German Birthdays!

Umm, this is the most important development in musicals since 1992: NEWSIES!
Something from childhood is fiercely excited about this show! I loved the movie as a kid and then me & Emily would watch it in our apartment (along with High School Musical - don't judge).

Ugh- upon further investigation, this show is playing in the middle of Jersey. sigh. But I am willing to make the trek! haha Me & Emily got tickets for 9/24! Squee!

Source

Anynewsies - Last night my parents took me out for an early birthday dinner (9/16) and me & Pete for an early anniversary dinner (9/19).  I suggested a great local German restaurant called Zum Stammtisch.

Cute placemats!

The place has a great old tymey time feel to it. The food was wonderful! Being 1/2 German, I love tapping into my heritage and getting some authentic and tasty German food now and then. I wish I spoke the language!

The food amounts here are insane. I took home more than half of my plate. Yay leftovers!

Afterwards we went back to my parents house for some cake. Have you met "The Birthday Man"?

He has been in our family since the early 70s. Every time there is a birthday, he makes an appearance!

It was a really great evening! :)

Ice cream cake is the best cake

It's birthday week kickoff! PS Did I tell you I met Justin Bieber at Macy's? ;)

FYI- I am NOT 5'3"....

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Autumn

Happy Monday everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend. After days and days of being busy with social plans and other obligations, I was excited to finally have NO PLANS! (Well, actually 2 things fell through... but I was still happy for the down time!) I spent a giant chunk of Saturday cleaning my apartment. I mean, I was scrubbing walls. Every molding we have is now super clean!

Saturday evening me & Pete went to A.C. Moore to buy some autumn decorations! We had maybe 3 pieces that were cute but I wanted more! Autumn is my favorite season and I'm so glad it's back!

Obsessed with Autumn candles!

Fred

Check out all our fun new stuff!

Hi!

Who is this?

You smell good. Lets be friends.

I love all this stuff so much I may not even decorate for Christmas. HA. No...I have two huge tubs of Christmas decorations and a 7 foot tree... that will be occurring around December 1st :)

It felt good to get my home in order and ready for fall. I spent the rest of the weekend spending time with my parents, Pete, Peach & my father in law. It was great spending time with family!

Goal check in -

No, I haven't forgotten! Last (last) Friday I made 5 goals for the week, and I did pretty good this time around!

1. Get to the god damn gym 3x. Made it!! (once.) (sigh.) (parenthesis.)
2. Do yoga 2x. Check!
3. Clean up and organize the kitchen table. (It's an endless struggle.) Check! That bitch is CLEAN and even has a nice bowl o' fruit on it now.
4. Make all needed doctor's appointments. I'm due for some checkups and have been putting them off! Check! (Joy. Can't wait! :p)
5. Blog 4x. Check! Oops, I totally thought I did this!! I blogged 3x. Whoops.

So there ya have it! At the end of this week I will be aging into my last year in my 20s (EEEK). It's all good. I took off this Friday & the following Monday as it is my 1 year wedding anniversary! I'm excited for a four day weekend.

This week's goals:

1. Mop. If I don't put it on a list, I will not do it.
2. Blog 4x!
3. Yoga 3x!
4. Utilize gym membership!
5. Stop using so many parenthesis and !!!! in blog!!!!!!!!
6. Reconnect with someone. Either an old friend, or family member I haven't spoken to in a while.

Facebook and texting ruins the world LOL. I mean, it's great, but I often forget to call people to see how they are doing. Maybe I'll write someone a letter. Or send a telegram. I don't know. I'll see how I feel.

Have a great week everyone!

You Shouldn't Have A Reality Show

Is anyone watching Tia & Tamera? No, not the WB show from the 90s, but their new reality show on Style network? I was half intrigued about it as when I saw the gigantic billboards in Times Square and decided to check it out.

Um, these people shouldn't have a show. They make me cringe!!

They just sorta say whatever pops in their head and bicker bicker bicker!! They had a ten minute fight about ice cream. Really. That happened. The music got dark and serious and they fought about ice cream. For ten minutes.

Selfish & Selfisher

At one point a pregnant Tia had to go to the hospital the day before Tamera's wedding shower. In her interview, Tamera goes "I didn't want to be selfish, but I hope she can make it to my bridal shower." (#@*%@(*#^%. The show is filled with comments like this that make me look around to lock eyes with some mystery person in my living room who is also watching this crap. Instead I'm met with looks from a bored Peach.
 

"Put on Animal Planet"

Naturally I proceeded to watch 3 episodes of this mess but was finally able to pull myself away. Sheesh!

Brunch!

On Friday, I got an email from my good friend Danni that she'd be in town this weekend from London!  Danni and I met about four years ago and quickly discovered we both loved beer, brunch and exploring NYC!

We brunched at a place called Intermezzo in Chelsea. They have an unlimited champagne brunch there! (And it's apparently also drag brunch. Shocking for Chelsea, I know!)

