Holiday Recap

When I woke up this morning, I felt like blogging. So here I am, unashamed that I'm sharing a holiday recap a month later.

This Christmas season was wonderful! I love being home with my family, having a lot of time off from work, and just relaxing.

Before everyone went home for the holidays, we hosted "Friendsmas" at our apartment, complete with festive cocktails and tacky sweaters!

We had our annual M&M Dinner at Lazy Goat, but unfortunately Katie hadn't arrived from SF yet so it was just me and the adults!

Next up: Katie and I were "A Perfect Pair" of salt & pepper shakers at our friends' themed party (such a fun idea for a party, by the way)!

And then the Christmas festivities really got started!

The holidays are always a flurry of cooking and baking. Mom and I sit down with a pile of cookbooks and make a menu for the days surrounding Christmas. However, our family takes our traditions very seriously so we usually don't deviate from our standard menu for most occasions.

Snapshots from Christmas Eve & Christmas Day:

The week between Christmas and New Year's was filled with more relaxing, movie watching, and spending time with family. With one last hoorah for New Year's Eve, it was time to go back to work.

2013 was most definitely NOT my favorite year, so we definitely had no problem toasting it goodbye!

My Favorite Holiday!

My favorite holiday has come and gone. But luckily, Christmas is a very close second and it's only 23 days away!

I'm not ashamed to admit I had 4 Thanksgiving meals this year and each one was better than the one before. We hosted our 2nd annual Friendsgiving, my sister was home briefly the weekend before Thanksgiving so we had dinner with her, my office hosted a Thanksgiving potluck on Monday, and then I headed to the mountains for the real thing. Not only did I have 5 glorious days off, but it SNOWED in the mountains! Probably the only time I'll get to see snow this year.

Ah, the greatest time of year!

How did y'all spend your holiday?

Linking up with Sami

Weekend Update ~ Labor Day Edition

This weekend had all the ingredients to be perfect: a holiday, college football, a Clemson win, and a mini-vacation to the mountains.

To try to express how amazing it was to return to Clemson and cheer my Tigers to victory against the Bulldogs on Gameday is simply impossible...

Every muscle in my body was hurting Sunday morning from being so tense the entire game and walking over 4 miles tailgate-hopping, but it was so very worth it.

I spent the rest of Sunday and Monday relaxing in the mountains with my parents. We visited the Cashiers Designer Showcase 2013 house, took a hike around the lake, and I took multiple naps.

With Labor Day gone, I'm officially ready for my favorite season, FALL!!!

Linking up with Sami

Weekend Update ~ Easter

We're just going to pretend that the weekend starts on Thursday (like it did back in college, sigh) because I finally did something fun on a weeknight instead of work so it's worth mentioning!

via

Anthropologie opened its doors on Friday here in Greenville, and I got invited to the pre-grand opening! The store was open for 2 hours Thursday night to Anthro card members so I invited my roomie to come along! We had dinner at The Lazy Goat beforehand and I cheated just a little because we ordered their amazing fried goat cheese.

 

Sorry I'm not sorry.
 

I may or may not have bought a few things at Anthro (I just had to) and had a great time enjoying appetizers while shopping in my favorite store! Seriously, I'm so excited that Greenville is becoming such a fun little city to live in! Next mission: convince Ryan we shouldn't move.
 

I worked a half day on Friday (it was a holiday after all!) and then met my mom at Whole Foods for lunch + Easter lunch shopping. I finally told her to just cook whatever she wanted, since this challenge allows me to eat nothing. I may have cheated (again) and had a mimosa and some ham biscuits!
 

My mom and I went back to Anthro so I could buy more stuff exchange a dress I bought the night before for a smaller size.
 

I was back at my apartment by 4 pm and got some serious cleaning/laundry done before Ryan came over for dinner. I made a simple meal of grilled chicken and roasted veggies for our date night!

I then proceeded to fall asleep on the couch at 9 pm while watching basketball. Oops.

I woke up at 7 am after a refreshing 10 hours of sleep and begrudgingly got to work. I finally crossed a few things off my to do list and was super glad to do so. And then Ryan crushed my dreams by telling me it "wasn't realistic" to quit my job and travel the world. Not cool.

I spent the rest of the day doing things I never have time for (working out! reading a book! finding new blogs to follow!) and then parked my booty on the couch for the rest of the day/night. So much laziness and it was fantastic.

Sunday, we celebrated Easter in Anderson with my parents with church and brunch!

Overall, a fantastic weekend! I'm so ready for spring weather to get here - since it's April 1st, I'd say it's about time!

I'm linking up with Sami today!

Weekend Update ~ St. Patty's Day + Family

Ryan and I were both pretty darn excited to have his family back in town this past weekend. He only gets to see them a few times a year, so we always have so much fun when they come to Greenville and it's awesome to show them our cute little town!

