Friday's Fave Five #294

Hi everyone!  Well I must apologize I totally schlepped out on FFF last week.  I had such a busy maintenance week and then hubby and I took a little weekend holiday together and I just couldn't get the post together.  But I'm back on track this week and ready to go.  Please join in to look for five favorite moments that blessed us this week.

I hardly know where to start for this Friday's Fave Five.  It's just been a wonderful couple of weeks.  I just might have to throw in a couple of extras or combine a few.  But to kick it off I think because I missed last week I'll start with...

1.  My favorite day trip...Waterton Park.  I love the mountains and we are very blessed to have a beautiful part of the Canadian Rockies within reach with a day trip.  Waterton National Park is my favorite day trip around here and I've been going there since I was little.  It is a stunning area with all sorts of hiking trails that caters to all levels of hiker or walker.  Beautiful mountains, rivers, creeks, canyons and lakes.  There is no shortage of the lovely handiwork of God to take in.  This time we took a nice easy trail to Blakiston falls.  Perfect weather and the perfect company of my beloved and my furball.  One of my favorite moments is watching that crazy hound swim after a stick over and over and over again.  He loves the water of Waterton Lake so much.

Blackiston Falls

  Red Rock Canyon

Happy trails to me

2.  Fresh paint job in the playroom.  Over maintenance week my main goal was to give the playroom a fresh coat of paint with a different color.  The last time I painted, in a moment that I lost my head, I picked a color that ended up looking like a dirty peachy color.  This time I went out of my comfort zone and picked a light grey and a light sky blue.  Two walls of each color.  What a difference.  It's light and bright and very lovely to be in.  So glad I got that job done!

3.  A weekend away with my hubby.  It was a long weekend here in Canada last weekend and hubby and I took the opportunity to take a little mini vacation.  We are blessed to have a great getaway city that we enjoy.  We booked into a favorite hotel.  New and modern, the rooms are huge and all have little kitchens and the service is wonderful.  Booking with hotels.com got me a great room for over a hundred dollars off!  Score!!  We had a wonderful time such as ...

...eating our way through the farmer's market.  Montreal smoked meat, lemon tarts, the best gelato I've ever had.  I chose two kinds blood orange and chocolate. Oh my goodness, soooo good.

4.  An item off hubby's bucket list...to ride on a Segway!

And how fun this was!!  They have a tour of the Lindsay Park area and our guide and instructor was awesome.  After watching a hair raising video that had me questioning our sanity in wanting to do this he gave us a lesson that brought it back to just a little bit of nervousness and off we went.  They are quite the machines and I think we really ought to be in some kind of futuristic movie!

5.  Trying out a new restaurant.  An avid fan of the Canadian Food Network's "You Gotta Eat Here", I've been faithfully taking note of all the Alberta restaurants featured on the show.  (An exciting side note...they were just in my city a couple weeks ago featuring my favorite pizza restaurant!)  Anyway, we chose Boxwood Cafe because the fact that they served rotisserie was appealing to us.  Well what an absolutely pleasant surprise this little place was.  Situated in downtown Calgary, in beautiful Memorial park, they have a huge patio area where we sat and enjoyed the gorgeous day.  They are a farm to table restaurant and everything, including filtering and sparkling their own water, is done by them and if it can't be it is locally and seasonally sourced so their menu changes seasonally.  They have their own little garden and they fresh pick for your meal.  Some of the best food we've had.  We felt absolutely food drunk when we left.  Good thing it was our only meal of the day.

  

















lemon lentil soup with spinach                                                                                           cold wild rice salad with pickled                                                                                                                                   onions and carrots, corriander and                                                                                                                                    tamarind glazed almonds 




                                                 
                        
                                                             my meal:  rotisserie chicken with veg
                                                                   and garnishes from their garden
                                                                hubby's:  slow roasted pork roast that
                                                                 melted on the tongue with roast apples                                                                                                                              potatoes and arugula salad on top

We finished by sharing our desserts of raspberry bread pudding with creme anglais and jonagold apple crisp with salted caramel gelato.  My mouth waters as I think about it.  We'll be going back there again sometime for sure!

bonus fave:  came from my sweet younger girl who surprised me with a bouquet of rainbow roses simply because.  Love that girl and love the flowers and sentiment that came with them.

What were your favorites this week?