have my workhorse shirts that glow in the dark (well, almost) that I rely on for my weekday runs, and I realized toward the end of last fall that they never had that fresh smell anymore, even right out of the wash. Plus looking at them in the light of day revealed a gray color to the sweat stained areas...so far I've found two shirts now to replace them. It was definitely time, LOL!

      The other thing about buying makeup at Nordstrom is that if you don't end up liking the color once you're home and using it in natural light, you can return it, no problem. Makes that hefty investment easier, knowing that.

      Definitely try that Smashburger chicken sandwich. Their sweet potato smash fries are pretty good, too.

      The guest room at my parent's house has a blackout shade and I sleep really well there, so I'm hoping hoping hoping that these blackout curtains will do the trick. Heck, I'd take 4 hours of straight sleep at this point!!

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  4. I love that you fit in relaxing time along with fun shopping and eating trips. The pizza looks amazing. And, of course it hurts just a little to see Scottie P's. 😥

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    1. Does it help to know that I think of you when I go to Scotty P's at least? :)

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  5. That sounds like such a fun weekend with Allie! It's nice that you're only a few hours away from her (or more with bad traffic... story of my life in Chicago, so I feel for you guys!)

    My mom was here visiting last weekend, and we had a fun shopping day together too :) I remember the days where we used to take my dad with us (for shoes from Clarks even!) who, like Jeff, was usually over it pretty quickly LOL

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    1. Too funny about your dad and Clarks shoes - it's such a man thing. Need shoes, buy shoes, why are we still here???

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  6. What a fun weekend!!! Relaxing...busy...full of love!!! Nothing better!!

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  7. How fun!! What a great weekend - shopping and eating - my 2 favorite things to do besides run, of course.

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    1. We deliberately didn't bring our running gear in order to make ourselves (well, Jeff more than me) relax. It worked! :)

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  8. Pets know about the vet. I think they smell our fear of them figuring out it's a vet trip LOL!

    The donation cards - where do you take those? That's a neat idea!

    I have to say that I have never been to an Ikea store. Haven't lived close enough to one to check it out.

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    1. You probably aren't the target demographic for Ikea seeing as you love antiques and they are more modern, but it's really a really neat store to visit, if you ever get the chance.

      The gift cards were sent to another blogger who is doing a birthday donation. I like her and what she writes about, so we participated; I think doing a donation for a big birthday is a pretty neat idea in general, and we've decided to do a little more to help out those who are really getting slammed with the new administration, so this fit right in.

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  9. What a great weekend! I love the idea of the donation cards! And love that Paco senses vet vs. fun car rides! AWWW! And yay for the matching earring selfie!

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