Sounds like you had a good time for the first time out with that car in years.

The "if it were me" recipe for solid 11's would be, converter, cam & heads, headers...... In that order.
9.5" converter
Cam in the 250's @.050, 108lsa
Sidewinder/stealth heads with some bowl work and a decent valve job
Hooker competition headers(1-7/8" and still affordable)

New light weight pistons are nice but will do very little for the ET.
Not at all a good "bang for the buck" improvement.