Weekending: Thanksgiving & Long Weekend Edition

November 30, 2015November 29, 20156 Comments

Good morning! I feel like I haven’t “talked” to you guys in a while… I guess an extra long weekend will do that 😉 I ended up taking Wednesday off since my company gave us a half day, so not working Wed-Sunday was a nice little treat! Although the time off was very relaxing, we did do a lot of fun things, so let’s recap! Warning- this is a long post, but there are lots of pictures so you can just skim and check those out if you want 😉

Wednesday

After sleeping in a bit, RM and I got up and had breakfast and then I hit the gym for a run and lifting session. It’s always a nice treat to be able to workout mid-morning without being on a time crunch.

Since a few of my girlfriends also had Wednesday off, we decided to meet up at my friend Jess’s apartment in the North End since she needed to stay close to home for her daughters nap time. It worked out well because we were able to chat and hang out without feeling rushed like we might at a restaurant.

For dinner, RM and I met up with his brother and sister in law at Charcoal Guido’s on Moody Street. One of RM’s childhood friends opened the restaurant a few years ago and since we live closer to the area now, we decided to finally check it out. The pizza and atmosphere were both great! I had never been to Moody Street but I think we will be going back soon because it’s such a fun street!

Thursday

We woke up on Thanksgiving and lounged around while watching the parade. I wasn’t sure if I was going to workout, but ultimately decided it was something I wanted to do. I wasn’t doing it to “earn my meal” or because I wanted to feel better about possibly indulging, I did it because I felt rested and I felt thankful for the fact my body can move and that it’s strong.

My parents ended up going to my sister’s for Thanksgiving so RM and I decided to go there for apps and a drink before doing the whole dinner thing at his mother’s house. I decided to bring a variation of the Apple Brie Appetizer Bites Athena posted last week. To change it up, I ended up using sharper, hard cheeses instead of the mild, soft Brie. They came out great and everyone loved them!

We had a blast at my sister’s and even though it was hard leaving them, it was nice to be able to see both families. Dinner at RM’s mother’s house was- no surprise- delicious, but sadly I didn’t take a single photo! I always feel awkward taking food pictures when I’m around his family, but I think I need to suck it up and take them because everything is always very picture worthy.

Friday

Friday was a super fun day because not only did I shop for wedding dresses, I ended up buying one!!! More on that later- I have a whole post to describe that experience 😉

I loved that my whole family- including my dad- were there for the experience. It was so special and so fun! And, might I add, there was no “Say Yes to the Dress” drama! To celebrate, we went to Buff’s Pub for lunch. My parents hadn’t been before and my sister and I thought it was a great place to take them. The verdict? They loved it!

After my parents left, RM and I went to Lookout Farm to visit his cousin and check out their new taproom. I fell in love with everything about this place! It was originally just a farm where you could go apple, pear, peach and strawberry picking, but recently they decided to make good use of the excess apples and they started making their own hard cider. I’ve never been a huge cider person (except for when I studied abroad in England and we drank cider all the time!), but the ciders at Lookout Farm are absolutely delicious! They aren’t too fruity sweet and they’ve got great fizz to them. We started with a sampler flight of the 4 flavors they had on tap: Farmhouse Blend, Super Berry, Green with Envy (has green tea in it) and Barn Burner (which is spicy, I think with habanero peppers in it).

Mark, RM’s cousin, brought us for a tour of the property and it was incredible to see how big it was and to see where they brew the cider.

Once we got back to the taproom, we each ordered our own cider (Super Berry for me) and shared a charcuterie plate (3 meats, 3 cheeses & olives for $12.75 I think). They also have big, soft pretzels and various flatbreads and everything looked delicious.

Such a fun time! If you’re ever in the South Natick/Wellesley area, this is definitely a place you need to check out!

Saturday

We got up early on Saturday and I fit in a workout before hitting the road to Ikea.

