Week Long Randomness

Welcome to a web of randomness!!  This past week I've been feeling a bit under the weather. I had random bouts of every so slight dizziness & light headed-ness, and headaches. Now, a few days later, I have a bad cough. Everyone around me has guessed it's allergies and since all people are doctors I believe them. Being ill leads to a very exciting week although I did have a chance to spend some quality one on one time with my sister on Saturday, and catch up with the girls over brunch on Sunday.

Here are some thoughts:

• I'm watching Oprah Presents Master Class: Bon Jovi while writing this post. So this handsome guy is on my mind :D



Source of Dreaminess

 I actually found an old camera memory card recently and was excited to find out what was on it. About 50 pictures were of a Bon Jovi concert my sister Dianna & I went to in 2007 at Madison Square Garden! We've seen him together multiple times through the years, (my sister even more times than me!) but this was my personal favorite performance. We sat fifth row! God, all shows should be watched from the fifth row. It was awesome!! It was soooo fun!

• Apparently it was macaron week in my life. Just macarons 24/7. I went from having a macaron once in my life to seeing them everywhere and having quite the craving. I always want to buy some, but they're a bit pricey. I finally gave in when I stopped in Financier to pick up those two baby cakes for Pete's birthday.  

Seven came in the box and, while tasty, unfortunately you couldn't really tell what each flavor was. I mean, all the beiges could've been anything.

The day after my purchase just so happened to be National Macaron Day. There were multiple bakeries participating across the city and  each were offering a free macaron with your visit.  The only one near my job in midtown was Macaron Cafe. There was a bit of a line outside, but it moved rather quickly. Once inside, I chose vanilla and OMG. These put the Financier ones to shame!!  The cookie portion was much more fresh & soft. There was an abundance of well flavored filling in the middle that just made the cookie fantastic. NOW I see why you shouldn't go for the "cheap" stuff.

Nom nom nom

• Um, what kind of cruel joke is this, Key Food?

• This picture of Lucy makes me want to make a sad, silent, foreign film with mellow piano accompaniment.


The balloon can float around aimlessly. Lucy will watch. Think about the balloon.
This one is a bit more playful. Turns out neither cat is thrilled w/ the balloon. Both are easily scared of it. Ha! Scardy cat! ....oh wait.

•   And lastly, me, Pete & my parents all went to Cheesecake Factory last night. After the meal we ordered cheesecake (duh) and I got the banana creme one with fresh banana. When my cake arrived, I was overjoyed to see multiple lil 'naner faces looking up at me!!

Now, I eat bananas nearly every single day, but I don't think I've ever seen them smile at me! As someone who anthropomorphizes everything, this was ridiculously hard to eat. ... but then I got over it. It was actually delicious, and is now my new favorite flavor of cheesecake.

Happy St. Pancake's Day!

Today is a special day! Not only is it St. Patrick's Day...

{Happy St. Patrick's day to all my Irish brothers & sisters!}

But more importantly... Happy Birthday to my favoritest person ever - my husband Pete!!

I love you so much & am excited to celebrate this milestone with you! xoxoxo

To help Pete celebrate, I decided to make him pancakes for breakfast. This is a big deal because I rarely cook, so he was pretty shocked!  I want to cook more often anyway, so today was a great day to start.

I made chocolate chip banana pancakes! I used this recipe. They came out delicious!

 I'm happy to report they came out delicious! Pete approved!

We're off to do some outdoorsy things and then have dinner reservations in the city. Enjoy the rest of your day and this fatty picture of Peach! :)

Three Things Thursday

Don't you love alliteration? I'm starting a new "segment"... 3 Things Thursday! Three things I'm obsessed with and loving! ... or liking... or noticed....or find interesting... etc etc. :)

Irish macaroons!! I was walking down a NY street and stopped dead in my tracks (which is AWESOME for the people behind me...and I love when tourists do that) because I was drawn to this display!! 

I never knew that these type of macaroons existed until Pete brought them home from pastry school. I was only aware of the coconuty version. Can you tell I'm not French?

What I am though, is Irish! (1/2) I walked straight in and then realized the cost and walked straight out! Haha! I will have to wait until payday for these babies!

Peach's paws!
Because I'm a thinly veiled cat lady & love my camera, I often get down on the ground to her level and get some up close photos and candids. Peach is a big ol' bear and she has giant paws. They're cute. Sometimes we hold hands/paws while watching television.

Remember the days of film? I used to be so excited to run down to CVS and see what developed, only to see I had my eyes closed in 3 of them, my finger over the lens in 2, and about 9 generally bad shots. Thank God for digital! haha :)


Mac & Cheese Cups!!

