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 :)

Weekend with the Family

John's family came in from Orlando last weekend. I kind of forgot that it was St. Patrick's day and that we would be dealing with the craziness that brings. Luckily we were able to stay out of most of it. I made sure we weren't going to be any where near the parade or so I thought, apparently there was a little mini parade on our street!

I was really concerned with taking the family around the city because pretty much everyone starts drinking at 9am on St. Patrick's day. We didn't see anything too bad but just to let you know how nuts the city gets for St. Patrick's day, there was a guy walking around with a goat!

We had a jam packed weekend which is always fun! Saturday we went to the Tenement museum which is a guided tour that takes you through what it would have been like to live in the late 1800's and early 1900's in NYC. They have several different tours and John and I have done quite a few of them, they are always really neat.

Saturday night we all went to see Broadway shows. Some of us saw "Death of a Salesman" with Phillip Seymour Hoffman and then the others saw "How to Succeed in Business" with Nick Jonas. The shows were great and I think everyone enjoyed what they saw :)

We had beautiful weather all weekend so on Sunday we got sandwiches from Eisenberg's, one of the famous delis in NY and took them to the High Line park for a picnic.

John and I are big fans of the High Line but we hadn't been in a while. It was a little barren since most of the plants get cut back for the winter but they were starting to come back, can't wait to go back again this summer :)

The last night everyone was in town we went to try S'mac which is a restaurant that only serves macaroni and cheese! Anna, John's sister saw it on the travel channel or food network and so we had to try it. Glad we did because it was awesome!!! John and I shared the sampler which was eight different kinds of mac-n-cheese. They ranged from the standard 4-cheese to Cajun to one that even had figs!

Its always fun to host friends and family and play tour guide, it gives us a chance to show off our favorite places and even learn about new ones :)

The Orchid Show

Last weekend John and I went to the orchid show at the NY Botanical Garden and it was so much fun! It was a special event on Saturday night so they had music and drinks in the conservatory for the show.

The gardens are in the Bronx so it was a bit of an adventure to get up there, but totally worth it, there were flowers everywhere!

The orchids were gorgeous and there were tons of varieties, lots of which I had never seen before.

 Off topic there was a gardenia tree. I've never seen a gardenia so big and it smelled amazing!!!

Hanging out with John and surrounded by flowers, I was a happy girl :)

 We even took an orchid home. John picked this one out, its called a "Dancing Lady" orchid because the flowers look like ladies with big skirts.

Valentine's Day Recap

For Valentine's Day I threw my annual cookie decorating party. This is the third year I've done this and even though its a lot of work to make so many cookies it is always lots of fun! I wanted to change up my usual party food and try some new things so I made deviled eggs and caprese skewers. The deviled eggs you've seen before, they're a favorite for John and I, but they're new to the party rotation. My usual party food consists of very southern style appetizers, you know, anything made with Rotel :)

 I also did something new with the cookie dough this year, I dyed some of it pink :)

The infamous cake pops also made an appearance at the party. A friend of mine was dying to make these so we gave it another shot, we made them previously for a baby shower and they weren't so successful. I'm not sure they were so successful this time either, I think I'm ready to give up on cake pops, just not my thing.

Unfortunately cupcakes didn't seem to be my thing this year either! I make strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese icing all the time, they are my absolute favorite. I have been baking for probably the better part of my life and I have NEVER seen frosting melt off a cupcake! Apparently my apartment was so hot and or humid that the frosting would not stay on the cupcakes :(

Here's what my kitchen looked like after the party, also a bit of disaster but fortunately Rosie was happy to help clean up :)

 For the actual day, John and I had a very nice dinner at home :)

I made pesto for the first time, it was pretty simple but I'm not sure I'm the biggest fan, I think I like my pasta a little saucier :) We also had strawberry salad, deviled eggs, bread and John's newest fave, dill butter. We ended the evening with chocolate covered strawberries, so yummy!