I’ll say that I love a good dorky matchy-matchy sesh, but RM and I were even a bit much for me on Saturday. In my defense, I got dressed first! Luckily he ended up taking off the vest once we got to Ikea 😉

We grabbed some Starbuck’s and then attacked Ikea. I was so impressed with how well the experience went. We were there early enough to avoid the crazy masses of people and we found everything we were looking for.

To celebrate, we went to La Casa De Pedro for lunch and cocktails. Everything was fantastic!

The rest of the night was spent putting stuff together and being totally lazy. We logged some serious couch time!

Sunday

I woke up craving pancakes so I decided to whip some healthy ones up.

And yes, I love topping mine with syrup, homemade jam and almond butter. Don’t judge 😉

After breakfast we did a good cleaning of the apartment and then I went and got a new phone. My old one had something stuck in the headphone hole so I couldn’t really use it when I was at the gym or teaching which was annoying.

We decided to get a new, smaller table and I love how it looks now! and the yellow chairs RM picked out are amazing!

Later in the afternoon, RM had to cash in a bunch of quarters so I went along for the ride… mostly because he also suggested getting a drink at a local bar after 🙂

Wine and an onion soup for me- perfect mid afternoon snack!

The rest of the night was spent doing some meal prep and lots of blogging. This is a busy week and I have lots to share with you guys so I tried to get ahead of the game by logging in some serious blogging hours. It’s actually a perfect sunday night activity since RM is usually watching football!

Questions for you: Did you take extra time off around the holiday? Where did you celebrate Thanksgiving? Did you do any good workouts over the weekend? Have you been to Ikea before? Ever been to any of the restaurants linked in this post?

Weekending: Friendsgiving, SoulCycle, sweetgreens & Taco Night

November 23, 2015November 22, 20153 Comments

Good morning! Well, here we are- Thanksgiving is on THURSDAY. Can you believe it?! I have Wednesday-Friday off so last night barely felt like a Sunday night knowing I only had 2 days of work before an extra long weekend 🙂 We had a really great weekend, so let’s get to recapping it!

Friday

I went food shopping on my way home after work on Friday- how exciting, right?! Once I got home and unpacked, RM and I enjoyed a glass of wine while catching up and throwing around options for dinner. We ended up walking to Bertucci’s, but sadly our meal was just OK- the pizza was just not nearly as good as I remembered it being. I hate that!

Saturday

We had a lazy start to our Saturday until it was time for me to go teach at the Y. It was a really fun class and for some reason my energy was off the charts so I hope I didn’t scare any new members away 😉

After teaching, I showered and headed to Queen Bee Nails to get my nails done. I had a free manicure coupon and decided to upgrade and get a shellac since I wanted nice nails for Friendsgiving, Thanksgiving and dress shopping. I thought this color was very festive for this time of year.

Once I got home, I got busy in the kitchen. I agreed to bring Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes and homemade cranberry sauce so I had lots of things to make! For the Brussels sprouts I just sautéed them in EVOO and added salt, pepper and 1 clove of chopped garlic. I also added pancetta which adds a great salty & crunchy combination to the dish. Athena left a suggestion on my Five on Friday post for a homemade cranberry sauce, so I checked it out and decided to make it. I loved that it was so easy to throw together! The only things I changed were adding more water, I put all of the orange peels in it and added a little bit of regular and coconut sugar because it was still a bit too tart for my liking (I think I had more cranberries than her recipe called for). It was super tasty!

In the early afternoon, RM and I got gussied up and headed into the South End to meet up with all of my friends.

Saturday night out is always more fun with leather pants on 😉

My friend Amy’s brother has an incredible pent house apartment above Boston Chops and graciously let us host our gathering there (he plays hockey in Canada so he wasn’t there anyway).

We had a blast chatting and drinking wine and eating. The food was incredible- everyone did a really great job with the dishes they were assigned!

I feel so blessed to have so many wonderful friends in my life- these ladies are the best of the best!

