Category: Bubbly

Weekending: Sushi, Shopping, Harvest Party & Travel

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Weekends go by fast enough when you have the whole one, right? Well, getting one cut short makes them seem even shorter 😦 Even though my weekend was cut short, I feel as though I was able to do a lot of fun stuff during the time I did have!

Friday night, I went to Douzo Sushi in the Back Bay. I had never been there before, but I was pleasantly surprised by both the atmosphere and the service/food. We sat right at the sushi counter which was fun because we got to watch the sushi chefs do their magic. I had a glass of Cava to start… nothing like bubbly to kick of the weekend!

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We got the garlic-spice edamame (holy crap SO SO good. I want to try and recreate this at some point), a few signature rolls and some sashimi pieces. Yum!

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Isn’t sushi presentation the best?!

Saturday started with a workout and then some shopping, which was really just a reason to exchange a pair of shoes. There was a Chipotle in the mall so I treated myself to a chicken burrito bowl for lunch. Delish!

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My friend Nikia and her boyfriend, Kyle, had a Harvest Party at their gorgeous home in New Hampshire, so I headed north on Saturday afternoon to attend. It was only about an hour trip- love that. No surprise that Kia had the place beautifully decorated!

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I was driving back home to Boston that same night, so I had a few glasses of bubbly at the start and then switched to water.

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They had games set up outside and I had forgotten how fun it was to play corn hole, beruit, etc. Steve and I (well, mostly me… apparently I’m good at corn hole?!) killed it at corn hole!

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Per usual, Nikia had an amazing spread of food.

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Thanks for a fun party, Kia!

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I made it back to Boston in no time at all and ended up watching the Sox game… I don’t watch sports, so I am glad I picked Saturday’s game 6 game to watch.

Sunday morning was spent blogging, catching up on some TV shows, filming something fun for an upcoming post and getting ready for an afternoon of travel. I love that most airports have Wi-Fi because it allows me to get work done.

I hope you’re having a good week so far, I’m hoping to be back tomorrow with a really fun Wednesday Workout post.

Questions for you: Do you like sushi? What is your favorite sushi restaurant? Favorite drinking game?

Weekend in Maine: getting out of dodge

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City life can be so tiring. We are constantly rushing from one thing to the next: plans, work, gym, catching the next T or next stop light… always rushing. While I don’t mind a fast-paced lifestyle most of the time (I like to do things fast. All the time. Maybe that’s why I get so run down!), there’s something to be said about “getting out of dodge”, and for me, that’s heading to Maine for a weekend of complete R&R. Maine living is completely the opposite of Boston living and sometimes that’s exactly what I need.

With that said, after teaching my kickboxing class on Saturday, that’s what I did; made the trek up north, but not without a number of stops on the way. Not being on a timeline is something I don’t do often (or well, for that matter), so it was a nice treat to have the day open for anything I wanted to do!

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side note: how fun are my new pants?! Love them!

I stopped off in Kittery, which, in hindsight was a terrible idea since it was so busy, but I did score some good deals at Banana Republic so I guess that made it worth it?

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New pants that match the suit I bought this summer, 2 new blouses and a new sweater… all for less than $100! The outlet was 50% off. Doesn’t get much better than that! I also stopped off at Lowe’s to get a digital thermostat to help make regulating my heat easier.

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My last stop of the day before going to my parents was the hair dresser. I usually go to a salon in Boston, but as of late, I haven’t been happy with my hair cuts and she has gone up to $65, which I think is outrageous! I decided to get my hair cut in Maine since it’s $26… yes, that is a huge difference. She went a little shorter than I had wanted, but hair grows and I’ve always been more of a short hair person than long hair.

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I wonder how it’s going to look curly… hopefully not too short!

We had a dinner party on Saturday night at my parents, which is always a fun thing. What made it even better was how much bubbly people brought; sometimes I think they do it just for me and “Burpees to Bubbly” 😉

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Have I mentioned how much I love being home?

Sunday consisted of church with both parents (dad doesn’t always go, so it’s a nice treat when he does) and then lots of shopping at Wal Mart, Kohls and Market Basket. I also visited with my friend Meredith, which is always a special treat. She sent me home with ice cream.. the best ice cream!

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Yes, that’s liquor ice cream. Strong liquor ice cream.

