It’s December! And the holiday season is in full swing. Alex and I got a head start on Friday night and went to check out the Christkindlmarket downtown. This is our 2nd year going together so we have a little tradition now of walking around while drinking deliciously hot mulled wine (from a tiny boot), eating fries with weird but awesome German ketchup, and sharing a skewer of chocolate covered fruit.

The market was surprisingly packed that evening and the line for mulled wine was crazy long but worth it. We walked around the booths and admired Chicago’s giant Christmas tree. I love that the majority of downtown is now covered in twinkle lights. It’s always worth the trek to Daley Plaza.

Saturday was a fairly laid-back day. The Renegade Craft Fair is back in Chicago for the holiday market, but we didn’t check it out until today. I am a huuuge fan of Reuse First and insisted on buying Alex a candle in a Malort bottle. It’s as awesome as it sounds.

We headed a place on our list of restaurants to check out for lunch: Handlebar, which is right in my neighborhood and vegetarian/vegan, but I’ve weirdly never been.

It was pretty delish; Alex had seitan for the very first time in the form of a BBQ seitan sandwich and I got the enchiladas verde. The lunch items we had were really good, but we’ve decided we need to go back for brunch as well.

I’ve decided to switch it up a bit with how I edited the photos for this post. After hearing a few different bloggers talk about it, I decided to check out the Afterglow app and I sorta love it. I’ll be using it a lot more often since I try not to constantly repost Instagram pics on here.

How was your weekend? Are you excited about the holidays? :)