Category: Life

Mardi Gras/Birthday

Thank you so much to everyone who came to my birthday party, mardi gras celebration. Every year it gets better and better and I’m so happy to share it with them. n0azaBMReVKtGwAA.jpg

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This cake was the best cake ever. My friend Tiffany was in charge, and I told her to make whatever she wanted, as long as I got to blow out candles. She went above and beyond what normal friends would do if you asked a friend to make you a cake. SHE MADE ME AN ICE CREAM CAKE.LMKbjyrc9a1E6WiJ.jpg

No this wasn’t your normal chocolate vanilla ice cream cake. She made a red bean and green tea ice cream cake, with a fluffy chiffon cake. YUM. I almost didn’t have any cake leftover, it was such a hit! (Tiffany managed to hide a piece in the freezer for me, for later).

I have the best friends, fiance and family. So happy to have lived another year!

 

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Birthday Week

 

My how the year has flown by! I am typing this to you on my surprise weekend trip to the Bahamas, which my honey gifted me! My actual birthday is Thursday, Feburary 27th. Since last year we went to Hawaii, and this year I was planning on joining my annual Mardi Gras party with my birthday party, he wanted to sneak me out of the country for a quick paradise getaway! More on my trip later.

In celebration of my birthday, I wanted to do a giveaway! Stay tuned! One of my favorite aprons will be up for grabs.

 

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Happy Valentine’s Day

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Happy Valentine’s day! I hope you all have a special day today, and the rest of the year of course! Every Valentine’s is “Gal”entine’s for me, because I feel like Valentine’s day is every day in my relationship (ugh, so CORNY, I know ;)) Well every year, for…I don’t know how many years now, my friend Vitya and I spend it together. Whether or not we’re in relationships, Valentine’s day is our day.

We call it Meatless Meatful (hehe, you can figure out why). And we always order meat lover’s pizza and breadsticks, or just have a meat feast. We tend to watch girly movies, and do girly things, whether it be painting each other’s nails or waxing each other’s mustaches (haha) to wearing creepy facemasks. I look forward to this every year, and even though she’s engaged now, I’m still so glad that we spend it together.

Here’s to us, my ride or die!

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Anniversary Food Adventure

Okay, so I usually don’t write lovey gushy stuff. So I’ll try to refrain from that. But my honey and I celebrated another year together by eating! We started off at his favorite pizza place in Leesburg, Fireworks Pizza. We normally just go straight to the point here. Pizza, and dessert. At the Arlington location, I like to get their appetizers. But today we were so hungry, after a 45 minute wait, we got spinach dip to start.

Then the main event, PIZZA! Smokey Blue with shrimp. There’s bacon, bleu cheese, balsamic glaze, sauteed onions along with rosemary, which just ties everything together. Afterwards, we had the chocolate chip cookie sundae. It didn’t last long enough to take a picture. Picture cookie dough in a shallow ramekin, blasted in a wood fired oven, until its crisp on top and the chocolate is bubbling. Top it off with a cold scoop of vanilla ice cream. Oh MY.

Afterwards we went to paper source to feed my stationary and paper goods addiction. And we found this gem.

I took too long staring at pens, stickers and stamps, so he went and got us starbucks!

We went to get pampered before going to our dinner date!

Bistro Cacao. I love this place. It’s so french, it makes me miss Paris more, but fills the void.

Lobster bisque with white truffle oil.

Pan seared duck with a blueberry reduction, braised endives and potato gratin

Mousse au chocolat with raspberry and mango sauce.

I love food. And my life. Le sigh.

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Meal Planning

I love cooking. But if it’s during the week, it is usually sporadic. Veggies go bad if I try to plan ahead too much. I’m going to give it another go and try to plan it out, and cook it on Sundays, and make SMALLER quantities. I have the bad habit of cooking for a football team, but it only being us two in the house!

I thought this picture was pretty cute, but because I come home for lunch and eat dinner at home, there isn’t really a need for me to pack bentos. This first week the meals are as follows…

We didn’t eat out a single meal this week! I and I didn’t randomly cook a huge meal that I got sick of eating, or gone to waste. We saved, literally, hundreds of dollars. My food budget was pretty large, because hey, I love to eat, and that’s where all my money goes, and I was okay with that!

The honey and I are taking turns planning the meals for the week, so the next one is his. I’m excited to see what he comes up with! I am leaving the weekends open for splurging and eating what we want 😀

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Rob Schneider at DC Improv

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DC Improv is one of my favorite venues for live entertainment. The atmosphere is very intimate, so it just seems like you are hanging out with your buddy, who just happens to be a famous comedic actor. At the Improv, if you get 8PM show tickets, seating is first come first serve, so the earlier you get there, the better. We got there right at 630 when doors opened and we were seated right next to the stage. I could see up his nose, and he made eye contact and talked to our group!
His opening act was a guy named Herbie Gill. The majority of the audience, if not all (besides us) were caucasian, DC yuppy types. I’m not being judgmental, I promise, I just wanted to describe you the audience type. I found Herbie’s jokes hilarious, and he was a DC native, young and struggling. I felt like he didn’t get as much laughs with this crowd.
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I’ve never seen Rob Schneider’s stand up before. I just know he is in funny movies and I enjoy his characters. When he first came out, he scanned the crowd. I guess getting a feel for the audience. He started off not tickling my funny bones. He made very political jokes to start…very republican, Obama negative. I’m just don’t one to discuss politics so I sat quietly while everyone else laughed. Then he got to the racial jokes (why are these so funny to me?) where he told us about growing up filipino and the antic from his childhood. He moved on to marriage, and life and thats when he got really funny.
It was a rough start but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I would see him again. He is getting old though! Since we were up close and personal, I could see the wrinkles and age spots. His eyes are a beautiful blue though! Afterwards, that weekend we watched a bunch of Rob Schneider movies. Did you know his mom makes a cameo in 3 of his movies? The Animal, Hot Chick and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigoglo. Can you spot her?

