Weekend Activities in Austin

• La Condesa will be hosting a Pumpkin Carving Fiesta from 3:00 to 5:00PM on Saturday. This event features three very important Ps: pumpkins, punch and piñatas. All of which can be enjoyed on a very important fourth P: the patio. While we’re talking about La Condesa, have you been there yet? If you haven’t, you need to go. For brunch. And order the huevos chilangos. In case you haven't a short memory, I raved about them just this week here.

• Don’t you love the Downtown Farmers Market? Having it in Republic Square Park really adds something that you don’t get at the markets in the parking lots at Barton Creek and Lakeline Malls. Well, this Saturday morning is your opportunity to say a little thanks for that beautiful setting. From 9:00 to 11:00AM you can volunteer, helping to weed and clean up the park. You might as well pitch in while you’re there picking up your veggies and such. If you miss it this Saturday, note that they do it alternate Saturdays. Plus, if you take a cooler with you to keep any perishables fresh, once you’re finished with your shopping and weeding, you can head the couple blocks over to La Condesa and have those amazing huevos chilangos. Doesn’t that sound like a fabulous Saturday morning?

• If you scored like a good competition AND you think you have an awesome Halloween costume (please note, us competitive folk don’t generally like to enter contests we don’t think we’ll win so the second part of this equation is key), then Hotel San Jose is the place for you to be this weekend. They are having a costume contest both Saturday and Sunday nights (if you lose Saturday, my advice would be to get an even better costume together for Sunday). The drink specials will run from 5:00PM to 12:00AM each night, but the costume contest will kick things off.

• If you don’t have a fantastic costume, but your pooch and/or kid does, you’ll want to go to Howl-o-ween at the Central Market on North Lamar on Sunday. There, the pressure will be off you to come in first place and instead you can live vicariously through your canine or offspring. Even if they don’t win (which really shouldn’t be an option), you’ll still have gone out and benefitted the Austin Humane Society so it won’t be a total waste of an afternoon.
  

• Normally, we associate fireworks with July 4^th and scary costumes with Halloween. If you’ve ever wished more holidays had a fireworks component, you’re in luck because there is actually a fireworks display Halloween night. Planet K will put on a fireworks show over on the East Side starting around 9:00PM.
  

• Also, normally when you hear something like Tour de Fat, your first response isn’t “Sign me up!” But, that should be your response to New Belgium Brewing’s Tour de Fat as it’s actually all about the bicycle as the best mode of transportation. Saturday at Fiesta Gardens will include a bike parade and costumes are encouraged. It is Halloween weekend, after all.

~ So, I’m going to the Worst Fest this weekend!

· Why on earth would you go to the Worst Fest? That sounds terrible.

~ Not the Worst Fest, silly, the Wurstfest.

Don’t you want to go to the Wurstfest, too? This is the 50^th Annual Wurstfest and it promises to be the worst wurstest of them all. It’s running this evening through November 7^th so there’s plenty of time for you to go celebrate German culture with music, the Tour de Gruene Bicycle Classic, and other events like the Circle Arts Theatre staging of Harry Potwurst and the Order of the Opas (I’m pretty sure J.K. Rowling hasn’t given her blessing to that adaption but it’s all in good fun, right?).

Nice

Today, two of my favorite blogs collided. Tsh Oxenreider of Simple Mom was interviewed by Gretchen Rubin on her blog The Happiness Project.

I finished Gretchen's book, of the same title as her blog, about a month ago and it made (and is still making) a huge impact on me. I need to devote a whole post to it once I can get the words right. I may need to read it again before I write a post. Which is kind of a big deal because I rarely re-read books.

For now, go check out those two blogs if you don't already have them on your daily reading list.

Aquariums? Really?

Today, my favorite little house feature in the New York Times includes a house in Austin.

A house with an aquarium in not just the master bedroom above the bed but also in...

Wait for it...

The kitchen.

That's weird, right? It's not just me who thinks it's weird to stick a couple aquariums in an otherwise gorgeous house.

Right?

Let's Talk Turkey Tuesday

For my birthday we tried two new restaurants.

First up, La Condesa for brunch.

I'm sure you gathered yesterday that the key word for my birthday is awesome. And La Condesa was awesome.

Christian and I both had the huevos chilangos because house-made wild boar chorizo with poached egg, arugula, quinoa croquette and avocado salsa sounded too darn good to pass up. If you live in Austin, go. Eat this. This Saturday. If there are two of you, just order one, though, because this thing is huge. The only thing I wish was different is that they would just sprinkle the arugula on top at the end so it would maintain the crispness and flavor. As it is now, it's in the middle of everything else and you don't really get to enjoy the wonderful fresh peppery arugulaness enough.

For my birthday dinner, we went to Parkside. This dinner was heartbreaking. Everything we ate - the garlic shrimp with smoked paprika (much spicier than you think it's going to be), the marrow bones, the pork jowls with polenta, the brussel sprouts and the fries - was awesome.

But, there was a little miscommunication in the kitchen about when everything was supposed to come out and we got the pork jowl entree at the same time as the huge marrow bone appetizer. A word of warning: trying to eat that much meat product in a very short amount of time so your food doesn't get cold (even though it's not your fault there's all this food on the table at one time) isn't a good idea. At all. It made us a little sick. So, we couldn't even finish the marrow bones, which was incredibly sad because marrow makes me happy. And, we didn't have dessert, also incredibly sad because I love dessert and they are supposed to make awesome sweet stuff.