We had visitors in the afternoon on Sunday… another one of my favorite parts of going home. I wish people my age did afternoon cocktail hour on Sundays that just consisted of a few cocktails and a few snacks.

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Bubbly and blogging… how fitting.

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Starting sweet Emma off young… her favorite thing at my parents’ house is the plastic wine glass collection. And Longaberger baskets.

For dinner, mom asked what I would want and randomly enough, I requested Beef Burgundy. It’s something I have made before, but likely wouldn’t make again for a while so it was the perfect meal to have her make me. Served with fresh, roasted garden veggies and garlic mashed potatoes (from the garden, too) made for a delicious meal. And, speaking of gardens, look at the last of the tomato crop from my dad’s garden.

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I wanted to have a “guess how many tomatoes” game on B2B, but that would require me counting the tomatoes and there were just too many to do that!

And, that about sums up my weekend. I’m heading back to the city feeling refreshed and ready to attack a few crazy weeks of work travel, parties and teaching. Bring it on!

Questions for you: Where is your favorite outlet shopping? What was the best thing you did last weekend?

Settling Into Eastie

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This past weekend, I felt like I really started to settle into living in Eastie. And, the more I see, do and learn about Eastie, the more I love it! There are so many great restaurants, bars, parks and nice people and I think it’s really turned around in recent years.

Not only am I loving living in Eastie, but I’m loving the fact that I have friends who live down the street from me! Pat, Colleen and I are starting to take advantage of living so close to each other, so Friday night, the 3 of us headed over to Ecco for afternoon cocktails. Ecco is owned by the same owners who own Santarpio’s. Since I’m still trying to hold on to one last bit of summer, I ordered their Sangria and it was amazinggggg.

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Pat insisted on us ordering the Seasonal Cheese Plate, so we did, and I was very happy about it. Cheese and crackers is one of my favorite “snacks”, especially when I’m enjoying cocktails!

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Thanks for a fun night, neighbors! Can’t wait to do it again 🙂

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I know this sounds so lame, but I was so happy about being home early on a Friday night and waking up on a Saturday feeling refreshed. I went to BodyPump, Christmas Tree Shop and then hung out with my sister and Amy at their apartment. They even made me pizza on the grill, which was unbelievable! Have you guys ever had that? If not, I highly suggest trying it 🙂

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From there, I went on another tour of Eastie; I swear, it’s bigger than I thought! We checked out Orient Heights and Constitution Beach and I learned all of the “hidden gem” restaurants and bakeries. We ended the afternoon at KO Pies which is a place I’ve wanted to cross of my “must try” list for a while. It’s this random, little hole in the wall restaurant in the shipyard area of East Boston and I would never have known about it had I not been introduced to it. There’s also a location in Southie- have you heard of it? We enjoyed Harpoon Pumpkin Beers while chatting outside- it was the perfect day for that! Not too hot, not too cold.

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And we couldn’t leave without trying their famous pies! I didn’t take a picture because it really wouldn’t do the pie any justice, but just trust me- it was amazing and well worth a trip!

I slept at my old apartment on Saturday night and as much as I love living alone, waking up and watching TV and blogging with “roommates” around was so nice, especially since it was such a rainy/gross day. We had ridiculous amounts of laughs, especially when we all practiced “twerking”. Yes, that happened.

We spent the rest of the day with Jessi, doing lunch and shopping. I was grumpy because of the weather and traffic and crazy busy city, but I did have fun with the girls! Prosecco in the afternoon on a Sunday is never a bad thing 😉

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Nor are nachos. I have a weak, weak spot for nachos.

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After lunch we shopped a little. I was good and only got a pair of skinny jeans that were super on sale at the Gap

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And, that about sums up my weekend! I didn’t have time to make a big “Sunday dinner”, but I did make some amazing Whole Wheat Pumpkin muffins and those were way better than any dinner I could have made 🙂

Questions for you: What was the best part of your weekend? Did you go to Harpoon fest? What’s your favorite cocktail these days?

Girls Night & Other Weekend Happenings

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What a fun weekend I had! I am loving having some extra free time on the weekends to go out and have fun in Boston, as well as get my apartment more and more settled!

Friday evening, the Shapleigh girls came over for a girls night. I did my best to play “hostess” and set out snacks and drinks.