 

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Cool Stuff: Madewell Transport Tote

I don’t consider myself fashionable at all. I’m definitely a food/life blogger. But this tote, is totes amazing (haha see what I did there?). I’ve had an eye on it for awhile but because I don’t really spend my money on things like bags it takes me awhile to really get something at that price point. However, I love this bag. I also researched other similar ones, but in the end I always came back around to this bag.

It is a Madewell Transport Tote. Unlined. Real leather, perfect size. It smells wonderful, the color is rich, and leather just gets better with age, so I’m hoping this will last me a long time! It fits everything I need to carry, ipad, laptop, notebook, wallet, etc. It has one interior zip to keep my small things, like my pens, lip stuff, etc.

There isn’t much else to say, other than I love it, it makes me feel fabulous, and I can’t wait to be styling yet function. Cause really its function over fashion for me! Also. No more bags or shoes for the rest of the year. I can do this.

 

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Ramblings: Social Media Lives

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Can I let you in on a secret? I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I love the easy access to keeping up with the daily lives of friends and family far away. I love discovering new things and making new blog/twitter/instagram friends. It builds a great sense of community, and there are people that can relate and I can pick their brains about topics of my interests. These are the things I love, and these are the reasons why I probably won’t give it up.

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I don’t have a personal facebook. My dog has one. I use his account to play games. And post pictures of him. I share lots of my life on instagram (things I want to share, not everything) and I have random commentary on twitter. But I don’t live on social media. I hang out with my friends, eat food, talk, cook, read etc. What I noticed with our society lately is people LIVING on social media… and a lot of the times they live fake lives.

There are different types of people. People who use social media for branding, people who use it for an online interests community (like I mentioned before), people who use social media to share only with people that care about them and vice versa (usually have everything on private), people who use social media to garner attention to feed their narcissistic behavior, and people who use social media to prove to other people that they are living fabulous lives when really they are trying to make themselves feel better about their own life. I read about this somewhere, I believe it’s called “Fakebooking”.

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I think this is the hate reason in my love/hate relationship. I’ve decided to cut out quite a few excess people in my life, due to their need to always one up everyone. I feel like this is fueled by such easy access to anyone’s lives via instagram/twitter/facebook. You start comparing yourself, and your life to someone else and it turns you into a monster!

That being said, I’m not going to give up on twitter or instagram. Who know’s I will probably get facebook sometime down the line to share pictures of my kids or something…but somehow I still feel like I won’t. I want to send more handwritten cards/letters/notes this year. Old school. Use up my stamps and paper supplies. Our life is so digital that sometimes I miss tangible things. I want to organize my things and be paper free and declutter. But I still love being in the real world as opposed to the digital world.

What about you? Are you living in the real world? And no, not the MTV show.

 

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Out & About

It’s been awhile since I’ve been out and about. So last Saturday I spent the day with my friend Tiffany and we had a whole day of food, people watching and catching up.

Our first stop was Hot & Juicy. She never been to a down and dirty seafood joint. Now that my older brother moved back to Louisiana 🙁 this will be my choice for crawfish when the season rolls around again. Since they were frozen, we opted for shrimp, po boys and crablegs.
After walking around in the cold, we decided to stop in for some tea and coffee at Sidamo on H Street. Super cute, tiny place known for it’s Ethiopian pour over coffee. Here we caught up. People watched, and made up stories about the characters we saw. Nothing interesting. But a very cozy time.
No trip to H street is complete without a stop into Dangerously Delicious Pies. I can’t believe I haven’t written about this place yet. If you find yourself near a location, stop in! They have both sweet and savory pies. This trip, I came home with Blueberry, Lemon Chess and Baltimore Bomb.
The night ended at Lyon Hall. One of my favorite spots for happy hour. I love their charcuterie and mussels. And we got exactly that, along with some rose. Perfect ending to our girly day of food!

 

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Sleep Cycles Part Deux

So remember when I wrote this post about waking up during your light sleep cycle so that you don’t mess up your whole day? Well I really liked waking up like that. I just made my whole day better. So to aid with that, I tested out this app called Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock.

You stick it under your sheet and through the phone’s accelerometer it measures when you are in which sleep cycle. Crazy I know. I don’t believe it either, but it gives you charts and stuff when you wake up. I tried this out for a week and here’s what I think.

I spend a lot of time in bed and I get enough sleep… Lately. This is all for the new year. If it was tracking and experimenting during the macaron rush, it would probably tell me to go to sleep more.

I do notice that I wake up maybe a minute or two, before the cycle timer makes me wake up. However I do enjoy my morning tea in the quiet. I do feel a lot more refreshed and make it through the day longer without naps and I’m pretty happy with this system of sleeping!

 

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