Holy moly... I was reading Emily's blog over at Cupcakes & Cashmere, lazily browsing, when these babies caught my eye.  OMGosh!! I loooove little miniature things. LOVE. I love tiny spoons and tiny cups and tiny whisks and tiny spatulas. Tiny frames, tiny Lego people, tiny EVERYTHING. I can't wait to make these for my next get together!!

Source

NOM NOM NOM!

Cashew Butter! ....Bless you!

A few weeks ago, I used a Groupon to a place called Elm Heath, a natural foods/grocery store. I had purchased one of these before, and while I thought they were really expensive, (higher priced than Whole Foods) I still felt I was able to get a good deal with the extra money the Groupon provided.

When it popped up on Groupon again I grabbed it, not realizing the location was different! This one was in the convenient location of 1st & 80th which is near no trains. Ah well. Getting exercise to get healthy food!

This time around I only picked up chia seeds, almond milk, pistachios and some packets of nut butters! I was super excited to find the packets because sometimes you don't want to commit to a $15 jar of something you're not sure you'll like!

That was a lot of babbling to get to my pretty breakfast! One of the packets I bought was cashew butter!  When I first tasted it, I thought... this tastes exactly as you think it would....sort of creamy cashews. Not sweet or anything. It seemed fine.

THEN I added bananas and *lightbulb* some honey. Holy moly!! This was SO darn delicious!!

Of course, I sprinkled chia seeds on top.

I will definitely be picking up a jar o' cashew butter!

What's you're favorite type of nut butter??

PS Peach's sleeping positions cracks me up.

Most Productive Morning EVER

Hi everybody! Can we pretend it's yesterday? Because I didn't get a chance to blog yesterday and I really wanted to because I was quite the productive Sally.

Happy Monday everyone!! :)  How was your weekend? I awoke on Saturday and while I always want to want to clean, I usually plow through my DVR instead and clean a little here and there, and then make a phone call, clean some more. Not Saturday! Saturday, something came over me. I mean, I was pulling out furniture and mopping everywhere. Boo ya!! (Watch out, I'm in quite a good mood today.)

I was a little bit distracted though, and attempted to take some glamour shots of Peach while I put laundry away. She knows how to find her light.

And Lucy had her darling little paws crossed and this amuses me.

So ladylike

ANYWAY. Sunday was a more relaxed day with Pete. I did manage to squeeze in some yoga which was exciting since I planned to do nothing.

Biggest Loser yoga

But Monday... let me tell you about Monday. A list if you will:

1. I awoke at 5:35 to move my car before 6am... they are replacing the water pipes in my neighborhood and it is greatly inconveniencing for everyone :p
2. Since I was up.. might as well hit the gym right? Got there at 6am! Did 40 minutes of cardio. Squee! (PS The walk to the gym and back is 1.2 miles... so that is extra, right??)
3. Came home, did some dishes. Dishes will never end.
4. COOKED DINNER *  Now I never cook. And it was an easy enough meal, but still. Cooking dinner for later that night at 7am is not me. But I felt so accomplished!
5. Showered/make up/blow dried hair.
6. Made breakfast.
7. Made lunch.
8. Went to work. haha

Ok now I'm stretching the list out. But still... this is productive for me! I was very proud.

* I made Penne Rotini with Cherry Tomatoes, White Beans & Olives.

I'm not a fan of mixing pasta shapes, but I had to use what we had!

Easy peasy!

It was a simple enough recipe that turned out pretty tasty. My major road block was that I had to chop olives (I substituted black with green since I loathe black olives) and the olives had pits in them!! Argh.

Here are all my meals. Look, not just breakfast! :)

My salad was super yummy - a mix of romaine lettuce, spinach, broccoli slaw, tomato, craisins and a 1/2 an avocado.

I'm so happy this is a short week. My office closes at 1p tomorrow and I am off Friday. Excited for Thanksgiving plans! What are your plans? Peach's plan is to take some time off hatin' on Lucy and to just chill.

Splash of Orange Juice

Hiii ohhh my how this week FLEW! I'm not even sure why or how or what happened. I took minimal pictures as well, which is probably why I wound up not blogging. I love to take photos and then creating a blog around those, and since all pictures this week were of the cats (#catlady) I chose to post nothing. This isn't Unchartered Shelter Cats.

ANYWAY yesterday and today I made some awesome smoothies! Yesterday's was thicker and I'm really not sure why since they were essentially the same.

In the mix:

• frozen 'naner
• frozen strawberries (like 5 sliced pieces)
• frozen pineapple (4 pieces..all that was left!)
• 1 cup vanilla almond milk
• 1 scoop vanilla protein powder
• spash of orange juice  * really makes it tasty!! Hence the title of this post :)

I topped the mixture with chia seeds and chocolate granola. It was really yummy! Look at that- I even broke out a nice placemat for y'all!

