Fall

Late S’mores and Fall Day Date

October 1, 2018 by Alicia 1 Comment

This weekend was a balance of work and play. Friday was a late night at the office with month end, but I came home and had delicious chicken wings that Brian bought and enjoyed watching tv with Brian. I somehow was awake until nearly 11pm and I don’t know how when I got up at 4:40am to go to the gym and had such a long day.

Saturday was a nice sleep in morning. I slept until 8 or so. I then made a quick breakfast before getting to work on some homework. Once Brian got up, we headed out to run some errands. I had to make a stop at the post office, bank and grocery store. The morning flew by and we had an early lunch when we got home from the store.

Brian headed out for the afternoon and I enjoyed a quiet house where I could finally work on writing a paper. Then for dinner, I decided to make us spaghetti squash bowls. I have always wanted to try them, but it’s a perfect recipe for two and I am usually cooking for one. Saturday night was the perfect time to try out the recipe. After carefully cutting the spaghetti squash in half (usually I prefer to stick the whole thing in the oven as it’s easier to cut after being cooked), I scraped out the seeds and put it in the oven per the recipe for 45 minutes. While that was cooking, I cooked up onion, garlic and ground turkey in a pan with some seasonings. Once the meat was fully cooked, I let it simmer in some chicken broth and added a few tomato slices.

I pulled out the spaghetti squash and scooped out the squash strands to add to the meat mixture for a bit. I then filled up my squash bowls and added a sprinkle of cheese on the top and put back in the oven for 5 minutes.

Overall verdict, the recipe was good, but the squash could have been cooked a bit longer and the ground turkey needed more flavor. I didn’t have the diced tomatoes the recipe called for, so that could have helped. Anyway, Brian seemed fairly hungry and happily ate it, so I call it a success. It was also super filling.

To end the evening, Brian built a fire outside and we had some s’mores. Even if we are a week into Fall, we never had our summer s’mores, so this was a fun night. The evening was beautiful and the fire and breezy air kept the bugs away.

Sunday was another sleep in morning. Amazingly I slept until 8am again. It was a bit of a rough night sleep with Brian suddenly snoring and stuffy. Honestly I was super tired on Sunday for most of the day, but that didn’t stop the fun.

After making a delicious pancake breakfast, I did some food prep and then Brian and I headed out for most of the day.

pancakes 1 — pancakes with cookie butter and banana and syrup YUM

We decided to go to Ithaca and they had an apple festival going on. We walked around for a bit and then went to Moosewood Restaurant, a nice vegan and vegetarian restaurant. They were serving brunch and since I already had pancakes for breakfast, I opted for a Thai rice bowl. To get a little fancy, I had a sparkling lemonade, which was so delicious as it was freshly made.

After eating, we headed back to the car and stopped at the Ithaca farmers market. It was a nice looking farmers market with so much produce available. I couldn’t pass up the kale. We also enjoy a mile walk or so along the lake front.

Next up we stopped at Hopshire Farm and Brewery. We had found this place last year on a drive and I remembered tasting a beer that was semi ok to me LOL. I don’t really drink beer, but they have a honey Beehave beer and it’s not terrible. I can pretty much only drink a sample. Brian enjoyed a pint of beer and we sat and talked for a bit before driving to Hollenbeck’s Cider Mill for some apples. We had planned to get donuts but they only had plain, no apple cider ones, so we just got chocolate and apples. Brian plans to get cider to make his own hard cider as well.

As we were heading back, we stopped at Brian’s family friend’s house to chat for a bit before heading home. It was a beautiful day, minus some rain in the morning, but it was a nice drive on the back roads with the stops. When we got back, I roasted tons of veggies for the week and Brian cooked sausage patties on the smoker for dinner. We then decided to end the night watching a movie, What if, which was a nice movie for a Sunday night.

It was a pretty laid back weekend and I didn’t even go to the gym, but I did get 10,000 steps on Sunday with all the walking around.

Pumpkin Carving Party Weekend

October 23, 2017 by Alicia 5 Comments

With the cold weather that came last Monday, I thought we would really be heading into Fall. I was pleasantly surprised though when the weather predicted for this weekend was in the 70s. The mornings were still a chilly 40 degrees, but by the afternoon, it was at least 70 and nice and sunny. It was the perfect weather (in my opinion) for carving pumpkins outdoors. We didn’t have that brisk Fall like temperature, but I liked that my hands were warm while scooping out pumpkin guts.

Friday evening, I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t sleep the greatest. I was hungry because I didn’t have a snack after yoga and my mind apparently was just racing with thoughts leading me to toss and turn. I couldn’t wait to make breakfast Saturday morning. I was slightly disappointed though because I ran out of bacon earlier in the week, so breakfast was just 2 eggs and a couple oatmeal breakfast cookies. I also drank tons of water. I could tell I was dehydrated as I drank water through the night and also easily drank 2 bottles in the morning within an hour of waking. Thankfully I was up plenty early when I consumed all this water because around 9am I left for a 2 hour drive that doesn’t have easy bathroom breaks.