Friday night, we had a pretty amazing dinner at Rick Erwin's, the well-known (locally owned!) steakhouse in Greenville. The steaks there are incredible and we had a great waiter - he even packed up another two loaves of freshly-baked bread for me to take home! What can I say? This girl loves her carbs.

We always find ourselves at Nose Dive afterwards for shots cocktails.

 

We might be holding hands here..

Total Bros

Laurel and Scott (Ryan's Stepdad)

Little Bro ("Ryan, your girl makes me look good" - gotta love him!)

 And while I must say, these pictures came out nicely - let me take you on a tour of the pictures that it took just to get 5 presentable ones...

So yeah, there's that.

Ryan hasn't quite figured out that if he just smiled for the first picture, we wouldn't have to take 15 more...

We were all moving a little slow on Saturday morning, but finally made it out to Smoke on the Water for lunch. We wanted to sit outside since the weather was gorgeous (hello 70s and sunny), but everyone else in Greenville had a similar idea. All we needed was some greasy burgers and mac and cheese and we were ready to celebrate St. Patty's Day!

 

We went to Liberty Tap Room afterwards, since they have one of my favorite outdoor patios. However, all the tables were full there too. We all piled into a booth inside (boo) and settled in for hours to play a game Ryan's brother, Mike, taught us.

 

Everyone writes down the name of a person (real or fictional) on a napkin and then passes it to another person at the table. You show your napkin to the group, but can't look at it yourself. You then have to ask the group Yes/No questions in order to figure out who you are ("Am I real? Am I female? Am I alive?" etc.) If you get a "no" answer, your turn is over and it moves on to the next person in the group. It's a pretty funny game and keeps everyone engaged and laughing. We played so many rounds, we all finally had to start keeping notes to keep it straight!

 

Some of the funniest and hardest to figure out amongst the group were Santa Claus, Mrs. Piggy, Smokey the Bear, Forrest Gump, Adam Sandler, and Celine Dion.

Then it was time for dinner! I made reservations for us at Nantucket, since everyone was craving seafood after having steak the night before. Nantucket happens to also be owned by Rick Erwin, and the food is fantastic. I can't say we had a bad dish at the table!

 

Our girl Victoria is now engaged! Weee!

 

 

 We finished the night off with lots of green beverages (they even dyed Ryan's mom's wine green!) at Nose Dive, and Ryan had a drink named after him!

 

 

Once the parents called it a night (at 1 am), the kids made one last bar stop, On The Roxx, which is where all good nights should end. They finally kicked us out at 2 am and we had to drag Mike away from the cute bartender. :)

 

Ryan and I had a slumber party in Laurel and Victoria's hotel room Saturday night, which provided some great laughs. I sure love this family!

 

Sunday morning came, we had one last meal at Tommy's Country Ham House, and everyone ate absolutely way too much (Mike ordered a patty melt with a side of western omelet). It was hard telling everyone goodbye, but we have Mexico to look forward to!

 

We got back to Ryan's apartment, and while I'm unloading the car, Ryan thought it'd be nice to take a little nap:

 

 

And that pretty much sums up our weekend!

Life Update

I feel like I just fell off the face of the planet for a week or so!

Let's rewind back to last weekend first.

Ryan and I celebrated our Valentine's Day at home on Thursday night (I cooked dinner - recipe coming soon and we had these for dessert) but we went out on the town on Friday night. I have annual coupons to several of the nicer restaurants in Greenville because of my donations to United Way, and I thought Valentine's would be a perfect time to use one of them!

We went to Soby's, a restaurant that I love but haven't been to again since I've moved to Greenville. We had a fantastic dinner of bacon-wrapped tenderloin and potato crusted flounder and headed home with full bellies.

 

 Ryan surprised me with these gorgeous flowers Friday night when he came to pick me up for dinner! It was such a different arrangement, which he said he helped pick out! I was proud of him!

I had promised myself I was going to take most of Saturday off from work to catch up on some other things (laundry, packing for Charleston for work) and I'd work Sunday instead. They were calling for snow on Saturday (I never believe them when they say it's going to snow), but Ryan and I headed to Coffee Underground to enjoy one of my rare mornings off.

 

We made it back to apartment just in time for the "snow" to start falling. We didn't get as much at my apartment as other parts of Greenville did, but it was still fun to be curled up on the couch and watch the flurries out the window!

This was early on during the snowfall



I spent the rest of the afternoon organizing, doing laundry, and napping.

Sunday, I was off to Charleston for a week for work, but not before stopping at The Bohemian for brunch. Their bloody mary bar and jalapeno pimento cheese is pretty hard to resist.

And then, next thing ya know, I was in Charleston!

I hadn't been in Charleston since the Cooper River Bridge 10K, so I was excited to meet up with my bestie, Rachel, for dinner Sunday night. She chose Basil, the most fabulous Thai food I've ever had. Then I was tucked into my hotel for a long week ahead.