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Our original plan was to go to Rino’s or Prima e Dopo, but we decided we were having too much fun drinking wine and munching on snacks at my place and didn’t want to leave! So, we ordered pizza which did the trick!

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I’ve lived with all of these ladies at one time or another and we all grew up together (Amy’s sister, Sara, is the last piece of the Shapleigh girls puzzle; she lives in NH so when we go home we make it a point to always get together!) so when we get together, it’s basically like hanging out with 3 sisters. We do stupid stuff like have random dance parties and jump contests. Friday was no different as we had a stretching competition to make fun of Danielle for being so un-flexible!

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Clearly the wine had set in at that point so we called a cab and got ready to head into the city.

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Amy had some friends going to Tia’s so we headed there first. From Tia’s, the plan was to go to The Brahmin, but per usual, the line was crazy long so we hopped over to Red Lantern to have a drink while waiting for the line to go down. I’ve never eaten there, but it’s been on my list of places to go for a while now!

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I think this is where things started to go from casual fun to drunken fun, haha I blame it on Amy’s college friend, Andrew, as he could be a professional partier 😉

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I hadn’t planned on going out and/or drinking wine like it was water, but the nights where you don’t plan on going out and end up going out tend to be the best, right?! Saturday night was no different! Any night with dancing is a good night in my eyes 😉

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Needless to say, I did not feel up to my normal self on Saturday, but I made the best of it! I got new glasses, went to the beach, made pizza, watched half of The Great Gatsby (couldn’t stay awake for the whole thing!) and was in bed by 9:30- regular ol’ crazy Saturday night 😉

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What do you think of my new glasses?? I am totally loving them and it’s fun having something so different than my other 2 pairs! They make me feel smarter, haha.

Sunday I got up and felt so much better so I went for a nice walk to enjoy the weather. I met up with my college friend, Pat, and his wife, Colleen for breakfast at Angelas Café, which is equidistant from both of our apartments. I’m SO excited to have some friends within very close walking distance- it’s going to be so fun 🙂 They also took me for a tour of Eastie and introduced me to another amazing park and ‘must try’ restaurants.

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Beautiful, right?! I’m excited to run there and use the gym that they have in the park- it’s a little area with all sorts of fun things to use as workout tools.

After the tour was complete, I headed back to my apartment to do laundry and hang up pictures and other random new apartment organizing things before my sister came over for a Target and Market Basket run.

I finallllyyy got a normal sized tv! It’s awesome!
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I also got new pillows for my couch! I’m going for a yellow/gray/white color scheme and I found these at Home Goods and couldn’t resist!

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I made Shepherd’s Pie for dinner, which I’ll post for you later this week 🙂

Questions for you: Have you seen the Great Gatsby? What was the best part of your weekend? Do you know of any “must try” restaurants in Eastie that I should add to my list?

The Big Move…

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“The Big Move”… I am so overly, unnecessarily dramatic 😉 But, in all actuality, it was a pretty big move for me. Even though I am very independent and am not one of those people to always need someone around to go shopping with, watch TV with, workout with, etc. etc., I have never lived alone (although for the past year or so, I’ve wanted to! No offense, Danielle or Amy, but at 28 it was just time to have my own place and no roommates), so this was a big step!

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I started my search in May or June (I think), and found my new apartment basically right away. My landlord is awesome and we got along great right from the start, so it just felt right to sign the papers, not to mention it was a super affordable 1-bedroom apartment!

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This pretty much sealed the deal that I made the right choice! I can be won over by wine.

So, Saturday morning, Sue and Al (aka mom and dad) packed up the truck with my couch and other various things I needed from home and came down to help me move.

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It didn’t take Danielle long to figure out what she was going to do to help us

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assume position and start barking orders. Just kidding! She was actually very helpful for the entire day and in no time at all, we had the first load ready

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I breathed a huge sigh of relief when my parents immediately started gushing at my new place. My only issue with the apartment is that it is basement level and although the ground is at a slant and my bedroom has 2 full size windows, I was just having a hard time accepting the fact that I was on ground level. Walking in with my parents and sister and having them all talk about how it didn’t seem like it was basement level, made me feel great (even if they were saying it just to make me feel better).

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Kitchen and living room

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Bedroom- see? It’s bright!