I drove up to Penn Yan where one of my college roommates lives. Each year she has a pumpkin carving party and has a HUGE display of pumpkins in her front yard. I was excited that this year, I only live 2 hours from her and I was able to make it. Sadly Brian got called back to work so he missed out.

With the warmer weather, it was perfect to be outside, the only downside was that the bees liked the fresh cut pumpkins a lot too. We had a great wooden spoon that worked as a bee killer. I didn’t try to make the bees mad, but thankfully some other guests at the party got pretty good at killing bees. One person trapped a bee in a beer bottle too. I switched between carving pumpkins and watching the little kids. My friend has a 1 year old daughter that I finally got to meet. She was so cute and warmed up to me almost right away when I arrived early and my friend was still preparing the food.

There were a ton of pumpkins to carve. I think I only carved 5 or so. I need to get more creative with my pumpkin carving. She had over 100 pumpkins!!

During the afternoon, we enjoyed stew, cookies and pie while carving the pumpkins. It was great to catch up a bit and do something fun and outside for the nice day. The past couple years when they have done their party it has been so cold they moved to inside the garage with space heaters. They really lucked out on the weather this year.

I decided to head out at about 3pm as I wanted to drive home while it was still plenty light outside. The drive home went by quickly as I finally figured out I could put on a podcast and navigation at the same time on my phone. I hadn’t tried it before. I also was able to swing by Wegmans for my weekly groceries on the way home.

I decided to make some zucchini boats for dinner as I was the only one home. Brian’s mom was visiting and headed out for dinner with everyone else, so it was just me and the two dogs, who mostly slept. I got dinner cooked and leftovers in the fridge. I did laundry and cleaned up a bit. I then had time to sit down and write for a while. I call that a productive and fun evening in my book.

I then got the surprise that Brian was actually coming home Saturday night. I thought he was going to be gone until Tuesday so that was a nice surprise.

Sunday morning I actually slept in a bit. In the morning I headed to the gym. I got my new program to follow, so Sunday was all about testing out how much weight for how many reps I could do. Overall, I know I went too light on some of the sets, but I was also just getting used to the movement. Next week I will increase. I’m excited to have a new plan to follow though as I was feeling a bit in a gym rut after not being super consistent through August and September.

Once I got home, we played shuffle the cars so others could run errands and I just parked my car in another driveway (the advantage to 3 family houses next to each other). Otherwise we would have played shuffle the cars all day long when I needed to be first for Monday morning.

Sunday was a pretty laid back day to get some reading done and also watch a few episodes of This is Us. I’m so close to finishing season 1 and then I can catch up on the current season 2 episodes.

Are you creative with carving pumpkins?

Date night, New Hope and Shopping: MIMM#94

November 7, 2016 by Alicia 4 Comments

This weekend was wonderful and we had great weather both days too. Linking up with Katie for MIMM.

Beginning with Friday, after work Brian and I headed to get a couples massage followed by dinner. The massage was wonderful, of course I could have laid there another hour, the time went by so fast. I had made reservations for dinner at Erawan Thai Cuisine. The place had good reviews online, but they were super short staffed Friday evening. We arrived right at 7:15 for our reservations and were seated, but I think it took them about 30-40 minutes before we finally got our order placed. The staff was constantly running (literally) back and forth from the kitchen to seating the guests and taking orders. I felt bad, but also it really was terrible service. We were seated in the corner and for a while I had a whole water pitcher in reach. Much needed after a massage and I was pouring my own water. Every table was filled and there were a few other tables complaining about the service. Brian noticed one table had a couple of the people head out to buy wine (it was BYOB) and they returned and the order still wasn’t placed.

By 8:30 we were finally eating! Talk about ridiculous. Thankfully we did get our appetizers before that, but still. By the time we started eating, we basically asked for a box and our check. I literally had to wave the book with the credit card sticking out for them to grab it. I don’t think we will be back there, though the food is good and maybe if it was a less busy time, it would have gone more smoothly. We caught an Uber home as the train wait would have been another hour.

I was so excited to sleep in on Saturday, laying in bed until about 8am. We took advantage of the beautiful fall day and spent a lot of time outside and around the New Hope, PA area. We began at Bowman’s tower. The elevator was out of service but according to my Fitbit it was only about 5 flights of stairs. It was a beautiful view over the Delaware river.

We didn’t spend too long there before we headed back down the hill and decided to eat at Bowman’s Tavern. We arrived right at 11:30 when they opened and I am happy to say the service went much more smoothly than Friday night. We were done within an hour and the food was delicious. I decided on a light lunch with the kale salad.

