Tourism and a NYE Wedding in Washington DC

Happy New Year, you lovable bunch of SOBs! I hope your 2014 ended on a positive note and that your 2015 is already making last year look like a chump.

The past couple weeks have been mostly spent away from my computer, which has been both a nice change of pace and a much-needed break for my neck/shoulder. I left the Boston area on Saturday December 20th to head to Pittsfield for my nephew and niece's birthday party, and I stayed there through Christmas (which was lovely!) and then drove south to Connecticut for a UMass friend's wedding on Saturday Dec 27th. (Congrats Luke and Dani!!!!)

On the 28th, I drove back up to Boston, relaxed for a day, and then flew out on the morning of the 30th to head down to Washington, DC for the New Year's Eve wedding of another UMass friend, Rabbi. (His name is actually Eric, but no one calls him that, and I'm sure not going to start now.)

I arrived in DC late morning on the 30th with my friends Derek and Jrod, and we made our way via cab to our hotel - the brand new Marriott Marquis in downtown DC. The hotel was enormous, and our block of friends was more or less scattered around the 9th floor, with a few exceptions. After settling in and meeting up with a few other friends, a handful of us headed out into the blue and crisp afternoon to find some food. We wandered the streets for a little while before heading into The Laughing Man, where my Buffalo Chicken Wrap did the trick to quell my growing hangriness.

Properly fed, we headed back out into the sun to be tourists in our nation's capital. Confession time:  This was my first trip to DC, and I was absolutely oblivious to the fact that all of the touristy national sites were SO accessible from downtown. For some reason I had it in my head that they must be more on the outskirts of things. I was way off. We spent the rest of that first afternoon in DC walking allllll over the place, checking out all of these thaaangs:

- The White House
- Eisenhower Executive Office Building (which I found much more impressive than the White House itself)
- Washington Monument
- World War II Memorial
- the reflecting pool
- Lincoln Memorial
- Korean War Veterans Memorial (larger-than-life statues of soldiers frozen in action as they make their way across a garden - a scene with a lot of impact)
- Martin Luther King Jr Memorial
- We saw the Thomas Jefferson Memorial from across the water

.  ye olde white house  .

.  eisenhower executive office building  .

.  the lincoln memorial  .

.  featuring ya boy, abe  .

.  reflecting pool and washington monument  .

.  successful selfie at the lincoln memorial  .
.  note to self:  zoom out, then snap  .

.  martin luther king, jr memorial  .

.  thomas jefferson memorial  .

.  the washington monument  .

That night a large group of us went to City Tap House - a restaurant just a couple of blocks from our hotel that featured a great atmosphere, delicious food, and fabulous dinner service. I ordered a kale salad that was decked out with dried figs, pomegranate seeds, toasted pecans, grana padano and maple-pecan vinaigrette, and my friends nommed on mussels, pizzas, chicken & waffles, and more.

We spent the rest of the night at The Dignitary - one of the multiple bars located within the hotel itself - with a ton of others who were staying at the hotel that night (mostly the wedding party and their significant others, with a mix of random friends).

The next morning we gathered up a crew and headed out again to find breakfast food, finally landing at a place that had no breakfast menu... but they did have desserts. So... peach cobbler for breakfast, it is. Then it was off to the National Museum of Natural History, where we saw exhibits on the deep ocean, dinosaurs, insects, gem stones, and the Hope diamond. We saw some big ass insects and some other creepy things, and had this terrifying experience with a tyrannosaurus rex:

.  derek, me, scotty, jrod  .
.  it was a close call  .

Some of my favorite parts of the museum that day were the many stunning photographs of animals and the natural world. There were even a few pictures of Oregon and Washington that had me longing for the Pacific Northwest. And clearly I couldn't resist this charming fellow:

.  dose lips doe  .
.  magical moment captured by derek  .

That night was New Year's Eve wedding time! I got dolled up in a new blue dress that I'd just purchased a couple of days prior from Kohl's and wore it with dangly chain rhinestone earrings, black nylons, black closed-toe booties, a bright magenta lip and a straightened ponytail. Here's the only photo that I have of myself from that night. Naturally, it's blurry:

.  with my fwiends kara and dan  .

Rabbi and Brooke's wedding was being held at Right Proper Brewery - a spot chosen because of the bride and groom's fondness for the place. It was a really cool venue for a wedding - laid back, spacious, perfectly set up to serve drinks and appetizers to lots of people, and adorned with interesting artwork on the walls.

After a nice ceremony that culminated with the smashing of a glass and an enthusiastic "Mazel Tov!" we nibbled on apps, drank, and enjoyed dinner before turning up the music and dancing the rest of the night. Leading up to midnight, they turned on a video feed of the Times Square ball drop, and we all participated in a countdown before exchanging tons of smooches and lighting sparklers.

(I'll skip the part about me getting sick that night after the wedding. I recovered just fine, and that's the important part.)

The next morning a group of us went back to the City Tap House for a very long New Years Day brunch that actually ended up being the perfect way to end the trip. Then, with full bellies and most of us still in one piece, we exchanged goodbyes, killed the perfect amount of time in the hotel lobby, and headed to the airport to trot trot back to Boston!