While this client was more than exhausting, we managed to hit up quite a few delicious eats while in Charleston. Every night we had such a hard time deciding because there are just too many restaurants to choose from!

The eating highlights of the week: sushi at O-Ku, seafood at Coast, tapas and people watching at Social Wine Bar, drinks at Proof Bar and Pavilion Rooftop Bar, and dinner at my all-time favorite restaurant Red Drum in Mt. Pleasant.

Homemade Sugar and Spice Donuts at Red Drum. Yeah, that happened.

I originally looked into booking the hotel for the weekend and having Ryan come down and join me, but after realizing the rooms were going to be $250/night, I decided we'd stick with our free original plan to go to the mountains for a belated Valentine's getaway.

We drove up late Friday night and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

Unfortunately, we woke up to a rainy day on Saturday, but that gave us a perfect excuse to build a fire and not leave the couch all day. I had to work for several hours, but at least I had a change of scenery!

I've been promising Ryan I would make surf & turf for dinner for months now, so I figured this was the perfect opportunity to get in the kitchen and try a new recipe. We stopped at the Fresh Market for steaks and lobster before we left Greenville, and I can honestly say we devoured this meal. I'll post the recipe for this lobster mac and cheese this week also! Seriously so good.

We were graced with wonderful weather on Sunday, so we were happy to finally get out of the house! There's a waterfall nearby that I've been to several times but Ryan has never seen, so we hopped in the car for a quick "hike." The road leading to the waterfall is paved and there are even steps down to get the best view, but somehow I'm actually sore today. Can we say, "out of shape"??

 

 

That, my friends, is what I've been up to for the past 10 days. I hope to not pull another disappearing act!

And holy crap, it's almost MARCH! How the heck did that happen??!

New Year's Eve Recap

I know, I'm a little late on this one too. We're one week into busy season and I'm already falling apart (kidding, but 12 hour workdays don't leave much time for anything else)!

There's always this huge pressure every year to have amazing New Year's plans, and honestly, it drives me nuts. I'd much prefer a low-key get together to ring in the New Year than a big fancy party. I've done the party thing, it was fun, but it's just not my favorite.

Clemson was playing in the Chick-fil-a Bowl in Atlanta on NYE, so Ryan and I debated for awhile about going to the game. Honestly, I wasn't too convinced we weren't going to lose, so I didn't really want to spend the money on tickets, hotels, etc. so we eventually decided against it. Plus, we had already been to Clemson's season opener in Atlanta earlier in the year.

So, in the interest of still doing something fun, we decided to tag along with my parents to their best friends' New Year's party. Becky and Ted have hosted a NYE party for as long as a I can remember (the year 2000 being my first vivid memory), and in recent years, they've turned it into a "seafood extravaganza" - crab legs, oysters, shrimp, oh my!

This was a perfect way for us to spend New Year's - Ryan got to meet a lot of my parent's friends, we ate some delicious food, and we got to cheer our Tigers to a victory against LSU! Such a fun, fun night ringing in 2013!

And this last photo was just too cute not to post:

Ryan got up to go to the bathroom and Scarlet stole his seat on the couch beside me. Ryan was delegated to the floor for the remainder of the game!

 

The next morning, we whipped up a delicious New Year's Day brunch (no traditional collards and black-eyed peas for this family - yuck!), watched some football, played card games and scrabble, and then it was back to Greenville and the real world.

 

 

This is my last post in terms of recaps of the holidays, I swear! How did you all spend your New Year's?

{Recipe} ~ Sparkling Apple Sangria

I tried a delicious, easy sangria on Christmas Eve and couldn't wait to share it with y'all! It's perfect for the holidays and looks really festive, too!


Sparkling Apple Sangria

from Spoon Fork Bacon
 

 

Ingredients:

2 bottles of Riesling (can substitute Pinot Grigio)
1 red delicious apple, julienne
1 Granny Smith apple, julienne
1 bottle of brut champagne, chilled

Directions:

Pour Riesling into a large pitcher and stir in the apples. Place in the refrigerator and allow to sit for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours. Add champagne/sparkling wine, stir and serve. Enjoy!

Merry Merry!

 

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

 

 

My holiday has been filled with family traditions!

 

 

Christmas Eve included a feast of Mom's chicken casserole, Katie's deviled eggs, and my sparkling apple sangria!

 

 

We had our candlelight church service at 8 pm, and then put on our Christmas pajamas, poured some hot chocolate, and drove around town to look at the lights.

Katie and I always sleep in the same bed on Christmas Eve, and then wake up early to open our presents. Mom and Dad spoiled us this year, as they always do, and I'm now blogging from my new iPad!!

 

We had a scrumptious brunch of sausage casserole and Katie made gingerbread with lemon glaze!

We finished opening gifts by digging into our stockings, then everyone took their places on the couch to watch our annual mainstay:

 

 

We're off to Virginia tomorrow to visit my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins!

Hope you all are having a blessed Christmas also!