From there, we headed around the corner to Solebury Orchards in New Hope. It was the last weekend for apple picking. We actually didn’t pick any apples, but purchased cider donuts for dessert and I had hot cider and Brian got cold cider. We also just enjoyed walking the orchard and tasted a couple apples.

solebury orchards and kale salad — kale salad from lunch followed by cider and donut and apples

Our walking around didn’t end there as we headed to Peddler’s Village. Last year we went in December after I heard about it from a co-worker. This weekend was the apple festival so it was PACKED. We barely found a parking spot. Luckily I spotted a person leaving and we snagged a spot. We didn’t mind walking too much. Can I say how much I treasure these moments without kids to unpack and stroller around or have a melt down?!

We weaved our way through the crowds and I found my way to The Lucky Cupcake and got an apple pie cupcake! It was delicious!

While we were there, I also scored a couple deals with new pj pants and some fleece lined leggings. As soon as I tried on the leggings I was sold. They are so fuzzy inside and they are going to be my new weekend pants lol.

Last year we didn’t make it into any of the restaurant in Peddler’s Village as there are always long waits. I had called one place in the morning and they were not taking reservations but recommended stopping by 30 minutes before we wanted to eat. Since we were mainly just walking around, we decided to eat an early dinner so we headed over to Buttonwood Grill around 2:30 to put our name in and they were ready to seat us shortly after 3:15. We walked around a bit in between and came back. It worked out since we ate lunch early and the food definitely didn’t disappoint. From the appetizer of spinach and cheese dip to my half rack of ribs and Brian’s “naked” (bunless) burger.

buttonwood-grill-peddlers-village — Buttonwood Grill eats

Then we were able to head home; first a stop at Wegmans not too far from where we were and arrived home at 6:30pm. Though we felt like it was 8pm by the time we got home. It was a fun day going all over New Hope for exploring and dining.

We made some homemade kale chips for a light snack and then decided to watch Forces of Nature with Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck and eventually headed to bed around 10 which turned into 9 when I switched the clocks.

A wonderful night’s sleep, it was great to wake up at 7 and have the sun out again as the mornings have been dark. The morning was laid back. We had to pick up my car that I had dropped off Saturday to get my winter tires on and an oil change. Then we watched Zootopia on Netflix. Neither of us saw the movie before and I have to say I really enjoyed it. It is quite long though at 2 full hours.

Then I was off to teach yoga and we decided to head to the outlet mall for a bit in the afternoon. I am glad that neither one of us is a big shopper, but of course you go to the mall not really looking for anything and end up walking out with something. I got a nice fleece (pictured with my fleece leggings above, hello winter weekend outfit!) and a gift. Brian scored well as he is in need of new clothes after losing some weight and clothes that are not so worn. Every once in a while new clothes are needed.

We came home in time to make dinner, some pork and cauliflower fried rice and then Brian had to head back for wok in the morning up North. It was a quiet evening for me, which was perfect for catching up on some cleaning and writing.

Do you enjoy shopping?

Do you own any fleece leggings? If you don’t I highly recommend them 😉

September 2016 Highlights

October 4, 2016 by Alicia Leave a Comment

I can’t believe it’s already October. September went by in a flash. It began with warm summer weather and then in the last week, we went into Fall or Spring (I’m unsure by the amount of rain). I was out of town every other weekend in September and as fun as the travel was, I am ready to be back at home for a few weekends just working on things around here. September had so many great highlights which is why I wanted to look back at them.

It began by driving towards a hurricane and spending Labor Day weekend in Virginia.

I went apple picking with friends the next weekend.

I then headed on a work trip to Tonawanda NY and got to visit Niagara Falls on a beautiful night.

I got back from upper NY, went to work for a couple days and the ditched work for a day in NYC with my friend from Australia.

We officially headed into fall after that, at least according to the calendar date. I then got a terrible cold, but managed to work on some yoga again outside of teaching. Thankfully I recently received my oil kit from DoTERRA. Comment below or email me if you would like to learn more about essential oils.

I started going to physical therapy for my toe as I am in the healing stages from my stress fracture. After a week and a half of PT so far, I can already bend my toe more and almost smoothly flow through a vinyasa. My balance is still a little wobbly on my right side, but has improved a bunch over the last couple weeks.

Lastly, I ended the month by taking a trip to Binghamton for engagement pictures and spending a night with Brian. Though it was rainy, it cleared up for the pictures which I am hoping turned out well and I enjoyed the time with Brian.

I put over 2000 miles on my car in the month of September. Considering I don’t use my car to go to work (I walk and take the train), a usual month without road trips might only put 600 miles on my car. I had a blast going to multiple places this month, but I am happy to get back to my usual workout and weekend routine.

Do you enjoy mini road trips?