Turns out that a New Years Eve wedding in Washington, DC is a right proper way to ring in the New Year. Surrounded by friends who make fabulous tourism companions by day and who all want to give you hugs and smooches at midnight... not too bad, Bail. Not too bad.

I hope you had a fun and safe New Years Eve doing whatever it is that makes you smile when the clock strikes twelve! Sleeping? High-fiving? Sparkling? Twerking? Get it.

Happy New Year!

FACEBOOK TWITTER PINTEREST INSTAGRAM BLOGLOVIN

My Lace and Burlap Inspired Gift Wrapping

Hellllllo and a very Merry post-Christmas to you all! This past week I have been in Pittsfield visiting with my family, and today I am off to a wedding in Connecticut for my friends Luke and Dani. Finding myself with a bit of free time, I thought I'd check in quickly to show off you how I ended up wrapping all of my Christmas gifts this year.

As evidenced in my Holiday Gift Wrapping Ideas post, I was really digging the idea of using lace, string, or burlap embellishments on plain white and brown wrapping papers. And, by golly, I did just that.

Materials used:

• brown wrapping paper
• white wrapping paper
• 2 different types of lace ribbon
• 2 different types of burlap ribbon
• small plastic pearl garland
• hemp twine
• hot glue gun
• tape
• scissors

After wrapping up all of the presents in either brown paper or white paper (or in some cases, both!), I went to town embellishing each differently with all of my accessories. No two are alike... check them out!

I am pretty thrilled with the way these all turned out, considering how often things can go terribly wrong when one is using Pinterest for inspiration. As my friend Derek pointed out, this was all more of an arts and crafts project than a "gift wrap" really haha. As such, I knew that the presents - all paper sealed with tape and all "accessories" secured with hot glue - would not be easy to get into. A small price to pay for all of their aesthetically pleasing outer qualities. I just made sure to pass out scissors to my family so that they could cut through all the lace/ribbon/pearls/burlap and actually get to their presents.

Did you wrap your presents in anything special this year?
What did Santa bring you?

FACEBOOK TWITTER PINTEREST INSTAGRAM BLOGLOVIN

Festive Nails (that I Should Have Posted Last Week)

Heyoooo! This week has been chock-full of me doing Christmas prep in the form of buying and wrapping presents, so I didn't have a ton of time to work on nails. The gift-wrapping that I did has me feeling PRETTY self-satisfied, so it will be super exciting me for me to eventually share that here on my blog with lots of pictures... but in the meantime, here is a re-do of the Christmassy nails I did last week but was unable to photograph at the time.

I used my Revlon Parfumerie polish in the color Balsam Fir and a Maybelline Color Show polish in the color Gilded Rose. All of my fingers besides my ring finger got 2 coats of Balsam Fir, while my ring finger got 3 coats of Gilded Rose. I also topped my middle finger with one coat of Gilded Rose for some extra bling.

Aside from gift-wrapping, this has been a busy week! On Monday evening I had physical therapy followed by a dinner date at Sei Bar with my friend Stephanie and her friend Cris. On Wednesday I spent the evening volunteering at a local food pantry, and last night I had physical therapy followed by a holiday event at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Tonight my friend Kara and I are taking a *romantic* stroll through Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood to look at Christmas decorations. Beacon Hill is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Boston, and the old buildings and cobblestone streets make for a really magical Christmas stroll, so it's been on my list of December must-do's. Thank god Kara agreed to do it with me haha - otherwise it might have been the prettiest, loneliest walk of my year! I'll take pictures of the decorations, and if they come out well I'll post them in a blog.

I hope your week has been going well!
What are your plans for the weekend?
What are you rocking on your nails today?

FACEBOOK TWITTER PINTEREST INSTAGRAM BLOGLOVIN   {Linking with The Nail Files and Friday's Fab Favorites}

Craft Club #3: Making Holiday Cards

Craft Club marches on! On Saturday, December 6, my friend Stephanie had a turn hosting our monthly club of creativity, and we nourished both our craftiness and our bellies by designing holiday cards while eating pizza.

The Friday before last (December 5), I went down to Steph's Canton condo for a pre-Craft-Club sleepover. We were supposed to watch the first two Home Alone movies, as I had stopped at Target earlier that day and was de-freaking-lighted to find that they were being sold together in a combo pack for only $19.99! However, we discovered in the twelfth hour that the box set I'd purchased was in fact full of Blu-Ray discs, and not DVDs at all. #Impostors. This terrible realization led to much fist-wagging and cursing of the inventor of Blu-Rays. So, confronted with that fail, we just colored in my brand new coloring books (also purchased at Target that afternoon) and watched The Roommate on TV till bedtime. The Roommate, by the way, is a movie so bad that you can't really turn away. We watched the entire thing.

The next morning I ran across the street to get us some Dunkin Donuts coffees, which we sipped while waiting for our Craft Club companions (Lauren and Anna) to join us. Steph prepped her living room by covering the floor with a big white sheet to protect the rug from the glitter bomb that was about to go off. And boy did it.