Sunday

Needless to say, I woke up with a bit of a wine headache on Sunday so I had breakfast and then snuggled up on the couch with our new book club book for a while before I went to spin.

Has anyone read this? I’m only about 100 pages in, but I’m enjoying it so far!

SoulCycle often sends out emails to take complimentary classes, I assume to help boost numbers for some of their lower attendance classes, but generally I can’t take part in them because they’re usually on really off times. This time, though, they had a Sunday 4pm class on the list, but when I called it was already full so they let me take the 11:45am class instead, which actually worked out better. I felt bad for the people next to me as I likely sweat out pure wine 😉 The class was really fun and the instructor, Jeff, had lots of energy! Per usual, I didn’t think the class itself was that hard- I don’t know what it is about the classes there, but I never think they are as hard as they are at other studios. Where I think they do step it up is the party atmosphere, which is what makes the classes so fun!

After class I went next door to have lunch at sweet green- a little Sunday treat 🙂

I did a make your own salad with kale, cucumber, broccoli, carrots and spicy quinoa and a side of their butternut squash which was not great- it was so thin and watery! The salad was fantastic, though.

When I got home, RM was snuggled up watching American Sniper so I decided to join him. It was a cold, rainy afternoon so it was a perfect thing to do! After the movie we went to Whole Foods to pick up a few additional staples for the week and for our taco dinner. We had a piece of steak in the freezer so RM took it out and suggested we slice it and put it in tacos. He’s full of good ideas sometimes 😉 To go along with it, I made a super easy salsa (red pepper, tomato, red onion, pineapple, lime juice- everything chopped really small and then throw half of it into a food processor to give it more of a salsa consistency.

I also made a avocado “sauce” made up of all sorts of random things we had lying around (I didn’t have sour cream or greek yogurt so I had to get creative): 1/2 avocado, 1 scoop of hummus, 1 scoop of goat cheese, salt, pepper, garlic powder, red pepper flakes, ~2 tbsp. EVOO and 1/8-1/4 cup of vegetable broth. Surprisingly, it came out great and was perfect to top the steak with.

RM cooked the steak in butter and with salt and pepper- so delicious!

It was a such a yummy Sunday night dinner! We both were pleasantly surprised by how well everything came together- even with using Ezekiel wraps instead of corn tortillas.

YUM!

And that does it for us- All in all it was a great weekend filled with good food, great friends, fun exercise and lots of relaxation!

Questions for you: What was the best part of your weekend? What did you do? Did you get in any good workouts? Hang out with friends? What are you making for Thanksgiving?

Weekending: Hopsters Date Night, Handle Bar & Brunching in Harvard Square, Hosting my Parents

November 16, 2015November 16, 20156 Comments

Good morning! What a busy, but fun weekend we had- let’s recap 🙂

Friday

After work on Friday I had to go into the city for an appointment. I had some time to kill and decided to pop into City Sports since I knew they were doing “going out of business” sales and I had a gift card I needed to use. I didn’t find much worth looking at (sales weren’t THAT good year), but I did find these awesome Saucony running sneakers I was able to get for 35% off! I’ve never run in Saucony’s, so I hope I like them!

By the time I finished up at City Sports, it was time to head to my appointment near the North End. As she was finishing up, she asked if I wanted any water, which I declined since I had a water bottle with me. She then asked if I wanted wine and I said “well, yeah! that’s more like it”. I thought she was totally kidding until she came back in the room with a big ol’ cup of wine. Best surprise ever 🙂

RM got home shortly after me and we decided to walk to Hopsters for a drink and dinner. I was there last Friday night with my sister so it was funny to be back again! We decided to get the sausage and arugula flatbread and harvest salad and both were incredible, the pizza especially. Wow- so so good!

Saturday

Saturday morning we woke up kind of early and decided it was a good morning for healthy pancakes so RM got busy.

Usually we do Sunday morning pancakes so this was a fun treat 🙂 It’s rare to have a Saturday at home without having to teach.

