Weekend Rewind: Brunch With Friends, A Perfect Sunday in the City

Hi!! I’m very happy to report that I had a super busy weekend in Chicago for the first time in forever (so, finally some actual material for a Weekend Rewind post lol). This last month has been so overwhelmingly busy, and my weekends have mainly been spent studying for the GRE and working on the blog. Truth be told, I’ve been a bit stressed out balancing everything on my plate, but I’m finally feeling like I’m in a pretty good place. I took my second practice exam and am officially scoring riiiiight around where I want to be for my program, which has been a huge weight off my shoulders. I was feeling very overdue for some fun and R&R, and the timing was perfect, as one of my best blogger besties Sylvia was in town for the weekend!

Friday

Friday I spontaneously decided to check out this local salon in my suburb to get my lashes lifted and tinted. I am SO happy with the results; they seriously look like I have extensions.

After my 5 pm appointment, I invited myself to my parents plans, and we went to PF Chang’s and saw A Star is Born. Side note, it’s been forever since I’ve had PF and wow; forgot how good it is. The vegetarian lettuce wraps are BAE. They also make fire virgin mojitos (I’m super weird and that’s been my drink of choice as of late, they just taste really good without the alc hahaha).

I had heard glowing reviews of this movie and went in with high expectations; I think the messaging may have been a little lost on my mom and I because we were noooot the biggest fans. Gaga is amazing in it, but Bradley Cooper’s character kinda sucks the whole time?? So why does she agree to marry him when he’s clearly a trainwreck waiting to happen?? And why is the piece of shit manager never hold accountable for the fact he essentially drives Jack to kill himself?? Maybe I’m just a hater, who knows.

Saturday

Saturday I also invited myself to my mom’s plans (I swear I have friends you guys), and we drove into Lake Forest to have lunch at Deer Path Inn. If you are local to the Chicago north suburbs or are looking for a day trip out of the city, I highly recommend checking out this cute English manor style inn and restaurant! They do a weekend afternoon tea in this gorgeous sun room (see second picture below) and they even have a cozy little pub in the basement. I love coming here when I’m craving a change of scenery; it makes you feel like you’re out in the English countryside!

Sunday

Sunday I took an early 9:30 am train downtown to meet Sylvia and Yasmina (another blogger friend of mine who recently started her MBA at Northwestern, so we’re like 10 min away from each other!) — linked both their blogs for you to check out FYI! — for brunch downtown. Some sweet friends at The Hampton Social invited us in, as always, the food and experience never disappoints. I’m sure you’ve seen the Rosé All Day sign on Instagram before; it’s without a doubt an IG Chicago bucket list item!

I met the girls by the river right around the corner from the restaurant so we could get some fire city pics; I seriously will never get over how beautiful our downtown is! We managed to flag down some poor passerby the take a group picture and boomerang of us, and then proceeded to take our extra asses over to the restaurant for lots of pictures by the neon sign (obviously) and approximately 184738 glasses of frosé (Hampton Social does THE best frosé). We split an order of the french fries, hiiiiighly recommend, Yasmina and I both got the crab and avocado toast, and Sylvia got a brown rice, black bean, and plantain breakfast bowl. We listened to live music, caught up on everything going on in each other’s lives, talked all things blogging, relationships, taking risks; needless to say, it was really, really good getting some girl time. There is truly nothing better 🙂