Once everyone had arrived, we spread out on the sheet, surrounded by all of the supplies that Steph and Anna had bought:

• blank white and off-white cards/envelopes
• tons of embossing glitter and accompanying clear rubber stamp pad
• heat gun for embossing
• sparkly paper in christmassy colors
• scissors
• glue sticks
• stickers
• rubber stamps
• Sharpies in tons of colors

Steph turned on some Christmas music and showed us how to use the embossing materials, and we all got started on our cards. I felt like each of mine took a really long time to conceptualize before I actually began making each one. But whatever - not like we were in a rush. There's no rushing in crafting.

Check out the below pair of owls haha! The one on the left was an example card that Steph had made before we arrived, using embossing glitter on both an owl stamp and a Merry Christmas stamp. The one on the right was Anna's first attempt at using the owl stamp, and since the owl looked so drunk we suggested she hashtag it #eggnog.

I'd never embossed anything before, and though the glitter was very messy, the end result was really cool. I ended up making four cards...

My first card was made with embossing glitter, a Merry Christmas stamp, and red, green, and white glittery paper:

My second card featured a strand of Christmas lights around the perimeter, with Merry Christmas stamped in the center. I drew the black cord with a Sharpie, but each gold light socket and each colorful bulb is individually embossed. Here's a little step-by-step:

The third card I made was the classiest, I think. Using gold glitter, I embossed the snowflake stamps, and cut out lots of different sized circles from some white and gold glitter paper. The end result was trimmed down so that the circles weren't overhanging, but I forgot to snap a picture of that! 

My last card was my least favorite, but the other girls said it was their favorite that I made! I tried to split the Merry Christmas stamp into two different words, but as you can kind of see each stamp left some trace remnants of the other word in it. Mreh. The gold, silver, and red were each individually embossed. 

Here's a snowflake card that Steph was working on:

And of course we can't forget about the other important aspect of Craft Club... the food and drink! Here's what we enjoyed that day for vittles:

• pizza
• holiday brownie bites
• red velvet cookies
• popcorn
• wine
• prosecco/cranberry juice mimosas

Steph's boyfriend Gerry had asked us the night before how long we'd be crafting that day, and my response was that the first rule of Craft Club is that there's no "end time" to Craft Club. With that no-limit attitude in mind, we probably spent about 5 hours playing around with our card project that afternoon. Craft Club is seriously the best.

On an unrelated note (you know how much I like my notes to be unrelated), I neglected to post a nail polish blog last week - but it wasn't because I hadn't done my nails. On the contrary, my nails looked awesome and holiday chic, but an unexpected work project found me using my hands extensively to pack up an entire office worth of documents, and my nails were destroyed in the process. My hands and fingers were even covered in paper cuts, so my digits were altogether unphotographable. Apologies. I hope it didn't ruin your week. It certainly didn't ruin mine.

And to bring it back to a related note... you can read about our other Craft Clubs here. :)

Do you send out holiday cards? I don't normally, but this sure gives me a good reason to.

FACEBOOK TWITTER PINTEREST INSTAGRAM BLOGLOVIN   {Linking with Craft Frenzy Friday}

2 Ways to Style an NFL Jersey

Earlier this week, I was invited to participate in a style challenge with Fanatics.com, a retailer specializing in sports apparel. The challenge was to choose an NFL jersey from their site and build a stylish outfit board based around that jersey. Fortunately for Fanatics' social media coordinator, she reached out to me right on the heels of a Patriots win, so the idea of creating a style board based around one of their jerseys sounded DAMN GOOD to me! Hooray for style and football in one fell swoop!

The challenge was to create one outfit, but my excitement may have accidentally overflowed into two different game-day outfits: one for watching at a friend's house (or AT the actual game, if that's how you roll!), and one for staying in, being cozy, and watching from home on a chilly December day.

After browsing around their selection of NFL jerseys (read: navigating straight to the Patriots section), I decided to base my outfits around the women's style jersey of Mr. Rob Gronkowski. It was pretty difficult to choose a player, so Gronk was chosen more or less because he just had a great game on Sunday night against the Chargers. Also because going with Tom Brady seemed too cliché, handsome and talented though he may be. Sigh. #DatSmileDoe.

Below are my two looks, and if you love any of these items, I've included links to where you can buy them (not affiliate links, just REGULAR LINKS).

LOOK 1 - Watching at a friend's house, looking all fly 'n shit:

 chunky cardigan / Gronkowski jersey / red cable knit hat / brown slouchy bag

Spike charm necklace / beige booties / Rockstar jeans / sapphire stud earrings

LOOK 2 - Watching at your own crib, lookin' all cozy, not givin' a whaaaaaaaaaaat:

Uggz Coquette slippers / fleece-lined hoodie / red, white & blue top coat / cozy socks

oversized white tank / ruby red stud earrings / Gronkowski jersey / wide leg jersey pants

I obviously chose these jerseys because I'm a Pats fan, but which jersey would you choose? Do you root for a team? Did you choose your team by location, random family loyalty, color scheme? Let me know in the comments below!

FACEBOOK TWITTER PINTEREST INSTAGRAM BLOGLOVIN