Our waitress and the manager were very nice about the whole thing and took the marrow off our bill and gave us a gift card. We'll go back and give it another shot.

Image via the La Condesa website.

Awesome Birthday

Saturday was my 28th birthday. And it was freakin' awesome.

My awesome husband took me shopping for 8 hours. And bought me some awesome new clothes. And shoes. And jewelry. And fed me some awesome food (more about that tomorrow).

Here are some highlights of the awesome awesome clothes I got.

Wightwick Manor Dress from Anthropologie. Can't wait to wear this with my wide brown belt. I'm still undecided about whether boots will be too much with it. What shoes would you wear?

Tweedy Leaves Dress also from Anthropologie. So cute. I can't wait until it's under 90 degrees here so i don't feel like a crazy person wearing something that has a wool skirt.

Hot hot pencil skirt from J. Crew (my name for it, not theirs). Isn't that color just awesome?

Some TOMS. I'm dying over how comfortable these shoes are.

That's only a small percentage of all the stuff I scored. I had some major coupons, we found some great sales and my closet is looking a lot fuller.

Awesome birthday.

Weekend Activities in Austin

• There are a couple very important birthdays happening this Saturday (MINE MINE MINE), including the Draught House’s 42nd. Their party is an all day affair running from 1:00PM to 10:00PM with plenty of beer, food and music. Don’t forget to bring your lawn chairs! Seriously, don’t forget them. There are sure to be a ton of people at this thing and you don’t want to be stuck sitting on the payment.
• Now, to stick with the beer-related activities, Austin Beer Week starts on Sunday. Beer Week will feature 30 happy hours, 9 dinners, 19 beer and food pairings and a whole lot more. There will be 107 events total in this week of hops and barley. You can even head back to the Draught House on Sunday for the 1st Annual Beer Olympics. Don’t forget your lawn chairs!
• We’re just a little over a week away from the best candy night of the year so it’s time to start ramping up the Halloween activities. First up, the Halloween Children’s Concert put on by the Austin Symphony at the Long Center on Sunday. In addition to the spooky music, everyone is encouraged to wear their costumes. And you know your kids are just dying to wear their costumes already. And, let’s face it, you are too.
• To really get in the Halloween spirit (hehe, spirit), you’ll need a pumpkin. So, head out to Evergreen Farms for their Pumpkin Hunt. Not only can you get a great pumpkin to take home and carve into the Star Wars character/death star of your choice, but they also have a real pumpkin hunt where you can take a wagon ride into the Christmas tree fields to search for mini pumpkins that are hidden in the trees. There are also activities like a pumpkin launcher, pumpkin golf and pumpkin spinner. I have no idea what any of those are, but they sound fun, right?
• Want something spooky? Pioneer Farms has a Haunted Trail that includes a walking tour with fortune tellers, ghost stories around a campfire, and even headless horsemen. The trail is only open this Saturday and next Friday and Saturday from 7:00 to 10:00PM. The scarecrows were already all booked up the other nights with Jazzercize and underwater basket weaving classes.
• Arthouse at the Jones Center is having an extravaganza of reopening events this weekend. That’s right, construction is complete and they are ready to show off their new space, which sounds amazing. There’s a super fancy (with corresponding super expensive ticket price) celebration tonight, but I’m looking forward to the Public Reopening Party on Sunday. That one offers free admission, plus part of Congress right by Arthouse will be closed that day and there’ll be some yummy trailers on hand.
• You'll notice that I'm a little obsessed with all the home tours that go on in Austin. My obsession perpetuates because I always forget about a home tour I heard about and want to attend until I’m writing my Friday Thoughts and realize I’ve already scheduled something that I can’t get out of so I’m missing yet another one. So, yes, I’m talking about another home tour. Sunday is the 7th Annual Downtown Living Tour. This tour is a chance to see some of those fancy downtown condo and loft buildings. Sadly, it does not include the Austonian. Or an explanation of why that building is named the Austonian since Austinites don’t refer to themselves that way. Also, sadly, I will miss this one because we're meeting my mom for a birthday lunch.

Let's Talk Turkey Tuesday

We're not actually going to talk about turkey. One of my 30 Before 30 resolutions is to try 30 new (to me) restaurants or trailers and I love food, so I'm now dubbing Tuesdays "Let's Talk Turkey Tuesdays" AKA let's talk about food I've eaten recently.

Since I made my 30 Before 30 resolution, I've tried one new restaurant: Foreign & Domestic.

I'd been wanting to try it ever since it opened but we just hadn't made it down there. I'm super happy we finally did - it's good stuff.

We had the gruyere popovers, the lardo and I had the mac and cheese for my entree (they had a fancy name for it "ditali and cheddar").

The only part of the meal I was a little disappointed in was the lardo. I had it really built up in my mind, which I totally blame Anthony Bourdain for given his constant praising of lardo. I thought it was going to taste like the best bacon fat I'd ever had in my life, but it didn't. It was still good, and it was still really rich, but just not the scrumptiousness I dreamed about.

The ditali and cheddar, on the other hand, was totally amazing. They use a mild white cheddar (always the way to go), put in oxtails and top the whole thing with a soft egg. Pure heaven. If you get it, don't look at the portion size and scoff as I did. It's plenty.

Sadly, we didn't get to try dessert, which was disappointing because they had a bacon root beer thing that sounded right up my alley. But, we'll save room next time. Clearly, we're totally going back.

Added bonuses: great service, cool space and decor, yummy drinks.

(Image via Foreign & Domestic website)