Catching Up

Ok, so I guess I took a break for Christmas and never really came back. Part of my absence is because I got an Ipad for Christmas and haven't been using my laptop since. The drawback there is that I can't get pictures directly from my camera on to my Ipad to blog. Anyway, here are some of the highlights from the past couple of months...

Before Christmas we took John's brother and sister-in-law to Carnegie Hall to see Handel's Messiah, it was a really neat experience!

For Christmas we went down to AR for probably the longest we've been since we moved to NY, I think it was almost two weeks!

Rosie even got to go down with us since we were going for such a long time. She did really great on the flight and loved getting to play with all of her cousins :)

John got an antique gun for Christmas from his grandfather and we got to do a little shooting!

After the excitement of Christmas there hasn't been much going on but I've been loving my latest knitting project :)

Giant's Causeway

We stayed two nights at the Castle Leslie and then drove north to the coast. It was a little rainy for a majority of our trip but that didn't keep it from being absolutely beautiful! Driving around the countryside was just like you imagine. It is green with rolling hills and sheep everywhere.

The reason we drove up to the coast was to see the Giant's Causeway, which is a really neat rock formation formed by an ancient volcano. Apparently when the lava cooled it cracked into thousands of columns.

It was incredibly windy being right on the coast but that didn't keep us from climbing around on the rocks :)

Some of the rock columns further from the sea edge were really tall. Of course we climbed all over those too :)

The rain and the spray from the ocean made it really slippery, by the end of our outing both of us had slipped at least once. John had mud on his jeans to prove it and I unfortunately slipped one foot off into the water.

I don't know what I was thinking but I straightened my hair that morning. By the time we finished exploring the rocks my hair looked crazy! Between the wind that was strong enough to knock you off your balance and the slight drizzle I had a full on fro going on. 

The rain also kept getting on the lenses of our cameras so unfortunately there are some spots on lots of the photos. You can see spots in the top right of this picture. You can also see my hair being blown in multiple directions.

After the Giant's Causeway we drove down the coast to stay the night in Belfast. We enjoyed taking in all the countryside we could on the drive :)

Thanksgiving in Ireland

John and I decided that since we weren't going home for the holiday that we would take a little vacation instead. We flew out Wednesday evening and had an overnight flight to Dublin, we got in around 7am and immediately got a rental car. Even though I was super tired there would be no sleeping in the car for me because I was FREAKING out! Thank goodness John loves an adventure and thought it would be fun to drive on the other side of the road. To make it even more fun he had to get used to shifting gears with his left hand too! No matter how smooth John was driving it seemed like every time I looked back up from the map I panicked that we were on the wrong side. 

When we stayed at a castle turned B&B last year on our trip to France we decided that those are really cool and we should stay at more of these. We drove about an hour and a half north of Dublin to a tiny little town to stay at the Castle Leslie Estate. The castle was built in the 1600's and is still in the original family's possession.

(I know this is a terrible picture and there is stuff on the lens but unfortunately its the only one I took of the outside)

The estate is about 1,000 acres and has lakes and forests and is absolutely beautiful! They even had an equestrian center.

John surprised me with a tour of the estate on horseback when we got in. I tried to take pictures while we were on horseback but it didn't really work out, not quite as smooth as I thought :)

Since the castle was in the countryside there wasn't much to do besides relax which is not our usual vacation but turned out to be really nice! We even ended up eating all of our meals on the estate too since they had several options and it was all really great food. Sadly our Thanksgiving dinner did not include turkey but instead pigeon! Definitely interesting and pretty good although very gamey, not sure pigeon would pass as food in NYC :)

The next day we just walked around the estate and then ended the evening watching the AR vs LSU game. You of course knew we would find a place to watch the game even if we were in another country :)

This definitely was a nice setup, unfortunately the game didn't turn out quite the way we hoped :(

The next day we got up early and continued our journey North. I'll share more on that in another post.