Whirlwind Weekend

Last weekend was jam packed with all kinds of fun. Saturday night John and I went on a Hudson River cruise to end a tech conference he had just participated in and then Sunday I co-hosted a baby shower for one of my sweet friends, Susy.

The river cruise started at sunset and was on a beautiful new yacht. Lots of food and drinks, a nice breeze and a great view, lots of fun!

Out of sheer luck we got to end our cruise watching fireworks over the Statue of Liberty :)

All of my free time outside of the river cruise was spent preparing for the baby shower. I, like usual, have a tendency to go a little overboard when crafts are involved :)

Our theme for the baby shower was really just navy and yellow, we thought anything preppy would be great since the shower was hosted by two girls from Arkansas for our other friend from Arkansas! The yellow chevron fabric was my favorite, I even painted little yellow chevron chalkboard frames (or at least I tried, after two I realized that was really hard and so the others got a different pattern) :) 

 Susy got lots of great gifts at the shower which is awesome, she's due in August and I'm soooo excited!

 All the Arkansas girls :)

It was a super fun weekend but I was definitely a little tired afterwards. It didn't help that work was insane that week too. Now I just have to get through two more days of work before John and I are off to Puerto Rico for a much needed vacay!

Upstate NY

This past weekend we took the train about an hour upstate to Sleepy Hollow to tour the Rockefeller estate. The house is called Kykuit which means something like "lookout" in Dutch. Its perched way up above the town and has amazing views!

If you stand in the center of the house you can see all the way through on both sides, its kind of fantastic. The Rockefeller family has an insane art collection but I was more excited by the architecture :)

Below is the view from the front door. We arrived in the driveway and it was like a little piece of heaven for me; a gorgeous view, fountains with the sound of running water, and greenery everywhere!!!

And it got even better when we go to the back of the house, the best view yet, overlooking the Hudson River. Its like a painting!

The house was insane inside but we weren't allowed to take pictures. We were allowed to take pictures in the carriage house though. It currently houses some of the old carriages and then a mini car museum.

One of the carriages was specifically for Winthrop Rockefeller, who was governor of Arkansas. I told our tour guide where we were originally from and she got excited because she had never met anyone from Arkansas :)

We also did a little exploring in Sleepy Hollow. Below is a picture of an old farm house that has been preserved.

We checked out the Sleepy Hollow cemetery and saw Washington Irving's grave site. There are apparently quite a few famous people buried here but for the most part we just walked around and enjoyed the quiet :)

 

DC Wedding

I'm a little behind on my blog so here's a little catching up....

About a month ago John and I went to DC for a friend's wedding. We took the bus again and didn't really have the smoothest trip there or back to the city but the time we were in DC was really fun. We actually missed the bus twice! Long story but it ended up being fine :)

The wedding was beautiful and had really great food and music. Clearly we had lots of fun in the photo booth they had at the wedding too!

The wedding was at a hotel in DC which happened to be on Pennsylvania Avenue so afterwards we took a stroll by the White House. I had never actually seen the White House in real life so that was pretty cool :)

Memorial Day Weekend

For those of you not familiar with what John's up to these days, he's crazy busy with his very own start up which is awesome......but......it means he didn't even know Monday was a holiday, soooo I went to Long Island with some friends. The original intent was to go fishing but my friend and I just ended up chilling out on the beach while the boys fished from the beach.

I haven't really experienced much of the beaches up here since my skin does not love the sun so much. We were on the North Shore which apparently is more rocky but I thought it was great. I've never seen so many shells all over the beach!

And of course, you can't be on the water in the NE without seeing sailboats.

The day turned out to be pretty great but it certainly did not start out that way. On my way to my friend's apartment I tripped on an uneven piece of sidewalk and sliced my toe open :( It was probably the most I have ever bled in my life! I know that sounds dramatic but seriously, I cut my big toe and there was so much blood in my flip flop that it started bubbling up in between all of my other toes. Probably way too much info, sorry! I considered stopping to take a picture but I was walking around lost trying to find my friend's apartment so it didn't quite make the list of priorities.

Anyway, I did get a picture of the sadness once we made it to the beach. This was my attempt to keep sand out of my open gash. Yes, I wrapped part of a trash bag around my toe :)

The rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful after that, ran a few errands, slept in late and saw the new Men in Black. Good weekend overall, now I can't believe June is here!

Weekend in Arkansas

I went down to Northwest Arkansas for a quick trip last weekend and it was so great to spend some time with friends and family and meet a new addition to the group :)

Sweet baby Wren was sooo precious!

I spent as much time hanging out with friends as possible and of course eating cheese dip :)

So many adorable babies!!!

My mom and sister even drove up on Saturday to see me which was awesome!

We all hung out at the Lake Fayetteville park on Saturday and I got to enjoy some greenery, definitely something I miss living in a gigantic concrete city :(

 

We even did a little swinging :)

It was a FANTASTIC trip, so laid back and so great to see everyone, if only it were a little longer!

Cherry Blossom Saga

After not having much luck in DC, my quest to see cherry blossoms continued last weekend when I went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. I finally got to see them en masse and they were fantastic! 

There were several different varieties but the big fluffy white/light pink ones were my favorite :)

My friend Susy was nice enough to brave her allergies and go with me. She helped me document my cherry blossom experience :)

There weren't many flowers blooming but almost all of the trees were in bloom, the lilac smelled amazing!

Another one of my favorite trees, the Japenese Magnolia, so pretty :)

Pretty much the only flowers in bloom were the tulips. Somehow everything blooming seemed to be color coordinated, all nice shades of pink, purple and white.

The weather happened to be great which made for a pretty perfect day at the botanical gardens, I think this may need to be a yearly tradition :)

DC Weekend

A few weekends ago John and I took the bus down to DC in the hopes of seeing the cherry blossoms. Ever since we moved to NY I've been dying to go to the cherry blossom festival. We finally made plans to go this year over Easter weekend because I had Good Friday off but because the weather has been so warm the trees bloomed early. We had to scramble and change our plans to go earlier but unfortunately we still missed the blossoms. Here are all of the trees that were supposed to be full of cherry blossoms :(

On the plus side, it was still a really nice break from the city and we got to visit with my cousin and her husband. We rented bikes and spent Saturday riding around DC which was lots of fun even though it made me realize how tremendously out of shape I am!

At least the tulips were in bloom :)

Biking around the memorials and monuments was definitely the way to go, we got to see tons of stuff, most of which I had never seen before.

Jefferson Memorial

 MLK Memorial (not quite sure how I feel about the pose) 

 Lincoln Memorial

On top of all the other stuff there happened to be a kite festival at the Washington monument :)

We had a great trip to DC even though it was really short. We had to rush back on Sunday to host a watch party for the Game of Thrones season premier. It was a little tight getting back in the city at 5:30 and having people over at 7 but it turned out great. I always love having people over but this time it was John's idea. He even had ideas for what he wanted to feed people!

We had our usual party food: spincach dip, deviled eggs, and of course introducing cheese dip to non-southerners is always a must :) John wanted to cook everyone dinner too so he made flank steak and I made brussels sprouts. We had so many people come over that we had to rearrange our furniture!

It took a couple of days to get everything back to normal after being gone for the weekend and then hosting the party but having Good Friday off last week definitely helped :)