HAPPY SNOW DAY!

Happy Snow Day to YOU! Enjoy this Meowtin...my Mom sent it to me last week :)


via

When Your Husband Works Nights

When your husband works nights, you spend a lot of time with your cats. You also take too many pictures of them.


You binge watch television (this season, a lot of British television). You go to spin class and to yoga class and when you get home, you have the constant conversation with yourself about why you shouldn't have to vacuum or put the laundry away since you just peddled a bike for 60 minutes and or/bent your body into a pretzel.

You see your friends a lot, which is wonderful.

You eat a lot of toast with peanut butter and eggs and smoothies for dinner because cooking for one singular person is harder than it seems. You call your parents and you Facetime your sister. You Gchat with your husband who is 30 miles away at his desk. You blog on this here blog and you tell yourself that you will not surrender to sleep because you will be awake when your husband comes home from work!



Sometimes he doesn't work too late and when that happens you're downstairs and awake when he walks in the door. The cats jump off of you and to the door to see him, because sometimes they are more like dogs than cats. Then the two of you pace around the kitchen, talking and laughing because he's so happy to be home and you're so happy that you made it to 10:45. Then you make lunches for the next day. You put on a brave "let's watch some TV together face," but most nights you're in bed 25 minutes after he walks in the door.

On days when he works very late, you take all of your electronic devices upstairs and you walk up the stairs. You brush your teeth and wash your face and do battle with the rosacea you've suddenly developed on your face with some heavy duty lotion. Then you get into bed with all of your electronics...you peruse Facebook, you click around on Instagram, you look around to see whats trending on Twitter, you start a new draft of a blog post...you start to read your book. And most nights, without fail, you fall asleep before your husband gets home with your phone and your glasses and your iPad and your laptop around you. When he gets home, your husband moves the laptop to the bedside table, puts the iPad in its case, puts your glasses safely on your bedside table, and plugs your phone in so that its charged for the next day. Sometimes you remember him kissing you goodnight, and even when you don't remember you know that he did.

And suddenly it is the morning. Its time for you to go to work while your husband is fast asleep. You take a shower and pad around the bedroom trying to silently get dressed. You kiss him goodbye and whisper "have a good day at work." You grab your bag and your breakfast, you head out the door. You get on the subway and get to your office. You work all day and take the subway home.

You are greeted by two cats who sometimes they think they are dogs...when your husband works nights.

A Post about Entertainment in 2015

Do you ever feel like you're consuming an awful lot of entertainment?

I was thinking about that recently while Becca, Shannon and I were watching The Interview on YouTube ("I want to watch it so I can have a conversation about it, in case anyone asks" said Becca. And I agreed with her. This is the state of our lives-make of that what you will).

I started thinking about all the other things I've already watched/read/listened to/attended in 2015 and we're not even a full 30 days into the year yet.

So I'm going to start making note of all the entertainment I'm absorbing and then I'm going to share some of it with you (you're welcome). Because watching/reading/attending something seems a lot more productive to me if I'm "recommending" things to you ;)


Peaky Blinders! Alyssa and I watched two seasons of Peaky Blinders when I was home between Christmas and New Years Eve. It starts Cillian Murphy (who I think I love?) who is the head of a British crime family in the 1920s. You have to pay very close attention because they are mumblers and they are British, so they're kind of hard to understand/hear, but we loved it! Season three is being shot now and we can't wait. Our favorite part of the whole show is when the 12 year old tells his (depressed, anxiety ridden) brother that he and his friends do coke "but only for special occasions" and that he should definitely have some before his big bar reopening. Clearly this is a much watch show!


The Interview! As mentioned above, Becca, Shannon and I watched this on a Saturday night while we ate left over gluten free pizza (parrrrrty). It was predictably terrible, but not nearly as terrible as I thought it was going to be. The movie definitely confirmed that I am strangely attracted to Seth Rogen but think that James Franco is a total weirdo. Major Perk: Joesph Gordon-Levitt is in the movie for three seconds and he's surrounded by puppies...its really great.



A Discovery of Witches! The first book of the trilogy, I hopped on this bandwagon because Marni and Teress were both reading them. They're about a witch and a vampire (I know, guys, but trust me?) and a secret book and also they go back in time. The books are on the longish side (more than a 1,000 pages each on my iPad mini, but I make my words kind of big) but I think they're worth it. I'm 2/3 of the way done with the second book and will keep you posted once I finish it.

Stay tuned for more riveting entertainment reviews in 2015 :)


I Love Three Day Weekends

This weekend was so fun! Our friends Tim and Julia came for the weekend on Saturday, our foster cat, Oreo, went home to his family and I got to spend time with his Mom's and his baby human brother (who I love so much!), we went to the ballet at BAM, AND Becca bought a wedding dress!

