Oh Yeah - October

In the words of the pop princess, "Oops I did it again."  A whole month without blogging and now here I come crawling back.  In the last month I've been on a travel spree with almost a week in Atlanta, and just working away. 

Oh, and food- there has been food along with it all, because a young lady has got to eat!  I needed a lot of energy to focus on my trip.

Pumpkin yogurt in the airport

Ceasar salad in the hotel at midnight

Hotel room all to myself

In the last weeks since being back, we have been working away on the kitchen.  It's not quite 100% done yet- but here is a sneak preview.  I am 1000% in love with it and I'll post some good before and after pictures once we are all done.

Another couple of things that I am 100% in love with are my boys.  We went to an enormous dog park today and walked around and let the beast run free.  It was a fabulous day.

What are you loving these days?  If I have any readers left, tell me what's new in your lives.

Sometimes

Sometimes we all just need to stop and smell the flowers (in our fancy pants business trip salad)

 Sometimes we need to dance like nobody's watching

 Sometimes we need to make a greater effort to appreciate the ones we love

 Sometimes we need to appreciate food for what it is- delicious, nourishing, and good for the soul

Sometimes you need to let someone pick you up and help you just for old time's sake

And sometimes we need to stare into the sunset and find the positive in everything (work trip, again)

I'm back homies.  My break was nice and I had to figure out what I wanted to do but didn't come up with any revolutionary answers, so here I am anyways :)  And I brought my fancy camera.

What's new with you?

Sometimes Multi-tasking Can Be Awesome

This past weekend, I found my crunchy granola Bay Area self far, far away in New York.  When I found out I was going on a six week travel binge for work and New York was one of the stops, I HAD to visit Mari of Namaste Mari- a dear friend who I have never seen in person but have had the pleasure of getting to know over the years. 
I was also excited to meet two of my other favorite bloggers, Missy of Missy Maintains and Gabriela of Une Vie Saine. See? Multi-tasking.

Mari and Missy were sweet enough to pick me up from my hotel, (clearly anticipating my lack of direction) and escorted me through the subway system to Spring Street Natural, a cute sustainable restaurant in SoHo, one of my favorite parts of the city.  The restaurant was fabulous- and the company was even better. 

We started with a beautiful basket of bread that was brought to our table before we had a chance to even sit.

The menu was amazing- I would have ordered almost everything on it, but I finally settled for the same thing as Mari- Pumpkin Ravioli. The cheese and crunchy hazelnuts made this dish.

Even better than the food was the company. The girls were just as eloquent, sweet, and witty as their blogs and I was so glad they each took time out of their day to come to lunch.  Since this was my first official blog meet-up, I wasn't sure what to expect, but the conversation was amazingly less focused on food, and more focused on normal conversation- except we paused to take pictures of our meals before we ate. 

Gabriela was the group photographer, with her fancy new camera. 
Missy and Mari:

Gabriela and I:

Group shot:

As we parted ways from Gabriela, Missy and Mari took me through the scenic route to get back to my hotel.  Some would call it lost, but I enjoyed walking through Greenwich Street, West 4th, and through Tribeca.  We stopped along the way for some pictures, mastering this whole multi-tasking thing.

When we got off the train, Mari and I continued our hot date and took an extra long walk to Magnolia Bakery for cupcakes.  Oh my word- these were fabulous.  I'm not sure if it was the chase of circling the block to find the place, or my excitement over my potential sugar coma, but I found these to be some of the best cupcakes I have ever had.

My hot date also treated me to mine, and it was just as good as it looked.

I killed mine, and Mari shared hers with the evil pigeons- but first a cute picture:

I am so glad that I stayed an extra day to meet up with these girls.  Of course no blog meet-up is complete without food and I'm enjoying the Godiva from Mari as I type this post.  Multi-tasking is fabulous.

How to Spend Two Days in a New City Without Stepping Out of the Airport

The title of this post refers to my business trip on Friday-Saturday night. A part of what I do at work includes meeting planning and since I have spent the last month planning a meeting in Dallas, I got to go run the meeting and check out what the heck it is I have been doing. The meeting was at a property adjascent to the airport, so I technically never left the airport.


My plane left on Friday morning at 6:00 AM...brutal! I woke up at 4:30 that day and headed to the airport. I slept all the way through my first flight and got a fruit and yogurt parfait in Phoenix at Starbuck's. I looked at the nutritional information and it contained 330 cals- that's a lot of yogurt! It was a good thing I had a substantial breakfast because I didn't get to eat lunch until 6-7 hours later. I also got a bunch of crazy physical workouts running around in heels and setting up the meeting. I got some good experience and it was worth it. Here are some highlights from my trip (and the only pictures I could take without looking like a freak):

My hotel room:



Frozen yogurt swirl at the airport (I ate most of the yogurt and a few cone bites)




Chicken burrito with black beans, salsa, lettuce, and rice. I ordered the 'half portion' and this thing was humongous! I still ate the whole thing because I was starving/tired:



I had two nearly 18-hour days in a row and came home quite exhausted! Not quite tired enough to miss our friend's birthday! We went to a new club in San Francisco and I even saw a Warriors basketball player- totally worth going out!

Today we took care of some financial chores (my favorite), cleaned a little bit to at least unpack, and made some soup for next week. We stopped for lunch/dinner at 4:00 and I was supposed to go to the gym but I was too tired.


Wedding Invitations

I think I found them! Our colors are white, black, gold, and silver. We'll also be including a little green as accents. I have literally looked all over the place, considered ordering them online, but I wanted to feel and touch them...
We wanted the option to print our own and when I saw these, I knew they would be perfect:



We got both boxes for $80 and have more than enough. I may add a vellum overlay and some ribbon to them, but the cost will be minimal. I just couldn't fathom spending $800 on invitations and would rather use the money for something else. I change my mind a lot, but I'm hoping I have found 'the one'! I swear, finding my future hubby was easier than this!


I am exhausted and skipped the gym today. I am hoping, hoping, hoping that I will be able to wake up and get some exercise in. I'm still having a problem balancing things and hope that some extra sleep will get me up very early tomorrow- otherwise, there is always after work.