Dining at The Red Door + The End of a Chapter {Weekend Recap}

Hello, hello!

How was your weekend? My friend Danielle was in town staying with me the end of last week into the weekend, so I was busy hosting and having fun!

Here are the highlights of our time together:

Eat. I’d been wanting to visit The Red Door for a long time, and I finally got the chance to have dinner there. The restaurant offers a menu centered around local, organic, sustainable & ethically sourced, seasonal cuisine… so it pretty much couldn’t be more my type of place!

We both first enjoyed a glass of Gold Crush chardonnay, which was so rich and buttery. I’ve been all about buttery chardonnay lately and will definitely be nabbing bottles of it as soon as I find it around! We split a couple of dishes: First up was their vegan nachos, which had this awesome cashew cheese sauce and local avocado, along with their lemon ricotta stuffed squash blossoms.   We also split this awesome zucchini pasta dish:

I enjoyed our dinner so much, and definitely want to dine at The Red Door again soon!

Play. By far my favorite part of Danielle’s visit was visiting The Shout! House dueling piano bar. I had been there a bunch of times when I lived close to downtown San Diego, and hadn’t been there in years. Locals, if you like live music, you must visit this place. It is so entertaining and fun! I play the piano and am so impressed with how talented the performers are there.

Workout. We went hiking with my pup at Elfin Forest. It’s such a nice hike to take visitors to because the views are pretty, it’s not too far away, and it’s a good sweat session, but it’s not too intense and you can hold a conversation without huffing and puffing the whole time.

Harley was the cutest little monkey of a hiking partner running around being her friendly crazy self, as per usual.

Notice how it looks like she’s staring longingly up at me? Not the case… she actually has her eye on a bug that you can see flying above us. Typical behavior for a dog whose favorite pastime in my backyard is chasing and eating bees!

Drink. My favorite place that we grabbed drinks at was The Patio on Goldfinch in San Diego’s Mission Hills area. I’ve been to their other location in Pacific Beach, and I love the atmosphere and laid-back, San Diego feel of both restaurants.

After Danielle left town, I spent a lot of the rest of my weekend trying to recoup from our late nights out. I’m definitely not a college kid anymore guys! My Saturday night was spent eating falafel pita + Greek salad takeout from a Mediterranean place nearby that I’d been wanting to try (yum!) & watching a movie.

This weekend also marked the end of a chapter of my life: My hubby finished his time in the Marine Corps. He has been in the Reserves for the last few years, after getting out of active duty. Our Marine Corps journey started 7 1/2 years ago, and it’s crazy to think about all that’s happened in that time!

I am so proud of A as he moves onto the next chapter in his life: earning his Masters degree in business. They say once a Marine, always a Marine… and I think that the same holds true for Marine Corps wives. I’ll take the experiences I’ve had in military life with me for the rest of my life, and I think that we’ve grown so much as both a couple and as individuals.

Life can be such a wild ride, and it’s funny to think about how my feelings of military life have evolved over the years. A journey that I was so unsure and scared of at the start is something that I think I’ll look back on positively as a life-altering time that broadened my horizons in many ways. Military life also brought me to California, which I am so grateful for!

Tell me…  Have you ever been to a dueling piano bar? What’s the best thing you ate last weekend?