My sister and I had plans to go to The Handle Bar’s new Harvard Square location for an 11:30 class and then brunch after. The class was really good and challenging, the brunch was a big disappointment 😦 We ended up going to Park Restaurant and Bar and everything from the slow service to the really, really sub par food made for a less than stellar brunch.

I ordered the goat cheese and spinach omelet and it looked like they literally put a scoop of goat cheese in the middle of the omelet and threw in some barely cooked spinach. I could have made something way better than that. My sister’s burger melt looked like it was from McDonald’s- the slice of yellow cheese wasn’t even melted and the burger itself was tiny. And the kicker? it took 40 minutes to get the food and it wasn’t even busy! I would not suggest going there if you’re looking for a bunch spot in Harvard Square- save your money!

After I got home, RM and I booked our wedding photographer (!!!) and went to Chelsea to go to the huge Home Goods to get some house stuff. We ended up getting new pillows, a new throw and laundry baskets- we are getting there!

The rest of the night was spent food shopping and meal prepping for my parents visit on Sunday. I also made our favorite Shrimp and Veggie Curry Dish for dinner, which is such an easy and delicious meal to throw together.

Sunday

I woke up early because I knew I had a lot to prep in advance before my parents and my sister came over for a little luncheon. On the menu?

Easy Pumpkin Soup from Lexi’s Clean Kitchen
Roast Chicken
Roasted sweet potatoes, Japanese sweet potatoes, celery, carrots and onions
Spicy broccolini
Fancy veggie filled stuffing that my sister made and brought- it had grated carrots, onions, celery, mushrooms- it was a really fun change from your traditional stuffing.

We had such a nice afternoon drinking bubbly/wine, catching up and talking big time wedding talk. My mom got me my first bride magazine, which was fun to look through! I love that my parents are so willing to come down for a few hours and a meal.

After they left, we finished cleaning up and got comfy on the couch- preparing a big meal and hosting a luncheon is tiring!

Questions for you: What did you do this weekend? Did you get any good workouts in? Do you like to entertain? Have you been to Park?

Although I still don’t know how to put into words the sadness and fear I have after hearing about the terrorist attacks in Paris, I’d feel remise if I didn’t take a little bit of blog space to mention it. We have been watching CNN and listening to NPR steadily since Friday night and I woke up Saturday wishing that it was all just a bad dream. What is this world coming to, where people can’t go to a concert, a game or out to dinner without the fear of an attack? My heart goes out to all the people who have been affected by this tragedy. I pray for a world with peace and love, not this crazy world filled with terrorists and fear.

I’ve only been to Paris once, but it has always been a place I’ve wanted to visit again. I loved everything about it and still hope to get back there some day.

Weekending: Wedding Update Edition

November 9, 2015November 8, 201514 Comments

Good morning! How was your weekend? Did you do anything fun? I was loving the great fall weather. Know what else I was loving? BOOKING A VENUE AND A DATE!!! If you’ve been following B2B for a while, you already know that wedding planning thus far has been stressful. Being on a budget, having no idea what I want and having a busy schedule anyway has made the whole process just not that fun. BUT, now that we have a venue and a date I already feel a million times better. Before we get to that, let’s chat about the rest of the weekend, too.

After work on Friday, I met up with my sister at Hopsters in Newton Corner. This place is literally walking distance from my apartment and they sell lots of craft beers and delicious looking charcuterie boards and flatbread pizzas. On top of that, you can even make your own beer there, which sounds like a fun activity even for someone like me who isn’t a big beer person.

The purpose for our meetup was so that I could finally officially ask her to be my Maid of Honor! I scoured Etsy for a while until I found this bracelet, which had my sisters name all over it (literally and figuratively!)- she loves bracelets and monogramed items so this couldn’t have been more perfect. Luckily, she agreed 🙂

When I got home, RM and I made a nice healthy fish dinner, thanks to my mom’s friend Jean’s husband who caught the fish!

