Five On Friday

October 30, 2015October 29, 201515 Comments

Good morning! Popping in today with a random post, but hopefully you’ll enjoy it!

I have to say I am really not enjoying the wedding planning process so far. Is that bad? Please tell me I’m not the only one who finds it more stressful than fun. I’m hoping it’s just because we haven’t locked down a venue or date yet and that once we do those things everything else will fall into place and be more fun. Right? Right??? I will say, though, that I find myself day dreaming about the moment I start walking down the aisle and lock eyes with RM. I cannot wait for that, as well as being husband and wife. THAT’S the fun stuff 🙂

2. At the age of 30, I finally have no desire to dress up for Halloween. It feels good to let that go and just be able to carry on per usual, oh, and see RM’s nephew dressed up and go trick or treating because THAT is going to be adorable!

3. We are so thankful to have so many wonderful friends and such wonderful family who have sent us engagement cards and/or bubbly. One can never have too much bubbly. Ever.

4. I had a one on one training session last night and I felt challenged, humbled, but also inspired. I lifted much heavier than normal and I loved it! More on that later 🙂

5. We don’t go out to eat very often during the week since we both enjoy meal planning and prepping and eating healthy even when we are busy (not to mention it saves money!), but when RM texted me on Wednesday as I was leaving the gym asking if I wanted to pick up sushi or pizza, I was totally on board. It was such a treat swinging by Max & Leo’s on my way home to pick up the pizza RM had ordered. If you haven’t had their pizza, GO AND GET SOME!!!

Questions for you: Tell me something random! Try any new workouts or gyms lately? What was your favorite thing about wedding planning? Least favorite? What’s your favorite pizza place? What’s going on this weekend? Best part of your week?

Weekending: October Sunshine

October 12, 2015October 11, 20156 Comments

Hi there! How are you? If you have today off, don’t tell me… not only do I have to work but I have to go INTO the office. Monday’s are usually my WFH day so it’s a very weird start to the week!

Did you guys have a good weekend? Mine was great- a good mix of celebrations, relaxing and productivity. I’m absolutely loving this warm October weather and after a gloomy day on Friday, I tried to soak up as much of the sunshine as possible throughout the weekend.

After work on Friday, I went to my sister’s apartment for vino and pizza. The traffic was TERRIBLE, so it was so nice to be able to relax with drinks and laughter and good convos!

On Saturday, after kickboxing class, I was able to run some much-needed errands and decided to grab lunch at Panera since I was out. Have you tried their lentil-kale bowls? Pretty good!

We decided to head into the city in the late afternoon and hit up the new Uniqlo in Faneuil Hall. While it was a big chaotic, I did score this vest for $39 instead of $59! I’ve been wanting a light down vest for a long time and I think I’ll get a lot of use out of this.

After shopping we stopped in at Back Deck for cocktails and a snack.

We also stopped at a coffee shop on the way home and they had the most AMAZING sweet potato pumpkin pie macaroons I’ve ever had. We stupidly split this, but I could’ve eaten 5 of them myself!

The rest of the night was very low-key and looked a lot like this:

Do any of you watch Ray Donovan? RM had gotten us both hooked on it, which is weird for me considering I hate violence and it’s a very violent show!

Sunday was a perfectly productive day! We had breakfast and then went to Target and Whole Foods before doing some major cleaning and food prep back at home. Also, Whole Foods has the prettiest bouquets- and sometimes you just need to buy yourself flowers 😉

The weather was too gorgeous to be inside all day so I took a break from house work and cooking and went for a quickie 5K run. The weather was so perfect!

I made some oat bars, soup and the most delicious stuffed acorn squash- I love going into the week with a whole bunch of good, healthy food!

Oh, and the BEST part of the weekend? RM’s mother stopped by and gave us our engagement gift, which is something I have literally waited my whole life for:

The funniest part was that I had been talking about Kitchen Aid mixers all weekend! I can’t wait to put this to good use- she said she loves using hers for her pizza dough, so that means I need to get the recipe AND give it a try 🙂

Questions for you: What was the best part of your weekend? Did you get out and enjoy the weather? Did you do anything festive? What’s your favorite kitchen appliance?

Craving Normalcy

September 14, 2015September 14, 20154 Comments

Hi B2B friends! I’ve missed you! While we are not anywhere near being fully unpacked and settled, we are starting to feel somewhat better than we did last week, that’s for sure! And, we finally have a kitchen sink! Might not sound like much, but washing dishes in the bathroom sink or shower for a week was getting a little old 😉 (still waiting on the back splash, so excuse that!)

