Happy Birthday, Danielle!

December 7, 20137 Comments

Today is my sisters- gasp- 26th birthday! It’s weird, because I feel like I just turned 26. For those of you who have sisters that you’re close with, I’m sure you totally understand the sister bond. Danielle and I may not get along all the time, but at the end of the day, we are sisters and we always have each others backs.

Last night, we celebrated her birthday and Amy’s birthday with drinks at the Top of the Hub and dinner at Vlora.

We lucked out because the skies cleared and we could see the city!

Nights out with these pretty ladies are my favorite!

What a fun night! It was a treat to get dressed up for fancy drinks at the Top of the Hub and dinner at Vlora never disappoints. If you like Greek/Mediterranean food, I highly suggest going!

Happiest birthdays to you, Danielle (and Amy!). Here’s to a fantastic year!

Questions for you: Have you ever been to the Top of the Hub or Vlora? Where do you go when it’s a special night out?

Girls Night & Other Weekend Happenings

September 10, 2013September 9, 20134 Comments

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.

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!

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!

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

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!

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 😉

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 😉

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 😉

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.

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!

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!

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?

Shopping, Girl Time, Celebrations, Workouts- Another Busy Week!

July 12, 2013July 11, 20138 Comments

Hi friends! Happy Friday! For some reason, I have had an incredibly busy week. It’s been fun, but I’m beat! Doesn’t end today, either. I’ve got work until 4:30, then I am subbing my old Friday night class at the Allston BSC (all my old regulars, please come!!!) and then babysitting! Phew! Let me tell you that a well deserved trip to Lululemon will be happening 😉

Let’s catch up, shall we?! On Sunday, on my way back to MA, I decided to make a pit stop in Kittery since I was tired of sitting in massive amounts of traffic. I have a bunch of work trips this month and wanted another suit, so it was a great time to check that off my “to-do” list. 45 minutes later, I walked out of Banana Republic with a new suit and a new dress- for $72!!! Long story short, I had cash rewards from my BR card and then had to open another card for some reason so I got the 15% off, too. Definitely a great pit stop!

I didn’t end up making a big meal on Sunday night since it was so hot, but I threw together a pretty tasty quesadilla! Shrimp, peppers, onions and feta- delicious!

On Monday, I went to The Studio Empower for an awesome class and was greeted with a salmon dinner prepared by my roommate when I walked through the door! Love that.

Tuesday was a really awesome day! I forced myself out of bed for an early run. It wasn’t fast, but I covered 3.4 miles in 30 minutes which I was very happy about. After that, I did 15 reps of biceps curls balancing on 1 leg, upright rows, triceps dips, pushups, and an ab ladder. Nothing like being finished a workout by 7:15am!

After work I met up with someone for drinks at Legal Harborside Roofdeck. I couldn’t believe how packed it was for Tuesday. Apparently people have a life outside of the gym after work; who would have thought?!

From there, I headed to Amy and Sheila’s for a girls dinner party! Instead of going out, they offered to cook for us which was a nice treat. It’s so hard to catch up with people while in a restaurant at a big table; I’d much prefer a casual setting at someone’s apartment. Our friend, Kelly, was also visiting from San Francisco so our group was even bigger than usual! Unfortunately, Kia couldn’t come because she had her puppy to tend to, but other than that we were all there!

Amy grilled up chicken, steak, shrimp and veggies. Jess and I cooked rice and green beans and Sheila prepped the salad. Pair that with a big ol’ glass of vino and you’ve got a happy Monique 😉

After dinner, we brought out the desserts for some birthday celebrations. If you remember, I severely cut back on eating desserts a few weeks ago, but I most certainly had desserts on Tuesday. I mean, funetti cake and peanut butter rice crispy treats with chocolate and homemade berry ice cream?! I was in sweet tooth heaven!

And, throw some bubbly in there and you’ve pretty much got a perfect night!

On top of all of that, just when we thought it couldn’t get any better than good food, good drinks, tasty desserts and long overdue girl time, Sheila surprised us with her recent engagement!!!!! Somehow, we had the whole ‘toasting to champagne’ thing on video and it’s literally the best video I’ve ever seen. All you hear in the background is “wait. WHAT?!” from me and screams from Lauren. It.was.awesome! We all couldn’t be more happy for Sheila and Bryan!

Beautiful ring unlike anything I have ever seen!

Wednesday I ended up teaching a double to help a fellow instructor out- phew! I was on another level that night; that is what happens when I go too long without teaching 😉 My Thursday double was a little tough to get into, purely because my legs were tired! What made everything better, though, was coming home to pizza fresh out of the oven!

Man did THAT hit the spot!

I hope you all have a wonderful Friday!

Questions for you: Tell me- what’s on the agenda for tonight? How have your workouts been? What’s was the best part of your week? Drinks on a weeknight- do you do that often?