Determined

The current state of our dining room table. Eating is overrated, right?! If you can't tell, I've got a one track mind these days; to finish decorating our home.

If you haven't seen the new Golden Days collection at Target go check it out. Lots of aqua, gold and blush pink home goodies.

Weekend Recap

We took full advantage of the holiday weekend with a a jam packed schedule full of fun. And I even managed to sleep in until noon on Saturday.

Friday night we met our old, and favorite, neighbors and their babe Luc at Cava for dinner. They’re expecting TWINS in June which we are SO excited about. We noshed on our favorite Greek foods of zucchini fritters, FRIED cheese, tzatziki, lamb chops, scallops risotto and grilled octopus. Yum! Hubs and I are late dinner eaters so we didn’t know what to do with ourselves when we were home by 8. We usually haven’t eaten by then. So we watched Moneyball. I’m not a sports girl but it was a great movie and perfect to watch with your beau.

Saturday we went furniture shopping. Again. But this time we finally found chairs for our living room and got them ordered – success! I can’t wait until they arrive in 4 weeks. We then rushed into DC for the Sixers/Wizards game. Hubs is from Philly and is a diehard sports fan. His cousin’s husband works for the Sixers and was able to get us tickets to the game. Without being completely contradictory to my statement above, can I just say how much fun basketball games are? There’s always a contest, free t-shirts or Chipotle being tossed to fans during the timeouts. SO much better than NFL games. It was an added bonus that the Sixers won and we scored free Chik-fil-a.

Sunday afternoon we went with a group of friends to a 1k Wine Walk. It was SO much fun, a must if you’re a wino like me. The walk was a 1k course, complete with a start and finish line, through an indoor mall with 10 wine stations scattered along the way. We even got bibs like it was a real deal race, without the running! The wines varied from local VA wines to wines from South Africa, CA, Italy, etc. We tasted over 20 wines so by the end everyone was a bit crazy. I will most definitely be on the lookout for more wine walks, if you’re in the DC Metro area be on the lookout for this event next year.

Monday night we had friends over for a little impromptu dinner that was planned towards the end of the wine walk, ha! Hubs grilled filet mignon, which was delicious. While dinner was grilling we munched on oysters on the half shell and bacon wrapped scallops. It was such a fun night with good food and friends and it was fun to host our first dinner in our new home.

Did anyone else have a fun-filled weekend?! I’m looking forward to a short work week!

Deal Alert

If you live you in Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church or any other DC neighborhood make sure you check out today's Living Social deal. It's for my favorite wine & cheese store, Arrowine, and this little mouse just bought 3!


http://share.livingsocial.com/deals/229166?ref=iphone-conf-jp&rui=2343757

Happy Wednesday!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Month of Organization: Planners

Ahh January, the month of organization. I'm busy getting our house back on the straight and narrow, purging clutter and getting back to some normalcy of life. The Fall threw us some unexpected curve balls and a few big changes including a move, a new business venture for my husband and way too many holiday events to even think straight. The craziness, good and bad, had us eating out 4 to 5 nights/week, laundry accumulations the size of a small country and general organization being non-existent. So I'm more than excited to welcome in not only a new year but also a much more lax month that will allow me to catch up, get back to being organized and even give me time to do some things I enjoy like cooking, baking and craftiness.

With that being said, I've been on a cleaning, organizing and reorganizing spree since we took our tree and Christmas decor down this weekend. Can I just say that with a yummy Starbucks drink all things are possible!

Anywho, the time came to fully transition from my old planner to the new one. No more using both depending on the need. This got me thinking, what should I do with the old planner? Planners contain a lot of personal info and even personal info about others; friends, family, careers. This means addresses, email addresses, and sometimes even medical info. So should I just throw it out? Rip the pages out and shred them?

So I'm curious, what do y'all do with your outdated planners?

And for a quick update: I transitioned from the My Agenda Planner I've been accustomed to for the past 5 years or so to the much hyped and coveted Erin Condren Life Planner for 2012. If you follow me on Twitter you know I was quite skeptical and even critical when it first arrived. But after using it for a couple months, I got mine in November, I will eat my words and admit that I was wrong in my first impressions and I do love it now! I'm pretty sure that this loyal My Agenda girl has been converted and will not be returning to My Agenda anytime soon -- unless of course they add the Ziploc-like folder to their agendas!

Hello 2012!

Happy New Year! Our Christmas/trip to Colorado was quite eventful, which I'll recap later this week, but for now I want to get my 2012 goals down before 1. I forget them and 2. so I can hold myself accountable.


But first, a quick recap of our New Years -- I don't think I've ever been so excited to welcome in a fresh start and a new year.  We had a great, low-key night welcoming in 2012. This was the first New Years in two years that we weren't traveling and were at home (2010 - Wintergreen, 2011 - beloved Nashville). We enjoyed a romantic night, just the two of us, that started with a delicious dinner at a favorite, neighborhood restaurant, Circa. I chowed down on the new years special, surf and turf and the hubs chose salmon. We splurged and ordered the most amazing dessert, key lime creme brûlée. It.was.to.die.for. Totally worth every last calorie! Since our wedding cake was key lime flavored we're partial to anything key lime. And hubs' favorite dessert is creme brûlée so this was a double whammy of goodness.


I digress. After dinner we grabbed after dinner drinks before heading home with about an hour to spare. We flipped back and forth between Carson Daly's new years celebration and the country music new years special, which was awful! Earlier in the day we hit up one of our favorite local wine store for some cheese and charcuterie to snack on while waiting for the ball to drop and enjoying the last bottle of our favorite wine.

The night ended in a dance party and hashing out our resolutions as a couple before calling it a night around 2:30 and sleeping for 14 hours!  Yes, 14 hours!

Okay, goals.
1. Continue working out and eating clean/healthy.  Hubs and I have done pretty good with working out 4-5 times a week.  The struggle I have is when life gets busy, the gym is the first thing that gets dropped from my schedule.  I hope to find the balance and make time, regardless of how busy I am, to work out.
2. Finally sit down and put together our home management notebook.  I bought this cute binder this past summer and have yet to do anything with it.

3. Make a list and pull coupons before going to the grocery store.  I am a chronic grocery shopper.  I make lists, off the top of my head, but my lack/failure to plan meals results in visiting HT and T. Joe's multiple times a week to pick up the forgotten items. Such a time suck.  I also fail to grab coupons for my shopping trip, when I'm in a hurry, even though they're already clipped!
4. Buying lunch no more than once a week while in the office.  This should be fail-proof since I telecommute two days/week and am only in the office 3 days.  We did pretty good with this the first half of 2010 but then lack of planning/laziness resulted in many bought lunches.
5. Get back to blogging regularly.
6. Remember the resusable totes for grocery shopping!  Again, something I did for half of 2010 but failed to make a habit. I'm guilty of bringing groceries home in reusable bags but then for some reason the bags never make it back to my car for the next trip!
7. Get back to sending my grandmother a weekly card or note.  I love getting mail and sending mail/cards/notes and I get at least one card or letter from her each week -- which I love reading.  I know she is equally excited when she receives my notes/letters and this year I slacked on this, bad.
8. Volunteer more.  Since 2006, I've volunteered a lot with St. Jude. It's definitely a charity that is near and dear to my heart.  I hope to continue giving back to St. Jude and find one or two other organizations to get involved with this year.   

Favorite goal for us as a couple: make dinner together one night each week. The recipe has to be a new recipe that we've never made.   This is two-fold since it will allow us to spend quality time together and will mean saving money by not dining out.

Here's to an amazing 2012!