I put mom to work with getting my kitchen in order while I finished bringing in load after load after load of my stuff. Once everything was in from the first load, it was time to pop the bubbly!

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What I really love about my place is the back patio! I can’t wait to have little BBQ’s and little gatherings out there. It didn’t take dad long to break the patio in!

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We finally got lunch around 2 or 3 and I didn’t take a picture because I was way too hungry. Between teaching cardio kickboxing in the morning and doing heavy lifting/moving for another 3+ hours, I needed food in a bad way. Once we finished eating, my sister left to go to a friend’s house and mom, dad and I went to Home Depot and Target.

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Once we got the vast majority of things on my list (at the time… my list seems to continuously grow as the days go on. yikes!), we dropped dad off at my old apartment and mom and I went back to my new apartment to unload some more things. I was obsessed with getting my bathroom set up- weird, right?! I also put together shelves and mom unpacked and set up other random things.

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By 7:15, we were absolutely beat and decided to head back to Somerville for the night (it was easier to stay there since there was more room)… but not without picking up Chinese food for dinner. Yes, you read that correctly: we had Chinese take-out on Saturday night. I haven’t had Chinese food in probably 3 years!! Totally worth it, though… I was famished and it absolutely hit the spot.

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I crashed pretty hard on Saturday night and before I knew it, it was time to get up and start all over again on Sunday! While mom was at church, Dad and I packed up the rest of the things in my apartment: bed, bureau and all my clothes/shoes/food/etc. Gosh, I was dripping in sweat within minutes! Moving is seriously NO JOKE. Great workout!

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It was definitely bittersweet leaving my old apartment knowing that I had everything packed up (ok, almost everything- I realized later that I forgot all of my jackets in the coat closet there, but no biggie since the girls are staying there this year!). But that feeling went away as soon as I had everything in my new apartment and started making it feel more like home.

We broke around 1 to go have a birthday lunch for my parents at Joe’s American Bar and Grill in the North End. The purpose for going there was to have brunch on the water, but long story short, we ended up inside. I’ve always enjoyed the food there even though it’s a chain restaurant, but this past experience was horrible!!! From the food to the service, everything was awful! Well, except for this drink

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Now THAT was good!

After lunch, I was feeling like it was time for some “Monique alone time”, so I sent my parents and my sister off so I could be in my apartment alone to putter and try to organize my life! I washed things that didn’t need to be washed and moved things from one place to the next and then back to the original place. I finally decided it was time to get out and grocery shop and pick up a few more things at TJ Maxx and Target.

My trip to Market Basket was rather large, but I think I spent half what I would’ve spent had I gone elsewhere! I love that store 🙂

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I also bought myself flowers because, well, sometimes you just need flowers 🙂

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Again, I didn’t stop until about 10pm on Sunday, but it was nice knowing that I’d be working from home on Monday (Comcast was coming so I wanted to be around for that!). Besides work on Monday, I was able to get some things done around my apartment, go to BodyPump after work (holy moly… I lifted heavy and was rather sore on Tuesday!! I secretly loved it 😉 ) and then hit up the Christmas Tree Shop for a few things. I also made my first “dinner” at my new place. Nothing fancy, but I’m loving my new pots and pans!

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I made my first commute to work on Tuesday from my new apartment and was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was!! My old commute was a short walk to the bus, a bus ride to the T, taking the T 4 or 5 stops into the city and then walking about 15 minutes to the office. Phew! My new commute is an 8 minute walk to the T, 2 stops into the city and a 12 minute walk to work- amazing!! 🙂

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When I got home, I went for a 3.5 mile run around my new neighborhood. There is a REALLY nice park with all sorts of paved trails a half mile from my house which I see myself taking advantage of during my time here!

By the time I got home from work last night, I was utterly exhausted! I ended up subbing the class before mine and I found myself having no energy to teach which never happens. I took that as a sign and did the low-impact version of the workouts. Thankfully I had leftovers for dinner, otherwise my dinner likely would’ve looked like this:

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My friend, Tim, texted me that and I thought it was perfect timing! Mom, he thought you’d get a kick out of it, too.

Even though I’m not completely settled in, I feel like I’m getting there, bit by bit! Luckily I don’t have any big plans this weekend so I’ll have time to finish up even more!

Questions for you: When is the last time you moved? What’s the first thing you like to set up in your new apartment? How long is your commute to work?