Check out the Bloggers of the Day (chosen from yesterday’s comments)!

• HomeCookedEm – Em is also pregnant and a great friend of mine! She’s the sweetest and most genuine person.
• Love Eat Now After – Lena writes about her life, while sharing great recipes in the mix (like this Veggie Paella)
• Snacking Squirrel – Kelsey exudes such beauty and confidence…and knowledge on putting together amazing healthy concoctions

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Yesterday defined a perfect weekend day for me. During the day I enjoyed a lot of free time, despite Peter off helping a friend on his car. I also still managed to accomplish a fair amount of to-dos. Then, I ended the afternoon and evening with a fun family night.

We had a Groupon for a pizza joint that we needed to use before it expired. So, last night we headed out to the Virginia Highlands area of Atlanta.

The Virginia Highlands occupies a small area of town and includes many beautiful  craftsman style homes, delightful restaurants, and small shops to explore. We took awhile before eating to do just that.

Finally, fall is here! Yes, it is! 😀 I adored venturing out into the cool early evening hours. We headed into a few of the kitschy shops. I love little places like this!

Those magnets = the story of my life! How fitting for a blogging, fitness fanatic mother! 😉

We also stopped into a high class kitchen and fine foods shop called Bella Cucina. If I had money to spend I could do some serious damage in there. They have all sorts of amazing spreads, pesto, cute dishes, etc.

Can I please move that same setting to my back porch? Pretty please! And I think all of us can agree with their tagline…

Cropped right from a picture of their business card. Don’t you love it?

Now onto the good food. Of course, when you choose to dine on your favorite food at a place that knows how to prepare it you can expect good things. Everybody’s Pizza did not disappoint. We split a medium with spinach, mushrooms, onions, olives, and pepperoni.

Or more accurately, we split half of it and took the other half to go. I knew we needed to save stomach room for something special. I give you three guesses what but you will only need one.

Oh, yea. The perfect end to the perfect evening. I heart thee, Pumpkin Pie blizzard! And how you help watching UGA lose again go down a little easier. Le sigh.

• What was the highlight of your weekend?

Check out today’s 30 Days post! Only 10 more days left in the series, which amazes me.

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Shall I continue with my crazy busy Saturday now? I think yes! I like looking back on the weekend. It helps make Monday a little more bearable. Especially when you have numerous things to do, but no motivation to actually do them. I need a day of nothing. Yea. Like that will ever happen. 😉

So after spending a day among toddler lovebirds and birthday cake, we did something I have looked forward to since spring. A hike! I love visiting the many various mountains and trails in our area for family hikes. I hated that the heat this summer combined with pregnancy made it very difficult to get out for any. Even though the fall weather has recently taken a backseat to more summer temperatures, I was not willing to give up on our planned hike.

We visited Kennesaw Mountain for a short 3 mile trail hike. I loved every grueling, 90 degree temperature, steep and rocky uphill moment of that climb.

Hiking is one of my favorite fall activities! I can’t wait for more…which hopefully we will have the time to fit in with our steadily filling calendar.

After the hike, we picked up our friend’s wife who couldn’t go with us and headed out to dinner. After last week’s lesson, my only request was “not a chain”. Our friends picked out Elevation Chophouse, a restaurant situated on the hangar of a small, local airport.

We got to dine while watching planes taking off and landing. Extra perk? It entertained M better than her little backpack of books. Always a good thing.

For my dinner, I split the hummus plate with my friend and also ordered one of the jumbo all meat crab cakes with hot pepper jelly.

These were good! The hummus had the perfect creamy consistency with a slight lemony undertone. The veggies were on the pitiful side, but the black pepper lavash bread made up for them. The crab cake tasted better than some I’ve had at the beach. It truly was all meat. And I loved the kick from the pepper jelly.

The second half of Saturday was a huge success. Good food, good friends, a favorite activity? What more could I ask for.

• What was the best part of your weekend?
• What is your favorite fall activity? I love visiting the pumpkin patch, corn maze, Helen, and other places in the fall but overall hiking is #1. Well, it could be behind eating pumpkin inspired foods. 😀