Penny's Passion: Weekending - March 4, 2016

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Weekending - March 4, 2016

Happy Monday everyone!  How many of you spent the weekend binge watching House of Cards?  Believe it or not, I haven't watched this series, but it's on my list.  I've watched the first episode no less that 7 times, but just haven't pushed on to watch any others.

We had a great weekend!  Let me start with what I did with my friend Debbie on Friday night.  We explored a bit of Maplewood, Missouri.  Maplewood is a suburb of St. Louis and is just darling.  I had seen a Yelp wine tasting event at Vom Fass and we decided to check it out.  Have you ever been to one of their locations?  Oh.My.Goodness -- we were so pleasantly surprised!  The event was much better than just an ordinary wine tasting.  This store is full of liqueurs, whiskeys, olive oil and vinegars.  All of which you can sample!  We headed straight for the liqueurs and found a couple we HAD to take home.  Pink Grapefruit was one of my favorites!




After having our fill of samples, we moseyed down the street to Kakao Chocolate for some more sampling.  This was quickly turning into a great evening -- sampling spirits and chocolate!  I learned something cool at this establishment that I'm tucking away for future reference -- they do a little chocolate sampling party.  How fun would that be?!?  Definitely on my list of things to do with a group of friends!


All the sampling was making us hungry so we stopped in A Pizza Story for a bite of dinner.  Their unique flavored brick oven pizza paired with a salad was the perfect Friday night dinner.



Saturday morning Eric and I headed to McKendree University to help with the St. Louis Post Dispatch Spelling Bee.  We were a couple of the graders for this first round of competition.  You might remember that last year's National Spelling Bee ended in a first place tie and one of the winners was Gokul Venkatachalam from St. Louis.  These kids are crazy good spellers!  They had to spell 25 challenging hard words in this round and the best of the best will be moving on to the verbal portion of the competitive next Saturday.  That winner moves on to Washington, D.C.  Good luck spellers!

On Sunday we had all kinds of errands to do before evening.  We pretty much ran around like crazy people getting stuff done before it was time to pick up Ian and Kayla for dinner.  It will be Ian's birthday on Wednesday and we celebrated a few days early.  He picked Cooper's Hawk Winery and we thought that was an excellent choice.  The atmosphere, food and drinks were divine.  Cheers to Ian's birthday!


Three out of four of us had the short rib risotto.  Yummmm!


Still having a hard time wrapping my head around my baby turning 25.  It just doesn't seem possible!  Hold on to your babies friends -- they grow up way too fast!


Remember on Thursday when I mentioned I would have to show you my outdoor St. Patrick's Day decorations on Monday.  Well, here they are!  Carol did a fantastic job creating these beauties for the front door.



Eric and I are so excited about a little vacation we're taking this week.  We are off to see the Cardinals at Spring Training!  Excited is really an understatement -- we are so darn ecstatic to be headed south for a few days!  You'll be hearing from me while down there, but probably not until Thursday.


Hope your weekend was a fantastic one.  Have a wonderful week!  Make the most of every single day.

Check out what others were up to this weekend.
Bella and the City
The Quinntessential Mommy
How To Get Organized At Home
Over the Moon

This post contained affiliate links.  I may receive a small commission if you click on the link and purchase.  Thanks!

5 comments:

  1. Those are the kinds of shops I love to visit and roam around in. To make a day of sampling, exploring with friends is the best. I felt like I was there reading this.

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  2. Oh we LOVE Coopers Hawk here as well.
    What a lovely relaxing weekend for you.
    <3

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  3. Coopers Hawk is very good, we did a valentine's there one year.

    I did a taste of maplewood once with Yelp and vom fass was on the list and I agree, its a fun stop there.

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  4. A chocolate sampling party?! That sounds like heaven to me. :]

    // ▲ itsCarmen.com ▲

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  5. Hi! I just found your blog and so I am commenting a bit out of the blue but I had to leave a comment about House of Cards because I did the exact same thing that you did! I watched the first episode three or four times I think and just couldn't get into it, but then I finally pushed through and forced myself to watch more and by episode three or four I was hooked so I just wanted to recommend that you do the same! Looking forward to stopping by here more :)

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