Girls Night & Other Weekend Happenings

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?

Settling in: First weekend in my new place

I finally feel like I’m starting to get settled in to my new place. It was such a great feeling going into the weekend knowing that I had loads of time to get my “to-do” list in order.

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After work on Friday, I headed back to Somerville since I needed to go back to the Christmas Tree Shop and Home Depot (I should get a frequent shopper card for all these stores. Either that or buy stock in them since I think I’m keeping them in business with my recent purchases). I decided to get my coffee table and end table (that I’ll be using as a TV stand) at the Christmas Tree Shop, not because I was looking for outstanding quality, but more because I don’t want to spend a lot of money on furniture until I buy a home and won’t be moving for a while. At this point, my furniture gets very dinged up every time I move, so it’s not worth buying nice stuff right now.

I also planned on spending the night at my old apartment to hang out with my sister and keep Charlie company until she got home from her week of travel. I had a bunch of things to do at the apartment and near the apartment, so it made sense to stay there! I couldn’t wait to open some wine- it had been a long week!

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Although I contemplated chips and wine as my dinner, I decided to get some real food in my system and made a quesadilla with chicken and peppers and onions. So good and perfect for a quick and easy meal!

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I woke up on Saturday and had extra time before BodyPump, so I finally cleaned my old room. It was really weird seeing it so empty, but Charlie was having a field day with all the extra space!

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Since my sister was going to Country Fest and left at 8am, my plan was to hang around the apartment and keep Charlie company (I know, totally a crazy cat lady move, but I feel bad that he’s been alone so much lately!), however, when I got a text from my friend, Athena, asking if I wanted to join her at Winthrop Beach, I quickly changed my plans, packed up and headed to my apartment to drop everything off and meet her. Winthrop Beach is less than 15 minutes from my apartment and it’s a really nice, quiet beach! We spent a few hours chatting and catching up about all things fitness, work, blogging, etc. It felt great to relax and not feel bad about it!

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When I got home, though, I got into serious productivity mode. I opened a beer and put furniture together and organized my apartment for two solid hours. I couldn’t believe it!

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My place feels SO much better now that I have furniture set up, curtains hung, and closets organized.

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Looks good, right?! To reward myself, I met my friends out at Pier 6 in Charlestown. It used to be Tavern On The Water, but recently opened as Pier 6. I took PT into the city and decided to bring a little road soda, errr, road wine. The ol’ Dasani water bottle trick isn’t hiding anything from anyone, but my mom is convinced it works.

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Although I went to hang out with my friends, I ended up spending the whole night talking to Jean’s niece, Michelle, and her cousin Hilary. I couldn’t believe it when I ran into them, but Michelle is basically the Mayor of Charlestown so I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised to see her on the opening weekend of Pier 6 😉

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These ladies are a blast… I better get that pool invite, Michelle- don’t think I’ve forgotten about that!

Even though I could have chatted with them the entire, time, I did break away to hang out with the birthday girl!

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And, did you know all the fall beers are out?? I’m not really ready for summer to end, but having a sip of this Shipyard reminded me of how much I love fall!

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YUM!! Such a fun night 🙂

I woke up Sunday feeling like I had had a liiiitle too much wine the night before, but felt much better after an English muffin and lots of water! I had very sad looking bananas, so I decided to make some banana bread… with a twist! I’ll post it later this week. So yummy. While the bread was cooking, I tried to get caught up on blogging. I have a number of draft posts for lots of different topics so it was nice to have time to develop those posts a little more.

Around 11, I decided to get out and go for a nice walk. I’m loving the neighborhood near my place! It’s so nice to have a good place to walk/run.

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Danielle came over shortly after I got back and we headed back to Winthrop Beach since the weather was so nice! Couple of hours at the beach was a very nice treat!

And, that about sums up my weekend! Be on the lookout for a recipe or two this week! 🙂

Questions for you: Have you been to Tavern on the Water or Pier 6? What’s your favorite fall beer? What was the best part of your weekend?