Weekend Recap

It's been a busy few days around here, and I haven't had time to sit down and blog!  My mom came into town for the weekend and stayed with me.  Every October, my dad goes on a golfing trip with his buddies so it's the perfect excuse to have a girls weekend!  My parents live about 2.5 hours from me, so it's an easy trip.

We went out to eat at a yummy cajun restaurant on Friday night - growing up with two parents from Louisiana, cajun food is a favorite in our family!

Saturday, we did some shopping.  My mom loves to go to Home Goods whenever she is in town since there isn't one near her.  I heart Home Goods too!  So we did that, but somehow escaped the store without buying anything.  Still not sure how that happened!?

Since both my brother and I went to UNC for college (he's actually a senior this year), and I live right down the road from campus, my mom wanted to go get a new UNC flag to hang outside her house.  Even though I can be on the campus of my alma mater within 15 minutes of walking out my front door, I am in Chapel Hill shockingly little.  When I go, I get so nostalgic!  I absolutely love the campus - it is so beautiful.  Unfortunately, it was raining when we went on Saturday, but the leaves had started to change and it was still so good to be there!  Being on the campus brings back so many memories.  The picture below was taken on Franklin Street, which is the main street on the edge of campus - where the bars, restaurants, and shopping is located.  Obviously, this is not a good picture, but I had to snap it quickly since I was standing in the rain!

Franklin Street is also the location of the famous Chapel Hill Halloween celebration, which has attracted up to 80,000 people in recent years!  It's crazy.  Honestly, when I was in college, I hated Halloween because SO MANY people came from all over the place (literally, there were people that would drive from different states to come to Chapel Hill's Halloween celebration).  This year, I'll be hosting a Halloween party, and we won't be going anywhere near Franklin Street!  I'll post more on my party later this week.  :-)

After our shopping expeditions, we went and got manicures and pedicures.  Sooooooooo relaxing!  Our Saturday was capped off by an amazing dinner at the Melting Pot.  I love that restaurant!  So much fun.  We did the whole thing - cheese fondue, salads, entrees and chocolate fondue.  And a bottle of wine!  It was a lot of fun to spend some one-on-one time with my mom and have the chance to catch up and just hang out.

Today, a friend of mine had a group over for some food, football, beer and pumpkin carving.  I brought a super tasty spinach and artichoke dip to share - maybe I'll post the recipe this week for my Tasty Tuesday, if you're interested (it's good, I promise!  And I made some substitutions to make it healthier!).  Five of us carved pumpkins, and I thought they came out pretty good!

In the dark:

(Please ignore the pumpkin on the far left.  In case you can't tell, it's a hand with it's middle finger up.  John thought it would be funny?  I don't know.)

The pumpkins with their respective carvers:

Here's a close-up of mine:

 So that pretty much wraps up my weekend!  With my mom in town, coupled with the rain, I didn't get to go for a long run this weekend.  To tell you the truth, I pretty much took the past week off from exercise of any kind.  Oops.  I'm going to have to get my butt running this week so I can tackle 10.5 or 11 miles next weekend!

Have a great week!