A little while after dinner, it was snack time. Yes, we have a snack time every night- it’s my favorite! We always try to have healthy snacks like paleo banana bread muffins or toast or something else that’s not loaded with tons of sugar. On Friday, RM toasted up some Ezekiel bread, topped it with almond butter and my mom’s homemade blueberry jam, bananas, cinnamon and ground flax seed. Delicious!

After teaching on Saturday, I rushed home to shower and hit the road to head up to Jackson, NH to look at The Wentworth Inn as a possible wedding venue.

I had spoken with Kim, the fantastic wedding planner, a few times leading up to our visit and was totally in love with the venue before even seeing it in person! It was affordable, included a lot of things in the package that most other places didn’t include (90 minutes of full open bar at the cocktail hour?! yes, please!) and seemed like a great mini destination place since it’s just 10 minutes north of North Conway. I also loved that everyone could stay on site, which eliminated the need for us to need to book buses or vans or some other type of transportation. And, they source all of their food locally, from 15 nearby farms, to be exact, and they said nothing is ever frozen. For foodies like us, we loved the sounds of that!

After a tour and long discussion with Kim, we were pretty sure we were going to book our wedding at The Wentworth… on the 4th of July! They were giving a phenomenal discount to have the wedding on that day, one that was just too good to pass up, so we are going to be getting married on July 4th, 2016! We are hoping it doesn’t throw a wrench into people’s normal 4th of July plans, but since the holiday is on a Monday, we hope that people can do celebrating on Saturday and Sunday and be with us on Monday- I promise it will be a good party!

After our tour, we decided to walk to the Wildcat Tavern for a late afternoon snack and drink since we didn’t have lunch. The trio dip platter was a fantastic option and their wine selection was incredible! Ashley- they had La Crema by the glass 🙂

When we got back to our room, RM laughed and said we apparently didn’t need to get a snack. Curious, I went over to see what he was looking at and was so surprised by the super sweet gesture that Kim had done by sending us a nice card and a cheese platter.

It’s little things like this that really go a long way with potential clients- we appreciated it so much!

After resting for a bit, we went down to the hotel bar to have some dinner. They have a full restaurant, but we prefer the bar atmosphere. The food was unbelievable- I got the lamb stew and RM got the steak and everything was absolutely delicious and so fresh tasting!

We also shared some sort of apple tart with cinnamon ice cream for dessert that went unpictured because we were too impatient to wait for me to get my phone to take a picture 😉

Another great thing about the Inn is that breakfast and breakfast tip are included in your room rate. When we saw all that they had to offer for breakfast, we couldn’t believe it! They had a really nice continental breakfast bar with fruit, yogurt, cereal, pastries, etc., but they also had a full breakfast menu. We decided to split both of the specials: blueberry pancakes and eggs benedict, with a side of homemade corn beef hash.

Oh, my, God. Everything was so fresh and flavorful and just delicious.

We hit the road after breakfast so RM could be back in time to watch the game. I decided to make good use of time and went to Whole Foods. I treated myself to a smoothie since I was hungry for lunch at that point.

We decided we wanted to do a roast chicken dinner so I prepped that when I got back before going to a yoga class.

There is a CorePower Yoga a short walk from our apartment and last week there was a day where I just didn’t feel like going to the gym so I decided to check it out. They offer a free first week for new students which is an amazing deal, so I’m trying to get the most use out of it. Yesterday, the only class they had in a time that worked for me was their Yoga Sculpt class, which is almost like a yoga bootcamp. I really wanted a restorative yoga, but I ended up really loving the Yoga Sculpt class- we started and ended with nice yoga flows, but in the middle we used weights and did all sorts of lunges, pushups, squats, jumping jacks, burpees, etc…. I was totally in my element, even in the 98* room! I felt great when I left.

I popped the chicken and veggies in the oven when I got home and everything came out SO GOOD! I have never made a roast chicken before even though it’s my favorite meal so I was a little nervous but everything tasted delicious.

And that’s about it. If you made it this far, thank you!!

