Christmas Cookies & Ugly Christmas Sweaters

Pin It now! This holiday season, I think we did well trying to stretch it out as long as could.  We started by making Christmas cookies - my Mom and I have been trying to make this an annual tradition.  We used the same gingerbread cookie recipe from a couple of years ago, and after a disastrous first attempt at sugar cookies (which turned into giant cookie the size of a sheet pan), we went back to basics and used Alton Brown's recipe.  My favorite was the gingerbread, but it seemed like the linzer-like sandwich cookies were the hit this year.

Michael and I also hosted an ugly Christmas sweater party this year at a bar down the street.  It was hilarious and some people were really creative (uh, pinning Santas where you don't usually pin Santas), while others borrowed sweaters from their mother-in-laws.  We held a contest where the bar staff chose their favorite - Justin's grossly oversized snowman sweater won, with Greg's original 1980's Pierre Cardin sweater coming in second.  Everyone was a little surprised Trish's homemade, Christmas-lit, music-playing, ornament-adorned sweater didn't win, but there's always next year.  There were a lot more funny and funky sweaters, but I don't think I got all of them.  Again, next year.

Lately

Pin It now! Summer 2012 has been fabulous.  My blogging about it, not so much.  Here's a condensed version of life lately.

~swimsuit fashion show at beekman beer garden followed by torrential rains.  luckily the beer garden is under a huge tent and luckily the rain washed away all the guys' photos of swim suit butts~

~Hester Street Fair Nights with June~

 

~Yankee games~
We made it on the Jumbotron!  One bucket list item checked off the list.
~Drinks at Nights and Weekends~
Granville is awesome and makes amazing slushy drinks.

~lots of beautiful sunsets~

~homemade airplane by a grandpa on the stoop by bedford ave. if you look closely, it's made out of soda bottles and a mini heineken keg, among other things..this is why i love this town!~

Last Weekend of August

Pin It now! As we wait for Isaac to become a full blown hurricane in a day or two, all everyone talked about this weekend was about Hurricane Irene and how fast the last year passed by.  I still can't believe it's a full year ago that we filled our bathtubs, refused to evacuate Zone A, and watched how the storm hit our area during a homemade brunch at our friend's apartment the next morning.  Ok, fast forward to a year later... our last weekend of August.  One of Michael's friends came to visit.  His girlfriend, who is the perfect Southern gal, didn't make it with him this weekend, but he's trying to convince her to move up to NYC.  She should have been up this weekend and would have had a much better experience than her last time in NYC during New Year's.  No drunk people puking in the streets, just lots of good food, drinking, friendly neighbors, a baseball game and great bbq. 



Our first stop was happy hour at Mole and then the Wythe Hotel rooftop where we listened to a (free!) Cypress Hill and Sublime concert (and watched all the other suckers who paid $75 to get into the concert venue).  The view and music didn't disappoint.  You could see all of Brooklyn and the Manhattan skyline (with a gorgeous sunset) and since the hotel roof looks over the Williamsburg Waterfront venue, we heard the concert perfectly.  The guys couldn't get the lyrics "I Ain't Goin Out Like That" out of their heads and sang it all night long.  Does anyone believe that song was from 1995?!  Feeling a bit old...

On Saturday, we headed to our annual La Mela dinner to celebrate all of our friends' August birthdays.  Seven courses of Italian food and unlimited drinks and somehow we ended our dinner conversation talking about 50 Shades of Grey (no I haven't read it!).  We planned on going for karaoke after dinner but our food coma sent us straight home.

And two random notes...Michael found this bug repellent last week and it's been a lifesaveer.  The two of us are notorious for getting bit wherever we go and for some reason the mosquito bites this year have left scars on my leg which look like bruises (ok, fine I can't resist scratching, I even wake myself up at night scratching those darn bites).  The spray is odor free and deet free, both of which I love.  It's heaven.

Second random...Do you have friends that you don't see for awhile and when you finally get together, it's still comfortable  and discussion flows freely, most about nothing and everything?  I hope you do, those are the best ones.

The Last Few Weekends

Pin It now! A couple of weekends ago (yes, I'm still catching up from a few weeks ago!), we caught Grand Street Walks where they closed Grand Street off for a block party.  Allison and I really wanted to get our face painted but the line (with other children) was too long.  Next time.  We celebrated Bastille Day with bottles of champagne, macaroons, and lots of photos with berets (yeah, not sterotypical at all).

Michael and I also ventured out with Annie and Pauly B to South Williamsburg.  After a wardrobe malfunction delayed us, we began our ad-hoc crawl at Crown Victoria.  It's hilarious and amazing discovering random places - who knew there was a huge backyard lot in the middle of no where and where hipsters come early to drink and play cornhole?  We eventually made it to our original destination, Bia Bar & Grill, and pleasantly stuffed ourselves with Vietnamese food (minus the bahn mi, not on the menu, strange).  We did manage to shoot a Cowboy Mimosa though.  Because we apparently have a food addiction and find friends who suffer from the same ailment, we ended our night with late night eats at La Esquina.

The Weekend

Pin It now! How was your weekend?  We watched our neighbor's dog for the weekend and this adorable cutie was the perfect house guest.  He's so easy going and it was fun to play doggie parents for a few days.  His tongue doesn't seem to ever fit in his mouth and is always stick out a bit. 

