weekend recap

Hello! How was the weekend? We were lucky (unlucky?) yesterday and were iced in with about two inches of ice on all the roads. Al's office was even closed! We had a very full and productive weekend before the ice hit. Here are a few photos...

We had our grill delivered earlier in the week and Al was like a five year old boy about it. He would go up each night when he got home from work to look at it and asked roughly 35 times if we could grill out on Friday. So we grilled out, despite some wind and cooler temps. It was worth it for some really fantastic burgers.

^^ Homemade baked beans too! Recipe here.

Saturday the forecast was good and it was looking to be our last nice day for a week or so. We started with donuts from a local joint we discovered, followed by a trip to the dog park, a grocery store run (where we bought furniture?), a few hours at the driving range, and then dinner and out with friends. That is one busy Saturday!

^^ I can't even describe how good these were. Truly tasted homemade. Don't worry, we didn't eat all dozen in one day...we ate them all in two days. :) 

A quick romp at Mutts for Miss Mayo. I can see already see this will be our weekend spot. She just loves it. 

And then something occurred that hasn't occurred in over six years. Al went WITH me to the grocery store. We tried to go a few times together back in New York and let's just say it didn't go well. But now that he's a grilling machine he had to come along so he can "pick out his meat". But the best part of the whole grocery store adventure is that we bought a table and chairs for the patio off of our kitchen. $80 bucks and I think they are pretty cute!

^^ Notice the salad to make up for the donuts. And thanks for the photobomb, Lil.

The sun was out so we headed for the golf course to hit a few balls. I'm not too bad after a few years off, but my form is just awful. Thinking I'll take a lesson this spring.

Dinner was at Public School 214, which we learned opened just three weeks ago. They've been in Dallas as long as us! Delicious food (homemade tater tots, deviled eggs, steak, mac and cheese, fish and chips) and fun cocktails. 

Sunday was cold, rainy, and after some post-dinner drinks with friends the night before, we all decided sleeping in was a good idea. Funny how we consider sleeping until 10am sleeping in, when just a few years ago that was soooo early. 

After we finally got up, we spent the following four hours watching Parks and Rec and hanging up our gallery wall. I'll give a few tips later this week for how to make it easy (it really shouldn't take four hours, we just took a lot of breaks...for donuts). We went from this lay out on the ground...

...to up on the wall!

And then I realized it was 4pm and I was still in my pajamas...

...so I did what any normal person would do. I held my dog and picked off my gel manicure. Totally normal. 

The rain never let up, but that didn't stop Al from grilling pork tenderloin for dinner. I'd say he's hooked. It's so fun to have him take an interest in recipes and cooking. He even marinated the pork all by himself!

And what a fantastic Oscars show to wrap up the night. I thought Neil Patrick Harris did a great job, although it felt like the middle of the show dragged on a little.  Not a whole lot of "wow" moments on the Red Carpet, unfortunately. My two favorites of the night were Rosamund Pike and JLo (minus her pink eye shadow). 

  

Mighty productive little weekend we put together. Wishing you an easy week. Here's hoping our friends in the midwest and East Coast start to thaw out soon! 

new york photoshoot

Greetings from Dallas!  We drove here Friday from Kansas City and thanks to some stern conversations Al had with our movers, our moving truck arrived Saturday (after they had told us it would be Tuesday before we'd get it due to the storm on the East Coast). We are settling in nicely to our new town home and have almost unpacked. The cable and internet guy came yesterday and I've never been so excited to be "connected" again (is that bad?). I've still got quite a few boxes to tackle and the furniture we ordered won't be here for several more weeks so while we're here, it's no where near a complete home yet. 

Forgive me for the rest of the week while I finish up stuff around the house and try to put together my new routine. I'll be back to regular scheduled posts next week, but in the meantime I have a lovely little surprise for you..

For a going away gift, several of my girlfriends got together and gave us a day with a professional photographer in New York. We spent a f-r-e-e-z-i-n-g morning before we left the city taking a photos in some of our favorite spots around the city. It was such a thoughtful gift from my friends and we will truly treasure the images. What a great way to remember our life in New York.  Take a look at a few of my favorites...

  

  

 Thanks to our friends for hooking us up with the incredibly talented and friendly Elizabeth Shrier. 

See y'all back here next week. Now off to unpack more boxes...

farewell week recap

Hello from Kansas City! We're not in Dallas just yet - we don't have access to our place until the 29th so we stopped off to hang with our families for a few days before we drive down to Dallas. We made it here Sunday night and missed all Juno-related snow issues, thankfully. But I'll admit, I did have a little bit of Juno FOMO yesterday.  

We had one spectacular last week in New York City. We started to call it our Farewell Tour since we had something just about every single night. It was a great way to see tons of our friends (and eat some great meals). Here are (quite a lot of) photos of our last week in the city...

