11th Wedding Anniversary Date

Paul and I celebrated our 11th Anniversary (August 14th) by going out to dinner at a restaurant called Whiskey Cake. The restaurant has been getting awesome reviews since it opened last fall. We were excited because it is a farm to table establishment and that means a lot to us.  The food was delicious and the atmosphere was eclectic, rustic and had a ton of neat touches. For instance, they re-purposed light bulbs as vases and filled them with sprig of rosemary, they cut up cardboard and used them as coasters and they also reused old nuts and bolts and made them napkin rings!  We mentioned to the waiter that we were celebrating our  anniversary and that the "standard wedding gift" for 11 years was stainless steel and we thought it was cool that the napkin rings were steel.  He told us to go ahead and take it and that they had a ton of them in stock and wouldn't miss one. We thought that was so cool!

We started with an appetizer of fried green tomatoes! Omigosh!! They were so good. There were 5 and Paul and I each had two and split the last one. But seriously, I probably could have had an entire meal of just the tomatoes!!  Paul got a chicken melt and I got a mushroom melt sandwich.  We each split a side of macaroni and cheese. Then we topped off the evening with a slice of their famous whiskey cake. WOW, talk about yum! It was so huge and we couldn't finish it, but I thought it was so sweet that the waiter put a candle on the plate to wish us well on our anniversary!

Whiskey cake!

After dinner, we headed up to this little shopping/high end apartment complex/hotel called Eilan. It sits high up on I-10 across from the Rim shopping center and it is so tucked away that you almost miss it. We were planning to go a bar there that Paul went to once during an office happy hour. He told me that it was so charming up there and it would be fun to stroll around and then grab a drink at this little pub. The architecture is very European and it truly felt like we just traveled out of the country for the evening. We went to the hotel and walked around. It is so nice up there and one day it might be fun to spend a weekend at the hotel for a short getaway. We were planning to go to the pub but then we heard acoustic music coming from the hotel bar. I was interested in listening to it since it sounded so nice, so we  decided to stay at the hotel bar and ordered a drink. I'm so glad we did because we had such a nice time. The music was good too. After the guy was finished with his set, we thought we'd stop in the pub just to see if it would be fun....well, we no sooner got in there we turned right back around. It was so loud and there were tons of twentysomethings' and we totally didn't fit the mold. It's kind of comical  but I guess we are officially old now. Eeek! I remember spending a lot of time in bars like that about 10-15 years ago. Times have certainly changed!

Eilan!

Being goofy

At the hotel bar - we ordered mint juleps.

I love this guy! This is in front of the hotel.

We got home around 10:45pm. Aunt Missy and Uncle Bob were watching the kiddos. They all were pretending to sleep when we got there! So funny! Then, Ashley and Aunt Missy created us a surprise. They made a scavenger hunt and sent us all around the house finding clues until we found the prize. They made us the most adorable poster board collage of drawings representing our marriage and love for each other. What a treasure!