June also came to visit on Saturday and we did a food tour at the Smorgasburg.  I love my friends because they love to eat.  We made our way to the Lumpia Shack, Piggies in a Blanket, brisket at Mighty Quinn and of course donuts at Dough.  The weather held out a bit for us to lounge out by the pool and the we met up with some others for dinner at the Roebling Tea House.  It was our first time at the Tea House and it was fabulous.  I've heard about it from others and have read the reviews, but was absolutely surprised by how delicious the food was.  The menu changes all the time so we had to order most of the appetizers on the menu.  I could have had a meal with just their appetizers - don't you love to do that?  I could have also had ten of their strawberry rhubarb crumbles - delicious.  We walked home and caught the end of the first of three Williamsburg Walks.  10 blocks of Bedford Ave were closed to make the neighborhood car-free for a few hours.  It was so nice to walk through the streets at night, be able to sit on the grass they laid out, listen to a crazy hillbilly band, and we found an old-school candy store - Handsome Dan's - inside the Williamsburg Mini Mall.  Charlie and Jason went crazy with the button candy, wax bottle candies and candy cigarettes.  The store even had Razzles!

The Weekend

Pin It now! I'm still in the honeymoon phase of my Instagram crush.  I'm still wondering whether it's worth the $1B, but someone said it was about the user base.  I don't know what that means.  I just know that someone paid $1B for a company that makes my cellphone pictures look like the ones my parents were taking the year I was born...and I like it.  So this weekend, I ran my first 5K of the season with Alysse and Matt in Prospect Park.  There were a lot less runners for this race than the Lincoln Tunnel 5K I did last year and it was just one loop around the park, so there weren't markers indicating how far we had run and the race seemed to go a lot faster than expected.  By the time I thought I needed a break, we were done!  I hardly head out to Prospect Park or Park Slope so it was nice to walk around the neighborhood after the race.  We were loving the brownstones and the quietness of the neighborhood.  That night, Michael and I made our way to Best Pizza.  Anything that says it's the best better be good (and always reminds me of the scene in Elf when Buddy finds the World's Best Cup of Coffee..."You did it! Congratulations! Great job everybody!...")  It wasn't the BEST pizza but it was pretty close.  Their meatball sub is to die for and we couldn't go wrong by adding bacon and caramelized onions to the pizza.  For the rest of the weekend, I purged more clothes from the closet and storage, had my first Dough donut of the season (my favorite) and we went to Long Island for a wedding.  I'll post more photos of the wedding soon, but in the meantime, here's the weekend Instagram-style.

Any Given Sunday

Pin It now! Michael and I took advantage of the beautiful spring weather to walk around the neighborhood.  It was really crowded near the Brooklyn Flea so we headed north and east and just wandered around.  We had brunch at Fada, an adorable French Bistro, and had the most delicious asparagus, fennel and gorgonzola quiche.  It was light and cream and the portion was perfect.  We were able to snag a table by the front and people-watched as we ate.  Lots of people out with their dogs.  Lots of pugs and French bulldogs.  We also wandered into a warehouse with second-hand goods.  For some reason we found a lot of things that were good for vampire-hunting: long railroad nails, some wooden tool that looked like a giant fruit juicer, and old rusty hammers.  Yes, it's scary that both of our first reactions were to hunt vampires, but being prepared might be useful one day.

We headed towards home and hubby dropped me off at the Brooklyn Flea.  Although the Flea opened up in Williamsburg a few weeks ago, I finally made it there today.  There were a lot of fun items, but it was way too crowded.  I didn't do my research on who was there today so I was just wandering around aimlessly snapping pictures without being productive on who was actually there and what they were selling.  I got yelled at by one vendor who said I should have asked before photographing (oops!) so I thought it best to take that as my exit signal.  I'll stop by again in a few weeks with more direction and try some of the food stalls (by the way, Smorgasburg opens May 21).  Today though, here are some random pictures (sorry, I can't attribute which vendors these are from).

I'm not sure what wore me out today (too much quiche!), but I closed my eyes for what was supposed to be a 30 minute nap and didn't get off the couch for 3 hours! I vaguely remember Michael saying he was cleaning the bathroom and the Angry Birds music playing in the background. I didn't even feel tired, but I guess my body thought otherwise. I'm sure I won't be able to sleep tonight. How was your weekend?

The Weekend

Pin It now! Busy weekend, and on top of that, the boiler in our building is broken so we haven't had hot water for the entire weekend.  Getting used to cold showers is not my idea of fun.  Anyway, my cousin was one of the leads in his high school musical Godspell and my sister and I headed up to the Upper West Side to see him perform on Friday night.  I didn't even know this kid could sing!  He was fantastic.  I babysat this kid when he was little and now he's on staging performing - yes, it makes me feel old(er).

On Saturday, the French invited me to a friend's art studio opening in Williamsburg.  J has a couple of Stefano Di Cicco's paintings in her own apartment, and she said that this collection was a lot more aggressive than his previous pieces. 

After the opening, the highlight of the night was heading over to Dram for drinks.  I had read about this place a while ago and was really excited to get drinks there.  It definitely didn't disappoint.  The drinks were delicious.  I'm not a drinker especially with harder alcohol, but I could have had ten of their Viceroy Daisies (gin, pineapple and orange juice, vermouth...).  Don't worry I didn't - I just had one.  Their chorizo tortilla was also delicious - perfectly seasoned and lots of pieces of chorizo.  We were impressed by the wood paneling in the entire place, including the ceilings.  It looked a like a cross between a speakeasy and Swedish sauna.  Who wants to join me there again this week?

Photo by Jackie Neale Chadwick via jackiephoto.com