Two Saturdays ago we had a fun morning doing a little goodbye surprise (you'll see photos of it soon, I promise).  After several hours in the freezing cold we stopped for brunch in the meatpacking district.

That night we had a big group dinner with some friends at Fedora. It came together last minute, but ended up working out perfectly. I called Fedora meekly on a Thursday asking if they had a private space available for ten people that coming Saturday (a notion that completely absurd). Thankfully, it worked out and it turned out better than I expected. Highly recommend their private dining room in the basement. We had great service, great food, and the private space made for a much more intimate experience.

The following Sunday we met my boss, her husband and darling daughter for brunch at Marta - a new place that I'm so sad we just discovered! It's so close to our apartment. I mean our old apartment. Yikes. Anyway, carbonara pizza for the win!

After brunch, we decided to tackle some of the drawers and spaces in our place that have been collecting the most random of our possessions over the past five years. Since we didn't have to pack (Al's new company paid for packers and movers), this was the extent of our physical work for the move (so lucky). We found some seriously great things - a first generation i-pod, 6,000 lip sticks, tons of old Lily toys, FLOPPY DISKS, my stash of Taco Bell sauce, and way too many expired foods. I'm thinking we should have been doing this exercise once a year...

^^ Not pictured: a first generation i-pod. I had to persuade Al to throw it out. He claimed we might want it as a "back up".

^^ "Guys, this bag better not be the trash bag. I need all these toys."

^^ The winner of the expired food awards. Food coloring from October 2011. 

^^ Threw out all but the essentials in our fridge.

^^ The great lipstick sort. Moses parted The Red Sea. I parted the lipstick pile. Can you guess which side was keep and which side as trash?

Sunday night we met our friends Matt and Megan for a delicious dinner at Dell'anima. I forgot how much I love that place. We ended the night with an after dinner liqueur they introduced me to and now I'm hooked - Amaro Nonino. Oh it's so yummy. Can't wait to sip an Amaro Nonino in Mexico in October at Matt and Megan's wedding! 

We had Monday off for MLK day and finished the clean-out process and called around and did the ol' cancel cable/power and change address routine. So many different people you have to notify about a new address. You'd think there'd be a site that you could enter the information once and it would change it on your bank, credit cards, post office, catalogs, voter registration, etc. 

Monday night we had dinner with our friends Ryan, Laura, and Patrick at The Smile. It was good to get the group together. Ryan and I work together and also went to KU together, and he's engaged to Laura who went to law school with Al and Patrick. How's that for a circle of friends? Another great goodbye meal. The Smile is darling, btw!

Tuesday my team at work threw me a little goodbye celebration. It was so nice to have all my friends from work from different groups stop by for a going away drink. And Al made an appearance too! We miiiiight have over-ordered on the appetizers a bit. So typical for my team (we are known for our eating habits...and our excellent work product, of course). 

Lily was so over us and our weeknight plans. She's used to us coming home after work to be with her. Not a fan of the farewell tour. 

And after some seriously intense work days (writing down a training manual for your future replacement is so daunting), it was Friday and the packers and movers were at our place and it all started to feel real. 

^^ Going to miss this view, for sure. 

We sort of forgot that we didn't have overhead lights in our apartment except for the kitchen. And with the lamps all packed up it made for some early dark evenings sitting around in our place. The future tenants wanted a few pieces of our furniture which worked out well so that we could seep on our couch for a few nights before we left. So we pushed the couch as close to the kitchen as possible for some light and hunkered down for the night (and watched The Wire). 

And then it was time - our last night in the city. We asked our friends to meet us at Anfora for a going away celebration. So many people turned out. It was really perfect and a very bittersweet night recalling old times and saying so long. 

^^ Hardest part was saying goodbye to my dearest and closest friend, Jolie. There were some tears for sure. Love you Jo Jo!

^^ Couldn't imagine doing any of this life stuff without Al. I feel like with him we could do anything and live anywhere. Love you, Al.

Sunday was our last day in the city. We spent it walking around to some of our favorite places and having one last meal at Friedmans with Jolie and Sean (we just couldn't say goodbye for real on Saturday night).

^^ One last carry home. Can't wait for the stares we'll get doing this in Dallas.

^^ One last play in the dog park for Miss Mayo

All packed up and ready to go. We definitely both had tears in our eyes (and mine streaming down my cheeks) when we walked out of our building for the last time. So much life was lived inside those walls.

And then we took our one-way tickets (!) and headed for Kansas City. What a great last week in the greatest city in the world. We love you New York and all of our friends.  See you very soon, I'm sure!

We're hitting the road for Dallas tomorrow (we hope - we were just informed that our moving truck didn't make it out before the snow storm - ughhhh).  See you soon new home!