Our weekend was a mix of unpacking/organizing/renovating, but we did get together with family which is always nice. Friday afternoon my friend Jessi was in the area so she stopped by for some Prosecco. Later, RM’s brother, sister in law and nephew came over for pizza and vino. We got the pizza from Max & Leo’s, which is just a short walk from our apartment. I have to say, East Boston has pretty much nailed the pizza game, but Max & Leo’s may have them beat! This pizza was outstanding!

Saturday we got up and I went for a 4.5 mile run before we hit the road to spend the day in Maine with some family. My mom had some of her siblings in town which is always fun! We went to the beach in Wells and then went to dinner at Billy’s Chowder House.

Sunday was spent making a major dent in some renovations- I sanded the pantry- which is quite a workout- and then RM did a layer of primer on the cabinets while I cleaned and primed all the draws.

It feels so good to make some progress with the rest of our move. While the living room is coming along and the bedrooms are mostly set up, we still have a long way to go until we are fully settled in!

I’ll say this- moving is stressful to begin with. Moving 2 people with fully furnished apartments into 1 combined apartment is stressful. Doing both of those things AND living a midst a kitchen renovation is stressful X 3 🙂

As I said last week, my goal during this whole move has been to stay calm, understanding and to try and stay up-beat/positive. I’ve only had one minor meltdown, so I think that’s pretty good! I’ve got a lot less stress than RM since he’s not only managing all of the renovation work at our new apartment, but also a complete gut renovation in a unit back in East Boston and getting new tenants into both of our old units. Even though we are both very similar in our abilities to handle stress and change, I feel like staying positive this time around is the least I can do- two of us stomping around frustrated and stressed is just not going to help anyone or anything 😉

All in all, though, even with all the chaos and no sense of normalcy, we’ve been having a lot of fun living together. We’ve both talked about how it feels so good to have one home base that we share. We may be stressed and tired, but at least we are going through it together. Going for a walk to Starbucks in the morning and figuring out where we want to put stuff has been so fun! And, little by little we are making strides towards normalcy- we both like to have food prepped and ways to eat healthy food at home rather than going out, so making it a priority to even have a few key kitchen items unpacked has really helped.

I hope all of you had a great weekend and have a good week! For those of you in the Boston area, I’m subbing for Athena on Tuesday morning at 6am at the Oak Square YMCA- would love to see some familiar faces!! I’m looking for suggestions on what to teach, too!

Questions for you: How do you handle stress? Do you go with the flow or stress over change and lack of normalcy? What did you do this weekend? Have you ever done home renovations?

Scenes from the Weekend

July 27, 2015July 26, 20154 Comments

Good morning and Happy Monday 🙂 Did you guys have a good weekend? I sure did! It kind of started on Thursday night when I hosted book club, continued on to Friday night when RM and I tried a new place in East Boston and then to Saturday/Sunday when my sister and I tried out a class at the new Handlebar Indoor Cycling Studio in Harvard Square and then headed up to Vermont for a quick one night getaway with our parents. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking- enjoy!

Great book! We all highly suggest it. Rose was delicious too 😉

I grilled pizzas- they were fantastic!

Love my SMC girls.

We found a new place on Maverick Street in East Boston- it’s a market/café called Maverick Market and it has a small menu and beer and wine. We had some ginger BBQ chicken sliders and a spicy shrimp and veggie stir fry. We were so impressed with everything!

Because sweaty/post spin pictures are always necessary…

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Italy Recap Part 1: Rome

June 9, 2015June 10, 201511 Comments

Hi friends! I feel like the start of my Italy vacation recap posts is long overdue. I can’t figure out if it’s because I don’t want to believe it’s over yet or because I have so much to share and don’t know how I want to do it. Whatever the reason, I’ve decided to make the plunge into my recaps today. I’ll preface this post by saying that I had very little (read: NOTHING) to do with the planning of this trip so I can’t really tell you why we went to the places we went and why we stayed at the particular places we did while at each location. It was solely RM’s brother and sister who worked with the travel agent to determine where we’d be going and where we’d be staying and I think they did a really great job! I loved each location for different reasons. They used Donna Franca tours, who specialize in Italian vacations, if you’re looking to have help planning your next vacation to Italy.

Boston–> Roma

Our flight wasn’t until 10:45pm on Thursday night (wayyyy past my bedtime!), so we decided to just go to the airport really early and eat dinner/have drinks before that.

The flight was smooth and I think I was able to get about 3 hours of sleep 😉 We arrived in Rome around noon and luckily had car service to the apartment we rented. It was fun staying in an apartment for the first part of the trip because we were able to get comfortable and feel a sense of home.

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