The grass was pretty green here yesterday...

(What I'm listening to as I blog...come on...you know you're curious!)

We always have humble plans to stay home and take care of the important/not-so-important/small/great things in our everyday lives.

But then we.....wait a minute, I'm going to stop here, throw Aaron under the bus, and just say it's 99% Aaron's fault (hi baby!).  Aaron gets bored and we just have to do something...anything, about it.  But, every once in a while, I'm guilty of "just wanting to get away," too.  There, I said it.

Anyhoo, yesterday was one of those days.

We finished a full morning in our ministry, but then we weren't quite sure just what we wanted to do.

We thought driving to Medford to eat at a good restaurant and maybe shop, sounded like the perfect idea.  We asked some friends if they would like to go, but they had other plans.

So then we re-considered our feelings on this matter and decided we didn't care if we stayed home OR went somewhere else.  So we decided to do the mature thing and stay home to "save money."

BOO!

But we didn't really save money at all.

We decided to stop by some of our favorite spots here at home and leave a little money trail as we went.  As a result? We had a lot of fun spending time together and seeing, at that moment, that home isn't always as bad as it seems.

Our first stop was the Mermaid Garden Cafe downtown on main.

They specialize in lunch only that consist mainly of panini sandwiches, salads, wraps and special pizzas.

I went there years ago and remembered liking it, but never returned for some reason.

So in the name of adventure and trying something different, we chose to go there.

We loved our food!  I ordered the smoked salmon pizza ( thick crust, brushed with olive oil and garlic and topped with a white cheese, smoked salmon, capers, pineapple and fresh parsley) and a beautiful, green side salad.  Aaron ordered the blue cheese chicken wrap (chicken breasts, dried cherries, blue cheese, spinach served in a spinach tortilla) with the same salad.

The food was awesome and so was the service in this bright and cheerful cafe.

We are so going back!

The colors in the room are aquas, greens
and the orange-yellow you can see here



Each table has a different painting of a fish




Their crazy/cool fridge



From there we walked to a specialty clothing and gift store, Royal Touch.

This store has brands of clothes that can be found in the likes of spendy boutiques and even Anthropologie.  They also carry cute and trendy home decor.  Several times now, I've ended up finding the perfect thing to finish off a gift or gift basket at this store.  I just love this store and feel wrong if I haven't bought at least one thing from it before I go. 

However, I kept this visit short since Aaron was stuck holding my leftover pizza at the front of the uber-girly store.....all in the name of love ;)

We then walked further down main to our local the Oregon Gift Store.

If you aren't familiar with this type of store, everything available to purchase is made somewhere in Oregon....but that's not why we went there.

They also have a wine and beer tasting room downstairs.

A seasonal beer for Aaron is why we went there yesterday, but it's nice to know that we finally have a wine bar of sorts to stop by.

As a bonus, the owner is so friendly and we stayed and chatted with her for a while.  We finally parted ways then headed to our next stop downtown.

Aaron likes to go to a local bike shop, Hutch's Bicycles and needed to, to pick up a bike he was having work done on.  I always like to walk through the rows of bike to check out the different styles of frames and colors and found my next want: A bright turquoise bike with brown leather-like grips and seat.

A lot like this:

But while Aaron was in there, I got bored and skipped (no, not literally) across the street to the liquor store to buy some peppermint schnapps for my hot chocolate.

(I wonder why I needed to tell you this....full disclosure in the name of blogging?)

I always feel like such a phony/drunk because they always put it in a brown paper bag.  So as you step out of the store, all the passerbys driving by can see the loser carrying the paper sack.  In this case, me! Bleh.  Anyway, don't judge.  It is winter time and Whitney needs hot her drink to warm her bones.

True fact, yo.

Speaking of drink, after Aaron finished at the bike store,we went in search of another type of beer for me this time: Elysian's the Great Pumpkin beer.  The label is ugly, but the taste divine!

Anyway, we found this beer, and maybe a couple more, at the beloved Portland Street Market

(referenced by me many times before)

I also snagged a couple packets of Pop Rocks and Zots for Aaron to try since he had never had them.

What?!

After that, we did some other random shopping for things we actually needed and headed home.

Home sweet home.  On the way home, we both agreed that it was a pretty good day and we were glad we did stay home. 

By the way, maybe if some of you out-of-towner's want to come visit us, we could drag you to our favorite places too!?

Hope you had/have a good day too!