Danni, myself, Emily and Danni's friend (and now ours!) Deb all enjoyed our meal and catching up! The brunch even included a little drag show where this fine lady sang and even laid out on 8th avenue to up her theatrics haha! I was so glad Danni flew in for a quick visit to the states! :)

Birthday Wine Tour

How was your Labor Day weekend? I had a glorious three day weekend that was unnaturally full and busy!

A while back Brandon & I decided to celebrate our birthdays by gathering up a bunch of friends and taking a day trip out to the vineyards on Long Island. We bought the tickets about a month ago so when Saturday morning finally arrived, we were so excited!

It was a little rough waking up at the crack of dawn and to travel to my favorite place - Lexington & 40th Street, but it was worth it. We all boarded the bus bright and early and were ready for the nearly two hour drive there.

Breakfast sandwiches mmm

Our first stop was Palmer Vineyards which was so beautiful! It was the most gorgeous day outside. This winery was in a large old house with a beautiful back porch and tons and tons of grapes! :)

The bus tour provided us with three tasting tickets for each place we visited. At this winery I tried the Riesling, Cabernet Franc and a white called Gerwurztraminer. My favorite of the three was the Riesling - although I honestly wasn't in love with any of them. I was more in love with the day and atmosphere.

Wine at 11am? Yes, please.

<3

with Nicole :)

After about an hour here, we headed to our next stop - Baiting Hollow Farm Vineyard.

Here we received three more tastings and were able to walk across the way to receive three tastings of vodka at Long Island Spirits.

Baiting Hollow's wines were much more enjoyable to me! Here I tried another Riesling (which was the winner of the day for me!) a Merlot and a Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé.

Birthday girl & boy!

The walls inside their winery were covered with tons of cute stuff including old time candy, wine glasses, and about a million other cute items. I nearly bought everything!

29 forever? 29 now!

After our samples we headed over to the Long Island Spirits. I was a bit nervous to try three shots of vodka! I never do shots of vodka!

Where are we?

not actually sure what is going on here ;)

I was super surprised by these drinks though. They were delicious and went down so smooth! I could drink this all day haha! I tried strawberry, raspberry and lime. Strawberry was my fave and I picked up a bottle of that.

Not all for me

Unfortunately the day flew by! It was so nice to celebrate our birthdays together with some amazing friends. It was great to get out of the city and explore different areas of New York and to not constantly be out in some random bar. I loved hanging out with my close friends, rekindling with old friends and meeting new ones. :D I will say friends some more. Friends.
Ok.

Anyway - I would definitely recommend a day trip to some Long Island wineries! Great day <3

Have you ever been to the vineyards?
What is your favorite type of wine?

I Pinky Swear

It's Friday! And I have a 3 day weekend!! And I have fun plans all weekend!!! :D

Back in February as Pete and I had yet another meal at the Cheesecake Factory and my meal came out slightly disappointing, I thought to myself - we should take a break from chain restaurants. Now normally we enjoy meals from Cheesecake Factory, & Outback. We'll get some stuff from Chili's and be thirsty for two days from all the salt. Once in a while we'll head to Applebee's and leave wondering why we just did that to ourselves. So I thought enough's enough and came up with a little pact. Pete and I pinky swore to not eat at any chain restaurants for six months. This thought was sparked because we live and work in New York City!! There are 20 restaurants on each block and it's ridiculous that we haven't tried that many of them.

At the end of the 6 months, we had made progress but not enough. I have now enforced a new 3 month rule - only restaurants we haven't been to before! So now we're really gettin started! In the past 2 weeks I've bought about four Groupons. They're a great way to try new places for a discount price!

So far we've tried about three new restaurants. I'm so excited! (It's the little things.) Earlier this week we tried out a new diner in Queens that had been bought by new owners and revamped. I know diners aren't that exciting but the place was pretty nice!

I ordered a grilled chicken wrap with lettuce, tomato and avocado and Pete had a Cesar salad wrap.

It was pretty good! They have a large menu and we plan to return! Afterwards we went to the movies and saw The Debt which was actually pretty good. I got distracted in the lobby though by this:

Squee!! I can't wait :D If you haven't read the Hunger Games trilogy, I highly recommend it!


Goal Check In

So last Friday I had made five goals for myself for the week. While I was a little bit distracted by hurricane Irene, I did ok. Here are the results!

1. Work out 4x (2x at the gym). Why on Earth am I paying for this gym!?! I did yoga once and 2 long walks. Um.. still not sure why I'm paying for the gym.
2. Bring lunch every day next week. (I'm normally pretty good at this but today I spent $9 on lunch :p) This I totally did!! Even when it was hard.
3. Get at least 5 servings of fruits/veggies in each day. (Easy peasy!) I did this 6/7 days.
4. Spend 15 minutes each day keeping my home neat & clean. I did this 1/7 days LOL fail.
5. Blog at least 3x this week. Check!

So there ya have it! My slightly underwhelming week.

Here's what's up for this week:

1. Get to the god damn gym 3x.
2. Do yoga 2x.
3. Clean up and organize the kitchen table. (It's an endless struggle.)
4. Make all needed doctor's appointments. I'm due for some checkups and have been putting them off!
5. Blog 4x.

There ya have it!

Enjoy your weekend! See you no less than four times next week! :D