Now that we have our venue and date picked, I can focus on the fun stuff like dress shopping and invites and things like that! Feels SO GOOD to have the biggest part of wedding planning checked off 🙂

Questions for you: What was the best part of your weekend? Do you prefer beer or wine? What’s your favorite dinner meal? What do you have going on this week?

Weekending: Review through pictures

October 26, 2015October 25, 20159 Comments

Good morning! Did you guys have a good weekend? We sure did- here’s a glimpse 🙂

I had to go to Milwaukee Thursday-Friday, which was a really nice trip. I wasn’t sure Milwaukee would be anything that exciting, but I have to say I really loved the little city! It was a much quieter city than I’m used to, but it was still really cool! I stayed right downtown and was within walking distance to the river walk and lots of cool restaurants and shopping.

I made sure to get in workouts while I was gone, too 🙂 One strength one and then one quickie bodyweight hotel room workout one- I’ll share both with you soon!

Hotel room bodyweight workout

I met my sister at a new restaurant in Watertown called Branch Line. It’s right near her new office and close to me, plus the owners of Eastern Standard (one of my favorite Boston restaurants) started it so I couldn’t wait to try it out. The verdict? LOVED IT! We only got drinks and their fried cheese bites, but the whole experience was very good and RM and I plan on going back for dinner since their menu looked intriguing!

RM and I ended up going to Stellina for dinner which was where we went to dinner the night we got engaged! The food was great, although I didn’t take any pictures 😉
Saturday we lounged in the morning. It was weird to be around with no plans AND no teaching. Rather than rushing out for the gym, I decided to hang around and get all my house chores done first. We had people over on Saturday night so I wanted to prep the chili and dessert and clean/pick up. I finally went to SoulCycle for a 1pm class. It was a good class, but not the hardest I’ve been to, or as much of a party as SC usually is. Oh well!
I had time to relax when I got back so I caught up on Greys anatomy while sharing a beer with RM.

Our dinner party was a blast! I made a sweet potato turkey chili which was a hit, a cheese and prosciutto board, guacamole and a batch of these delicious Paleo Pumpkin Bars. I added in chocolate chips and pumpkin spice chips and they came out SO GOOD! Along with these treats, RM’s sister-in-law Emily brought a tasty apple crisp and Amanda brought a fantastic brie/pecans/craisin ball. Oh, and lots of wine 😉

Sunday we made our way to NH to go look at another venue and while we liked it, we were kind of turned off by how far lodging was from the venue so I’m not sure we will pursue it further. Oh well.
We were staving when we got back so we heated up chili and other treats from Saturday night and had a medley sort of lunch. While RM watch/snoozed through the Patriots game, I whipped up some lemon blueberry muffins from his Practical Paleo cookbook (we are trying to incorporate more paleo-like meals these days). They came out pretty good!

After I finished my book/the Patriots game was over, I coerced RM into going to Marshall’s and Target with me. We are on the hunt for a new dining room table and living room chair and I wanted him to see some of the things I was digging. Love this table from Target:

Although I was really craving pizza or something like that, we opted for a healthier dinner and had chicken thighs, kale, mashed sweet potatoes and butternut squash and for some reason, everything came out SO GOOD. Nothing fancy, but so tasty. (I snapped a pic halfway through).

All in all, a great weekend filled with friends and family, relaxation and productivity. Oh, and wine. Definitely wine 😉

Questions for you: What was the best part of your weekend? Have you tried out any new restaurants? What’s the coolest city you’ve traveled to? Did you get in any good workouts? Any good meals?

Burpees to Bubbly

Because good workouts deserve bubbly rewards!

Category: Weekending

Weekending: Thanksgiving & Long Weekend Edition

Weekending: Friendsgiving, SoulCycle, sweetgreens & Taco Night

Weekending: Hopsters Date Night, Handle Bar & Brunching in Harvard Square, Hosting my Parents

Weekending: Wedding Update Edition

Weekending: Review through pictures

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