The heavy metal bar on our block, Lucky 13, moved to a new location early this month (we sure will miss seeing those topless lady's having a cigarette outside the place!) and a new place opened up on Friday. Their new sign didn't seem to be ready yet so they opted for a piece of loose leaf paper.


Here's Becca in her bridal robe waiting for the consultant to pull the two dresses she was choosing between! I think the socks add a particularly elegant touch. 

 

The bridal boutique was having a Badgley Mischka trunk show when we arrived. The dresses were so beautiful...they even had a bridal skirt, which I have no idea how you would wear but I kind of wish I had worn it to my wedding!


The weather was terrible when we left for Becca's dress appointment (it was frozen, too-I took a header down our front stoop) and it kept up all day. The weather plus the holiday weekend made the city feel empty, which is always my favorite!


I hope your weekend was the best, too! 

A New Hobby: Embroidery

A few months ago, Becca emailed me to tell me about an interesting person she had met the night before at a dinner party, Rebecca. "She was so nice!" she wrote to me "and she makes these beautiful things!" I clicked on over to Rebecca's Etsy store and resisted the urge to buy everything in her shop because I wouldn't know what to do once everything arrived.

I've been wanting to learn how to embroider for a few years now (after I tried my hand at cross stitching a while back and it proved to be one of the most stressful experiences of my life) and I was so excited to see all of Rebecca's beautiful designs.

When my Mother-in-law asked what I wanted for Christmas, I asked for the Color Wheel Sampler, which looked like it would teach me all the stitches I needed to know. I started it during the few days that I was at my parents' house between Christmas and New Years and luckily for me, my cross stitching Mom knew all the stitches and was able to teach me (and we didn't even yell like we usually do when we do a craft-we're notorious for our yarn fights in Michael's, which is when we yell at each other about how much yarn I need for a particular project and what colors are the best).

When I got back to Brooklyn, I spent a full morning binge watching Downton Abbey (I am almost on to Season 4!) and made some serious progress on it!



My favorite stitch so far are the French knots (the purple ones)...I just want to keep making them and think I could easily make hundreds before I got tired of them, they're so cute!

My least favorite is the Blanket stitch (see below) because I am terrible at it and also I stuck myself with the needle and made myself bleed. Don't worry, I ripped these out and started over...these really are the worst, they look like I did them with my eyes closed.



Dilly and Zula like when I embroider a lot more than when I crochet because its smaller and they can cuddle right on top of me, which they're into. My MIL also got me The Sequel Sampler, which seems to be a more advanced introductory sampler. The sticky up thread one looks like its going to be challenging?

I'm looking forward to tackling the Paisley DIY Sampler after I master all the stitches and build up a more substantial thread collection. You can also subscribe to Rebecca's shop and you get a sampler every month! Its on my To Do list for 2016 and I'm so excited (is it too early to start making plans for 2016? It seems like maybe it is?).


So if you're in the market for a 2015 hobby, I say embroidery may be it! I love, love, love all of Rebecca's designs and I have to say that the Color Wheel was the perfect first project. So go, go, go and buy one! I can't wait to see your progress!

Christmas 2014


This Christmas was our second married Christmas and the first one that we spent with John's family in Albany. I'm very lucky: I've got wonderful in-laws, but your first Christmas away from your family isn't an easy thing. We had a wonderful time though, and John even surprised me and helped me check an item off my bucket list!


Do you know that this year no one knew if the people in our Christmas card was us or not? I used a great (I thought) picture of John and I walking into the Pacific Ocean in Crescent City. The picture is of our backs and we're pretty far from the camera...my Grandmother, Aunt Cristina and a few of our friends asked who the strangers were in our Christmas card. Not strangers! Us! Those people on our Christmas card are us!


John took his first stab at child's toy assembly this Christmas! He's pretty good at it and thankfully carries a multi-tool with him at all times which is perfect for those tiny screws.

And now: BUCKET LIST! Two days after Christmas, I shot a gun!

I know, don't I look like someone who has "shoot a gun" on her Bucket List? Well its been on my list forever and two days after Christmas, John took me to our friend Tyler's house. Tyler has a house about a million acres of land and he taught me how to shoot! We started with a BB gun (which I didn't like because you have to pump it and I just don't have the upper body strength for that) and then we moved on to a .22 which required much less arm strength. I even wore John's goofy hat. My aim is not so great but I think that maybe with some time I could get better! I want to go to a range the next time so that I can shoot a target that looks like a person and pretend I am on NCIS LA (have I mentioned my love of LL Cool J before?).


If you celebrated, I hope your Christmas was lovely, too!