Friday Favorites - 8/1

Our cat Bella is such a Daddy's girl. But last weekend, after Aaron had been gone for three days, she must have decided that I was an acceptable snuggling companion.

Every morning I put this in my coffee:

And yes, every time I sing "I'm so fancy....."





This week saw the long-awaited opening of The Market Italian Village in our neighborhood. I went on Monday during the soft open, and again Thursday for the grand opening. I haven't counted the steps yet, but they're so close that when our windows are open, I can smell the coffee.

Last night I hosted the neighborhood ladies for Yahtzee night. Our group this month was small but mighty. I provided the finest in cheap boxed wine, meats and cheeses from the aforementioned Market, take-n-bake pizzas from zpizza (and yes, I baked them) and a blackberry lemon trifle (check back next week for the recipe).

Have a fantastic weekend!

Italian Festival and Wine for Wildlife

Happy Columbus Day! If you have the day off, good for you; if not, sorry. And for my Canadian friends and family, Happy Thanksgiving!

Living in Columbus, I feel like it should be a bigger holiday, but the great thing about Columbus Day Weekend in Columbus, OH is the Italian Festival, which happens to be in our neighborhood. It's not a big festival but it's full of delicious food, two music stages, rides for the kids and ... did I mention the food? We went both Friday night and Sunday afternoon, and we have friends who literally live inside the festival, so we hung out on their patio as well.

We signed up for the new car share program in Columbus. The program starts in a couple weeks and just might persuade us to become a one-car family. Check out our friends' gorgeous dog Chloe.

Saturday we were fortunate enough to attend a fundraiser at the Columbus Zoo called Wine for Wildlife. It was a beautiful night and a LOT of money was raised to support the zoo's conservation and sustainability work. We didn't win any of the auction items, but we did make a donation to the Cheetah Conservation Fund. Dinner was catered by Ruth's Chris Steak House (I'm still dreaming about the sweet potato casserole).

We got to see an Amur Leopard cub up close! Oh, and we drank a lot of wine.

With our friends Ron and Will (check out Aaron's monkey ears!).

(Almost) Wordless Weekend Windup

Friday

Patio Of the Week (POW) at a rooftop bar on OSU's campus, 

followed by late night carousing at our corner bar.

Saturday

Block party for BBITIV (Best Block In The Italian Village)

Sunday

Sunday morning on the porch, brunch at Mouton, live music at Goodale Park, meeting baby Rylie

Framily Dinner

Not too far from our house, there's a restaurant called Cafe del Mondo. Its location is kind of strange and they're generally only open from 9-ish to 2-ish on weekdays, but once a month they open up for dinner (five-course meal, reservation only, BYOB). These Italian Dinner Nights are usually on Thursdays, which for Aaron and me means choir night from September - May. When we realized that we could make it this month, we asked our neighbors if they wanted to join us. That dinner happened last night.

The only downside to having a neighborhood as great as ours is that sometimes not everyone can be included. We had 20 people interested in going to dinner; we could only get 12 in, until the restaurant called and had some cancellations so we got our group to 16. We were set up outside and the weather could not have been more perfect (especially for mid-August!).

We feasted on bruschetta, salad, the most amazing bread, lasagna, chicken topped with spinach and cheese, mixed vegetables with fresh dill, and a cake that was so delicious that I ate it before I could take a picture.

Everything was delicious! Cafe del Mondo always takes great care of us. Aaron is a regular at lunchtime and they cater our annual Christmas party, which includes the amazing "meat tree."

After two and a half hours, with full bellies, we walked home (definitely needed that walk).

Aftermath, photo by Michelle

For Whitney's #backthatazzup Friday, I'm giving props to those friends who are family, who will never let us down and always have our backs. And I'm not only talking about the ones who were with us last night. Y'all know who you are!

The long weekend in pictures

Very appropriate that the Day 28 challenge is: only pictures.

Here are scenes from the Memorial Day Weekend, including scenes from the Crawl for Cancer:

Yahtzee!

A little more than five years ago, Aaron and I moved into our dream house, which was built from scratch. It was a long, looooong process but well worth the wait. We lived there for about a year before meeting any of our neighbors. Now, it's hard to imagine our lives without the people of the BBITIV (Best Block in the Italian Village).





