My night away

    So, on a personal note, my husband and I went away last weekend for a date night. (I put together a year's worth of date nights for his Christmas gift.  There will be one a month. This was the first.)  We went up to this bed & breakfast in Wakefield, NH. This was our 4th time there. We had gone for our anniversary one year when Matt's parents offered to take the kids for the night. The owner has been trained as a chef in France and makes incredibly delicious breakfasts.
     This was our room:

 A king sized bed would never fit in our apartment. This bed was so incredibly comfortable. The duvet and pillows were made of down feathers. The sheets were super expensive very high quality and soft.  It didn't hurt that I didn't have children trying to climb near me in the night/early morning.

      This is a day bed that is opposite to where the picture above was taken. The door on the right opens to the staircase in the last picture.

      Because I'm a nerd, I had to read the entire journal for the room. People from all over the world had stayed in our room and I came across this fantastic sketch. The view is what you would see from the window on the left side of the first picture.

      I'm not going to lie- I totally wanted to find some ink and write a letter with this old pen and inkwell. I restrained myself (though I know Ashley totally would've encouraged me to go for it!! lol).
                                            

    This is a super cool spiral staircase from the front door all the way to the 3rd floor. The 2nd floor had a stagecoach door where stagecoaches could unload to the 2nd floor. There is a whole gallery of brides who have had their picture taken on this staircase winding up the wall. Very cool.
     I wish I had taken a picture of breakfast, but I forgot. (More like I ate it before someone could snap a picture..  ha ha!) For starters we had a fruit cup with fresh strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupe (I just seriously spelled cantaloupe wrong 5x. Wow.), red grapes, and bananas. I don't know how the fruit tasted so fresh in the middle of winter in New Hampshire but it was delicious.  Next came something that seemed like a Yorkshire pudding bowl (or popover type bread) filled with blueberry compote and a few slices of bacon. I also had a glass of cranberry juice.

    Matt has always enjoyed cooking so the reason I decided on this place for a date night is because there is an option to sign up for a cooking class.  We took a class with 4 other people. (Remind me to tell you about the older woman who hacked her chicken apart while we were learning how to quarter the chicken. I had a very difficult time not laughing as she ummm- mangled- her poor chicken carcass.)  We made a 5 course meal- simple bread, chicken glazed with honey and fig, mushroom bisque, butternut squash and cranberry risotto, followed by a chocolate mousse.
     After we cooked, the 6 of us sat down and shared a meal. I actually really enjoy sharing  meal with people. It was interesting to sit down with people who were basically strangers and conversing with them. One of the women was deaf.  She and I talked most actually.
     This is what our main dish looked like:

    This doesn't look so pale in person. The chicken was a golden brown. The dark things are figs. It wasn't bad. We got the recipes so maybe we can cook you the recipes we made sometime.

    No good mail for the past few days.  My 1st lip balm tag got to Finland and she liked it.