the pursuit of favorites: hooked on colfax

march 17, 2011

after my last coffee experience, i was excited to try another place. i looked up a few places on the neighborhood guides and settled on a place called hooked on colfax. i thought it had an interesting name and i knew it was near lovely confections that we had already tried. i knew i had chosen the right place right after we sat down with our coffee. it is a smaller coffee house that is very narrow, but there is also a downstairs that has many couches. there is a window filled garage door as the wall along the sidewalk that they open when the weather is nice. there was a door at the back that i think went to a porch area, but i didnt go out there so i am not quite sure what it was. and the coffee was served in real mugs! they also serve beer and wine! oh, the joys in life! and there was local art on the walls! there were so many great things about this place. it was relaxing, not squished with tons of people, and had local advertisements on cork strips. one that i found was for a culinary bike tour and sounds absolutely amazing! you meet at a coffee house and then ride your bike around the city and stop at different locations to learn about buying and cooking food! i will participate one day and i cant wait!

love.

let's go fly a kite!

(to the tune of the mary poppins song)

i am currently craving a beautiful day filled with kite flying. preferably a kite that has a long tail with fabric bows tied down the length of it. i dont have a picture of one because it has been far too long since my last kite flying adventure, but i have been doodling a lot of them lately! i keep imagining how beautiful my kite would be and how fun it would be to run around in a field while holding on to the end of the kite string. i am going to make it one of my goals before it gets cold outside. that should give me plenty of time to achieve it!

love.

the pursuit of favorites: root down

march, 15, 2011

because of the extreme table wait there was the last time we tried to eat at root down, we decided to make reservations this time. since we also waited until the day of to make reservations, the only available time was 5pm. super early! we ate only a small snack for lunch so that we would still be hungry for dinner.

i really like the atmosphere of root down. it is a bit fancy, but still seems to have a laid back feel. most things in the restaurant are refurbished or recycled in some way. the building is even an old garage! i also really like how they give the table a glass bottle filled with water that is filtered by reverse osmosis. it is also nice to have the bottle on the table so that you do not have to wait for a waiter to fill up your water glass if you find yourself being extraordinarily thirsty.

the appetizer bread with butter was very delicious. the butter was different than normal butter, but i cant figure out how to describe it. the closest description i can think of is very delicious, lets eat all of it haha. handsome ordered the roasted petaluma 3 chili chicken (habenero, chipotle, jalapeno, lemon creme fraiche, green chili grit cake and cucumber-spinach salad) and i got the colorado grass-fed buffalo sliders (aged cheddar, oogave carmelized onions, tomato jam, mustard pickles, organic sweet otato fries, udi's challah bun and curry-lime sauce). both of them were pretty good, but i did feel that prestons chicken was better than the sliders. the curry-lime sauce was delicious though! and so were the sweet potato fries, but when are they not delicious?!

we would go back to root down, but we would try happy hour the next time. our dinner was very expensive, possibly a bit more expensive than it was worth when only taking the taste of the food into account and not the organic/local aspects of it. (but i also do not have an income at the moment due to school and that may be a large reason why i feel that way). we were there during the time of happy hour, but apparently the happy hour prices are only given in the bar area. we found this out after we had already sat down. it would also be a fun place to enjoy a few drinks. the patio was closed, but i think it would be a very enjoyable place to hang out when the weather is nice. it also has a very nice view of downtown denver. maybe we will try happy hour on the patio next time!

there is a recent change to my pursuit of favorites. instead of moving to denver, i will be moving to little rock for a year. i am still going to continue the pursuit of favorites whenever i visit handsome, but i will also be starting another series about my favorites in little rock! so many favorites to find!

love.

easter food!!!

i hope everyone had a lovely easter! i went to church with my dad and then we had a wonderful brunch at cheevers. it ended up being a very rainy morning right when we got there and we had to pretty much swim into the restaurant, but it was definitely worth it! i then spent my afternoon the way any easter afternoon should be spent, enjoying the wonderfulness of eating peeps! i love them sooo much and was able to enjoy them thanks to my sweet sister and sweet friend alisha. thank you so much!!!! tulip even wanted to try a few. but i didnt let her. maybe later this week!

