In New Yorrrrrrk, concrete jungle where dreams are made of

Mags and I flew to NYC to visit Brie and have our annual weekend of fun this weekend. It was so great to see these girls and we had a blast! We got in Friday evening and headed downtown to meet up with our friend Jess from college who happened to be in New York for work (yes, the same Jess that lives 3 miles from me in Chicago)! We went to Arturo's, this amazing, crowded, family-run Italian restaurant known for their coal-oven pizza.

Saturday we spent the day roaming all over the city. We started by grabbing brunch at Rue 57, a charming restaurant near Central Park. Everything was delicious and the Bloody Marys were as spicy as they were strong! We walked past Radio City but we didn't see any NFL prospects.

Time Square was bustling, as usual, complete with entirely too many people and Elmo. We thought about catching a show, but there wasn't anything playing that we were too excited about, so we just kept moving.

We checked out the green market in Union Square, where Mags contemplated buying some Ostrich eggs (not really). It was such a beautiful day! 

We made our way to the meat packing district and walked along the High Line, an old abandoned railroad track that was turned into a beautiful garden walkway, a nice "escape" in the middle of the concrete jungle.

From there we headed to SoHo, walked past trendy hot spots including Dash and Baked by Melissa (both places are a ripoff IMO and we had no desire to check them out), saw the hostess from Top Chef (I, of course, had no idea who she was but Maggie recognized her by her voice), and finally ended up in the Broome Street Bar taking a break from the crowds.

We walked around a little more (and narrowly escaped getting run over by a bus full of rowdy Rangers fans at Madison Square Garden) before heading back to Queens to relax with manis/pedis in Brie's favorite nail salon. And this is where Mags provided entertainment for the ENTIRE salon when she admitted she hadn't had a pedicure since my wedding (almost SIX years ago)!! I LOVE the color I picked out for my nails. I never paint my fingernails because I am constantly washing my hands at work and I feel like it never lasts, but I couldn't resist.  Also I love that the name of the color was "Chicago Champagne Toast."

Since the entire population of Astoria (where Brie lives) is Greek, we opted for Greek food for dinner at this delicious restaurant named Ovelia. The fried feta was amazing (as was the Sangria) so we got a little carried away devouring it before we thought to take a picture of the last piece! 

Sunday we grabbed some bagels (with the most cream cheese options I've ever seen) and coffee from Brooklyn Coffee & Bagel Co before heading to the airport. We had an amazing weekend catching up, reminiscing, supporting each other, and bonding over the fact that we are old and refer to ourselves often as Grandmas :)  My how things have changed from our college days 10 years ago!!  I can't wait until our next reunion!

Gardening Opening Day

Somehow I managed to keep my basil plant alive inside since last summer. We transplanted it outside last weekend, but I'm a little nervous that it's been too cold this past week. Hopefully it will make it.
To keep with tradition, Tom's friend Ben sent him various pepper seeds again this year (and threw in a few good ones for me too)! Thanks Ben! I tried planting tomato seeds a few weeks ago, but I think I was too eager and watered them too much because they would sprout and then die :( Round 2 is doing much better.
Here is basil plant, Tom's pepper plants, and my tomatoes (left and center cups) and oregano (right cup).

I still need to plant cilantro and I'm thinking about planting some Rosemary too. Hopefully everything will continue go grow!!

DIY Project Update

I've had a couple of things on my DIY Project list for quite some time and managed to finally take care of them over the past few weekends. First, we had this ugly shelf thing that we used as Tom's bedside table for the longest time. When we finally purchased bedroom furniture last year, the ugly shelf went into the outdoor storage area and sat there until I decided to paint it. I still had some brown paint leftover from when I painted our table in our "sitting area" in the living room. And I bought some cute baskets at Target that fit perfect on the shelves. I'm not really sure what we're going to use this for or where we're going to put it, but I really like the finished product!

Our outside table was past due for a repeat staining and sealing. The last time I stained it was in 2009 and it's seen a lot of elements since then! A little work on a Sunday afternoon and voila! Good as new! I wish I had before pictures for this table and for the shelves so you could see the dramatic difference!

I made my 2nd (and final, for now) homemade wreath. I made one last fall - and I love it, but this one was a little less time consuming and a little cheaper too. I had heard rumors that the Dollar Tree had some good fake flowers/berries from time to time, so every so often I would check it out. I was so excited to finally find GREEN berries that I bought all of them. I made the whole wreath for under $10 :D

And last but not least, I had a little Freezer Cooking session this morning. Okay, so this isn't exactly DIY, but it did involve me "doing stuff myself" and I don't feel like it needs it's own post ;) I made four recipes out of Once A Month Cooking: Family Favorites and four recipes (so EIGHT pizza crusts) of Pioneer Woman's pizza dough! I also cooked and chopped some chicken for some casseroles, but I got a little burnt out and didn't actually make the casseroles. Although prepared chicken will certainly cut down on the prep time!

I can't believe my writing career never took off...

Happy week

This was a good week. Life in general has been a little off lately, so it's so lovely when I have a really good week :)

It all started last Saturday when my cousin Laurel came into the city for the day. She is thinking about moving here, so we spent the day checking out different neighborhoods, doing a little shopping, catching up, and eating and drinking some good wine. We went off of a friend's recommendation for lunch, and checked out Nohea Cafe in Roscoe Village. The sandwiches were good, but there were too many undisciplined kids running around the joint for my taste (which is pretty typical of the neighborhood). For dinner we decided to take advantage of a Groupon Now deal at a sushi place (Umi) that is walkable from our apartment. I wasn't sure what to expect but it ended up being amazing! The restaurant was really cute, the waitress we had was even cuter (I wanted to keep her in my pocket!), and the sushi was amazing!

In other good news my new schedule got approved, so I'll be spreading 6 extra hours over two weeks and having every other Friday off. I'm on a "trial period" of the schedule for 3 months beginning mid-May, and as long as my productiivity stays high (which I will guarantee it will) then I'll be able to keep my schedule. Although I kind of have a feeling that once I get a taste of having a few Fridays off a month, I'm going to want to cram in the extra hours and have every Friday off. We shall see. Thankfully my work is pretty flexible and I'm so glad I have the freedom to play around with my schedule.

In other exciting news I finally get to hang out with Tom this weekend! AACR (a major cancer conference) was this past week in Chicago so Tom was gone 12+ hours every day of the conference. It was so wonderful that he didn't have to travel out of town but I really didn't get to see him much! So I imagine our weekend should look something like this........

Spring is in the Air!

I have been LOVING my lunchtime walks! Here are a few more pics from my latest walk. When I don't have enough time to walk to the lake, I take a couple of laps around the pond and the nature conservatory. Enjoy!