Random Chatter: 11/11/14

When a Chick-fil-A drive-thru employee compliments your outfit, you feel great.  And then a couple of weeks later when a different CFA drive-thru employee, at a different location, compliments your outfit, you start to wonder if they are running some sort of self-esteem promotion where they are required to compliment people in addition to being sure to say “my pleasure”!  The more I thought about it, the less flattered I was. ;)

A couple of weeks ago, my girls and I went shopping in downtown Monument.  I’ve seen advertising that indicates they have a “shopping district”, but I’ve never checked it out until now.  Well, it was so fun and I’m so glad I finally explored their shops!  I found quite a handful of home decor stores, fashion boutiques, and restaurants.  There’s the new children’s consignment store that just opened, and a Lillian’s boutique opened recently, too.

(I’m actually really happy that there is a Lillian’s here again.  There was one on Academy a few years ago, and I liked their selection of cute and somewhat-unique-but-not-weird apparel and accessories.  I would say their prices are reasonable for what it is – ie, it’s not cheap, but it seems like much of it is higher quality and different than what you’d find at many stores.)

Oh, and the lady at the bookstore in Monument (they sell mostly new books but had a few racks of used books) told us we should check out the chocolate shop, and so we did:

1492 Chocolates makes European-style chocolates and has a truffle named for each of the fifty states.  (Thus the name – the idea behind 1492 Chocolates is to explore America through chocolate.)  Each state’s chocolate is themed after something significant about the state, and it was fun reading all the descriptions and thinking about how they corresponded to each state.  There’s one for New Mexico, featuring Hatch chiles – which was really good, by the way – and the Colorado one has some trail mix ingredients.  The Kentucky “Off to the Derby” truffle (the green one above) has caramel, bourbon, and mint; and Michigan’s has cherries.

They were quite delicious (and definitely a treat to savor slowly at around $2.00 each!) and I was thinking it would be a fun, thoughtful gift to give someone who has maybe lived in a number of states or has a connection to many different places.

Anyway, you can find a list of (most of?) the Monument merchants here.  I’m definitely going back to Christmas shop!

This week, I took a picture to record the first time in forever that I’ve had a “full” supper on the table in less than an hour:

I’ve learned to overshoot the time estimate for supper, but then when I actually cook quickly, the food is ready way before I said it would be.  Poor Jeremy – I think he used to add time to my estimates because I was always off, and now that I’m trying to add time myself in an effort to be more accurate, it really gets confusing – especially when I’m ready half an hour before I thought I would be!