WEEKEND

What's a Minnesotan recipe for a perfect fall weekend?
A hearty fall themed dinner with lots of friends + early morning hike around the lake and breakfast with your mother-in-law + a brewery-hop in Northeast topped off by a Hibachi dinner for a birthday + an outdoor Vikings game on the most PERFECT sunny Sunday afternoon.

This weekend was everything I was craving and missing up until this point in our busy fall so far.
Friday (as you may have seen on my Instagram) one of my squirrel friends tried to crash dinner:

Of course about 30 seconds after this photo he launched himself at the screen and just hung there for a second. Scared the pants off me. 

There was a near-casualty during dinner prep involving carrots and a knife. Which was strangely reminiscent of the FRIENDS episode in which Chandler loses his toe and Monica brings a carrot to the hospital instead. 

Thankfully nothing needed to be reattached and I didn't bleed on anyone's carrots.. so.. WIN!

Saturday M and I both had "in-law" days. He went fishing all day with my dad and my dad's cousin, while I went on a fall-colors-hike with M's mom. It was a crisp but perfect fall morning. I may have lost my mom too young, but I'm so grateful to still have a fantastic motherly influence in my life. 

After the hike we went out to small town MN and stopped at Peg's Countryside Cafe in Hamel. It was voted one of the best breakfasts in MN by the Star Tribune and it did NOT disappoint. Super cute spot, definitely worth the drive!

I went home and took a nap with tootie, because- CATURDAY- after which I met up with some friends for a brewery-hop in Northeast. Every since the "Surley taproom bill" passed a few years ago MN has seen an INSANE surge in breweries and tap rooms. Most of which are concentrated in one part of Minneapolis, which makes making a "day" of it all so much easier.

After the tour I had my first ever Hibachi experience at Wasabi, which was a lot of fun! I love interactive dining.

Sunday M scored some tickets to the Vikings game with his boss and his boss's wife and I got to tag along. The Vikings are getting a new stadium so for the next few seasons they're playing at the U of M's TCF Bank Stadium, which is an open air stadium. I'm not sure how I'd feel about games in the winter (I went to the outdoor hockey game last year in January. OMG.) but Sunday turned out to be PERFECT. It was about 65 and sunny and quite frankly, HOT where we were sitting. The Vikings sucked it up, but it was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I'm so glad I got to experience the narrow window of outdoor football that we'll have here and on the most beautiful day to boot!

Sunday night we enjoyed a fresh batch of chili that M whipped up and then ventured to Columbia Heights to procure this baby:

I'd throw the original owners under the bus and say this was the listing photo but this is my doing. Once she's redone I plan to take proper photos and stage her up for resale. SO if you're local and interested, keep an eye out. I may or may not have sort of started a little side-thing FB page and blog for crafts. I'm tentative about sharing the links (right now because they're empty- I'd like to craft some things for them first) but in an effort to stay within our budget and allow ourselves some more 'fun money' this was one of our ideas- finding furniture to flip and selling crafts. I'd be open to shipping some of the stuff out of state (I'm thinking watercolors) but the wood crafts would just be too bulky to ship. Is this something anyone would be interested in? locally or otherwise? 

Anyway, Hope y'all had a good weekend!