i watched a today show clip about peep craft projects. i had not even thought about doing things with peeps that didnt involve eating them! i just love eating them so much that it is hard to change my mindset. but since they would also be fun to look at, i have decided that next year i am going to try to make one! and if i dont next year, i will definitely try the year after next.

love.

the story of my favorite picture

i found a photo of a worn down chair in a field somewhere in blogland and immediately fell in love. i mean, i loved it. i have always been a lover of juxtaposition and things in unexpected places. there is nothing more beautiful than seeing something beautiful in a place that at first glance would not be considered the most beautiful. but to me, these places have so much potential and can be the most beautiful. especially when something beautiful is placed in that setting.

i talked with handsome about this photo and how much i loved it. i think i even showed it to him once. everytime we were around a field, we would talk about the picture and discuss what aspects of the field could be changed in order to make it the absolute perfect field for a photo.

we were headed to the petrified forest while on vacation to the grand canyon and realized we were surrounded by the most perfect field! it was flat, with long dead grass and was pretty much free of trees. that's when handsome suggested, why dont we take a picture in this field? completely caught off guard and super excited, i immediately agreed and we pulled over. handsome decided to put our cooler in the field so we could sit on it. i balanced my polaroid camera on top of the car and when i felt it was set up properly, i turned on the self timer and ran to the cooler. the polaroid ejected and i quickly grabbed it and put it in the car to protect it from the cold wind. we packed up the cooler and continued on our way. i turned over the picture and it was the most perfect picture i had ever seen! it is absolutely impossible for the colors to come out any more perfect! i talked about it and how perfect it was for pretty much the entire car ride home. i am sure it was annoying, but i just couldn't help it! i still love it just the same and look at it almost every time i walk in the door of my apartment. i love it so much!

love.

"who knows where this path will take us...

...but let's go forth hand in hand and promise not to let go because it may lead us somewhere vast & amazing" ~freya

things have been more on the not so enjoyable side lately and i am happy to say that i am fine now. i have not posted any currently cravings these last two weeks because i honestly have not been craving anything. all i have wanted is for things to be normal and healthy. handsome came into town to be with me (and work, but that's not as important) and everything was as perfect as ever. i loved every moment! we ate delicious fried goat cheese balls drizzled in honey, enjoyed swirls at the mont and even went on the most amazing picnic yet! he is the most supportive person in the world and i am so thankful that he is such a big part of my life. i will post more about everything later, but in the meantime, here are some pictures of the enjoyable week!

love. and happy weekly lovelies!

some new additions

my dad came up this weekend and got me some beautiful flowers to plant in my two lonely pots! i love them and loved the beautiful day when i planted them.

and a bit unrelated but not completely, here is my new orchid capri. beautiful! i will take a regular photo of her sometime later this week.

love.

its time for a funny story!

when handsome was packing everything up at his parents house before heading for denver, he left the back of the uhaul open while we ate breakfast. before we left, we noticed that his moms cat was missing. after we were driving an hour or so, his mom called saying she still had not seen the cat. when we would stop to get gas, handsome would open the back and look for her, but she was never there. once we finally made it to his new house, the minute handsome opened the back of the uhaul, she came out! he brought the cat to denver! obviously, she was very scared because she had no idea where she was and had been riding in the back of a uhaul for 12 hours. we kept her in a room that handsome now uses as his office and made her a litter box out of a lid from one of the moving boxes. she was really sweet the whole week. i took her back to oklahoma on the plane and it made me decide that i will never try to take tulip on a plane. you have to hold the animal when you walk through security and let the carrier go through the scanner. she preferred to be inside the carrier because it was protecting her from all the craziness that comes with an airport. i got lots of strange looks and stares because she was meowing so loudly. all in all, it ended up not being as difficult as i was expecting, and it was kind of a fun experience. i just know if i ever tried that with tulip, she would definitely attack me!

isnt she just precious?!

love.

currently craving: a picnic...

...with handsome, laying in the grass next to our willow tree while we stare at the clouds and decide what shapes they are making. the one below is a baby dragon! see it?!

delicious food at the picnic would also be awesome!

love.