They're replacing all the water pipes in my neighborhood, and it's been really fun waking up to machinery noise. :p

The girls don't seem to mind. Speaking of, Lucy is adjusting wonderfully! She's been super shy and she slinks away with a worried look on her face all the time, but in the past week, she has made kitty strides.

The curtain is a fine place to sit.

We've been keeping her in the bathoom overnight and sometimes during the day so that Peach doesn't muder her.

I will murder you with my lasers!!

Lucy has been super sweet in the bathroom and I've taken to calling her Bathroom Cat. As soon as she leaves the room, it was like she forgets who we are and what is going on.

But she is getting better! She is hiding less and very playful. She even comes up to me in rooms now! I'm glad she's becoming well adjusted. Now I just need Peach to be nicer to her. She is....but it's going to be a long time before they're friends. Unchartered Felines.

In other news, I was excited to get my Oprah's Favorite Things O Magazine this month and was delighted to open up to an OOOPPPRAAHHHHH RAAAAAIIINNNNBBOOOOWWWW!

Have you started your holiday shopping  yet? I've bought maybe 3 things, and am a bit stumped on the rest.

Goals:

Sooo this was from last week - let's see how badly I did:

1. Blog 3x. Blogged 1x. Oops
2. Yoga 2x Yoga 1x
3. Gym 3x Gym 2x
4. Eat smaller meals wha?
5. Throw a kick ass brunch for Mom's bday Sunday :) Yea!

Mom's brunch was fun! My sister & her family came down and we all ate tons and tons of carbs and grapes. :) Mom had a blast.

This week!:

1. Gym 2x
2. Yoga 2x
3. Blog 3 god damn times.
4. Catch up with my bro!
5. Try not to go insane food-wise during the Thanksgiving holiday next week.

This week, my mother and I were invited to take a set tour of One Life To Live! Now, this was a big deal for us as my mother has been watching for forty plus years and I grew up with the show. I would always watch on and off, follow story lines for a while and then not at all. However, for the last three years, I've been a daily watcher. Thanks DVR! :)

A lovely young production assistant took time out of his day to show us around town.

Now, I do realize it's a television show and not real, but it was still jarring to see the "homes" as sets! When we first came in, we were lucky enough to see Starr & James filming a scene on the steps in Starr's home... its just steps! LOL Like I said...I realize it's a fictional show. It's just odd!

At Bo & Nora's

Outside Victor & Tea's home

Visiting Asa's mansion

My mom & I had a blast and were excited to see & meet some of the actors. We watched a few scenes be properly filmed, and a few be rehearsed.

Afterwards we went up to hair  & makeup & then wardrobe. I was itchin' to be made up and wardrobed, but surprisingly, no one offered. ;) *just kidding, not totally delusional yet*

It was such a fun time! A great big thank you & hug to Karl for hooking us up!!

I feel like lately all I do is soap related stuff. Unchartered Soaps. LOL (Watch out for January when I get tickets for the One Life To Live event like they had for AMC!)

I should really be focusing on what I originally wanted for this blog. Yes, a place to share my life & thoughts, but also, a motivating place where I can talk about goals (and um, hello.. meet some of them maybe? Before I turn 30!.. or ever!)

Soooo lets set some goals for this week!

1. Blog 3x.
2. Yoga 2x
3. Gym 3x
4. Eat smaller meals
5. Throw a kick ass brunch for Mom's bday Sunday :)

I need to keep myself on track.

After our trip to Llanview, Mom & I went out for a late lunch. When I arrived home, Pete was cooking up a storm, making the meals for the week. By the time it was all done, I only had a mini appetite so I had a mini plate of meat loaf, mashed sweet potatoes, corn &  broccoli.

Playing with the focus of the camera

Look at all those colors!! Pete's been focusing lately on making more colorful items - veggies etc, to get more nutrients in. Yay! He's also hooked on chia seeds!!

I couldn't resist playing with my food. I am five. I planted broccoli trees and planted corn.

One last note, Peach is getting more used to Lucy, and hissing at her about 33% less! She's still very territorial and angry though, but she'll come around. Lucy is busy exploring her new home, but very skiddish. Any noise and she'll run and hide. Last night however, I was playing with a laser pointer thing that Peach LOVES. So I'm moving the laser around for Peach, who is getting ready to pounce, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, LUCY pounces! LOL Both cats loved it and played together! I hope it was a glimpse of cat love to come!

In the same room! ...Vince don't judge my dishes. You either reader!

The sight of both girls together is hysterical to me as Peach is an over sized lump of 19lbs and Lucy is an undersized *apparently* 2 year old who is 6lbs. She's super tiny. The two look comical together.

OK ill stop babbling about cats! See ya later!