The Hygge Happiness Date

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And now...on to today's stories: 

Though we seem to be living in a season of not really being able to make concrete plans, I do have a dream of spending 2019 exploring some new things we've not experienced before here in our very own hometown. Like many of you, we visit a variety of places in our town, but we tend to always travel the same circuit. Surely there are restaurants we haven't tried and stores where we haven't shopped, right?

I decided we'd kick off this adventure by attending First Friday last week. I know they're becoming more popular, but if your town/city doesn't have one, here's what it is. It takes place, as you might guess, on the first Friday of the month, and it typically centers around the downtown area. Businesses stay open late, some have special sales, food trucks might show up, and it's just fun.

We've had every intention of going to Kokomo's First Friday several times, but it seems like every first Friday, we end up busy and can't go. I asked Ryan if he could pencil me in for a First Friday date this past weekend, and that's exactly what we did! Kokomo always has a theme for their First Fridays, and January's theme was called Hygge Happiness. (Hygge is a Danish word that doesn't have an adequate English translation, but it basically means coziness.)

Unfortunately it wasn't TOTALLY cozy. Why? Well, I'm pretty sure the rest of Kokomo stayed home. Sigh. Seriously??? Even though Friday was CRAZY warm for Indiana in January, and the night was perfectly clear from any kind of wind or precipitation, the streets were mostly empty. We still made our own fun.

(I do think the ice skating rink was busy. It's new this year. They installed it at the baseball stadium and named it the Frozen Sandlot. It was open and isn't far from downtown, so I think it probably had a good crowd. I do NOT need to add a broken self to my list of appointments right now, so we didn't attempt it.)

Our first stop at the night was at MoJoe, which is a coffee shop on the square. Now, that place was SO busy. They had live music going on, a full crowd painting pottery in the back, and the boutique upstairs was open. We decided just to get our coffee to go, but we did listen to the music while we waited for it!

We wandered through the streets and discovered an art alley. WHO KNEW??? We sure didn't! It was dark when we arrived, but the alley was well-lit, so we were able to see the exhibits well. I'm SO not an artist, nor am I smart in any way about any kind of art. I don't get the symbolism. But I appreciate things that catch my eye, so here are a couple of photos.

(That last one had the word courage in it, so I figured I should take a picture.)

The alley full of art was right outside a business called Artworks Gallery. I'm sure you can guess we hadn't been there before either, but I had read they were serving a s'more buffet, so you surely can believe I marched in to participate in that! (Ryan was cornered by an employee who told him all about art, so he wasn't able to document my stellar marshmallow roasting skills, but he did get the final product.)

And since we were getting our fill of art for the night, we walked over to the area that had a new exhibit called Kokomo Glow. It really was pretty cool.

That was the end of our First Friday Hygge Happiness date. It was a short but good evening. It would have been a bit more exciting if a few more businesses had participated or a few more people had shown up, but we learned new things about our town, so we counted it a success! And with all the lights and s'mores and coffee, it really was hygge for us.