We first got to know Colin & Amy, who live four houses away from us. Most everyone has their introduction to the 'hood through Colin & Amy; we call them the Chamber of Commerce. They invited us to their legendary Halloween party and we met some more neighbors, although afterward we didn't recognize most of them since they were no longer in costume.

It was decided that we should have a Christmas party so we could get to know more neighbors. So Amy drew a map for us and Aaron printed up a flyer and we also invited friends we already had so we knew people would show up. The flyer had things like this on it:

(So you know that house on the corner where it looks like someone might live there but you aren't really sure because it is always dark and the yard doesn't look so great and maybe they live there but just want to keep to themselves but you watched the house go up and it looks pretty cool and you wonder whether or not the people inside are cool or just assholes but then you heard from Amy that they voted for Obama so they can't be all bad, can they? Well, here's a chance to find out for yourself ... )

some tasty snacks provided by Aaron ('cause Gwen really isn't much of a cook)

beverages courtesy of the Columbus Brewing Company, because Gwen works with them

and the brewmaster who is a cool guy will be at the party too.

It worked, because we had a great turn out and that night in our garage Angie had the idea of having a monthly gathering of the girls to play Yahtzee (she figured the ladies in the 'burbs do Bunco, so we'd go old school). We started this tradition in January of 2009 and we've done it every month since. We rotate houses, so you only have to host once a year, but you provide all the food and drinks when you host. Now, as you might imagine, the actual playing of Yahtzee didn't last. Angie used to bring the game every month and for a while we did play at least one game, but now we don't even pretend. It's just a way for us to get together regularly, but we still call it Yahtzee night, which is tonight.

Sometimes it's a late night, sometimes not, and sometimes a fun Yahtzee night can lead to the Yahtzee flu the next day. Let's hope that's not the case this time around!

Oddly enough, there aren't many pictures that exist of past Yahtzee nights, but here are some from June of 2009 when we got rained out at Sara's house and had to move the party to Jennifer's where we had a dance party in memory of Michael Jackson, because it just happened to be the day he died.

Besides Yahtzee and the Christmas party, we have new traditions like the Chili Cook Off in February, Crawl for Cancer in May, Comfest brunch in June and the Garden Party in September. We've had a few weddings, a baby, vacations and some not-so-fun occasions. These truly are the best neighbors ever!


Stay Tuned,

The Gila

Linking up with Shanna for Random Wednesday

Raindrops on Roses

A little departure from the Restaurant Odyssey, I give you Gila's Favorite Things Vol. 1:

Our neighbors. Aaron and I moved to Italian Village five years ago, and we often say that move was the second best decision we ever made (after marrying each other). The neighborhood deserves a blog post of its own, and someday you'll get to read all about it.

Pre-Cancer Crawl 2012

Beach vacations. I love the sound of the water, the enormity of the sky and sea, the solitude of losing myself in a book with my toes in the sand, the tropical drinks.

Myrtle Beach, October 2012. Coming this weekend: Destin, FL!

Vindaloo. You probably know that Aaron is the cook at our house, but this is one of the few meals that I make. It's a spicy Indian stew-like dish that (in my circles) is now also known as "Gwendaloo." I freaking love this stuff.

It may not look appetizing to you, but it's my most favorite meal.

This guy:

Pretty Nails

The name of this color is (for real)
"Call me Gwen-ever." Also note the new ring
which is currently serving as my wedding ring.

I got this idea from In Style magazine and
recently did it in shades of brown.

Musicals. If you recognize the title of this post, you get it. When I was growing up, my mom had soundtrack albums as well as sheet music of Broadway musicals. On our recent road trip, Mom and I listened to two channels on her satellite car radio: college football and the Broadway channel. My high school produced a musical every year and I was involved in those. Next weekend I'm traveling to Pennsylvania to see this year's offering, Les Misérables.

Our cats, Bella, Gato and our newest addition Clover 

(formerly known as Mr. Handsome until we found out he is really a she).

Bella's "in the bag" and Gato looks like
he wants in there, too.

After four weeks, Clover finally feels
comfortable enough to get on the couch.

That's it for this episode. Stay tuned!

The Gila