Thanksgiving, in Review

Ross and I had a lovely Thanksgiving! In addition to spending quality time with loved ones, stuffing ourselves with delicious food, and enjoying a few games of Cards Against Humanity, we got to enjoy a cider tasting from one of our favorite cideries (is that even a word?), Albemarle Cider Works!

We had the whole lot from Albemarle. It's hard to believe that just one year ago they only had four assortments. I'd like to point out that if you're thinking of Woodchuck or Strongbow in this post then you are quite misguided! This hard cider is tart and sparkly. It is not nearly as sweet as the mass distributed options you've seen around. 

Complete with tasting guide!

Ross and I first tasted Albemarle Cider Works two (or was it three) years ago. We loved the unique flavor of these ciders. At the time our favorite was the Royal Pippin. Now, in the broader spectrum of ciders produced, we thought that the Royal Pippin was not as flavorful as some of the others, such as the Ragged Mountain - a group favorite this Thanksgiving!

A cidery (I'm going to make this word happen!) recently opened in Austin. Ross and I are excited to try it out. Austin Eastciders looks promising and really caught my attention - especially given that it markets its product as "bittersweet" and "lightly carbonated". I'm quite intrigued and look forward to trying some soon.

In addition to my post as sous chef and cider taster at Thanksgiving, I was given the task of folding the linen napkins. I try to take this opportunity to be really creative! So, some research and I settled on a combination of the "Rosebud Napkin Fold" and "Crown Fold" courtesy of NapkinFoldingGuide.com. Didn't they come out super cute?!

efficiency for effectiveness

Efficiency is the key to effective wedding planning. For months I have known that I was had this Friday to dedicate towards planning activities up in New Jersey. As a result, Mom and I have a very full weekend ahead!

Our Friday itinerary includes:

• {Florist and Designer} This is our first consultation with the preferred florist of our wedding venue. I'm looking forward to talking to him about the options that are available! I absolutely adore flowers and wish that I could learn how to design bouquets and arrangements. 
• {Limousines} The limo company we scouted out requested that we stop by to take a look at their fleet. Fingers crossed we can book the vintage Rolls Royce! Two benefits of having an RR at the wedding: the sheet joy of riding in the Rolls with my Dad as I get transported from my childhood home to the place where I become a wife and a Mrs. Secondly, it will make for some really fantastic pictures!
• {Mother of the Bride Dresses} My Mom seems to have made more headway in her dress shopping than me, but that's okay! She found a great dress that she wants me opinion on. I have no doubt it will look great, she has the keenest sense of fashion.
• {Lunch} Need lots of energy for a full itinerary like this one.
• {Invitations, Printing, and Calligraphy} I haven't even purchased save the dates yet because I am waiting to see what this lady has in store. I will admit, I am a stationery snob. Every time I receive an invitation I will run my fingers over the paper to see if the ink is raised or if the paper is pressed. I'm willing to splurge on invitations because it is important to me - such a shame most people will throw them away the next day.
• {Eyebrows at Anastasia} I have heard wonderful tales about the ladies at Anastasia and their eyebrow-taming-mastery. I rarely get my eyebrows professionally done, so I figured that taking a few trips to Anastasia while I'm in NJ between now and the wedding couldn't hurt to give some real shape to what has been referred to as the "monsters" and "furry caterpillars" on my face ;-)
• {Century 21} It is an absolutely necessity to take advantage of the tax-free, reduced-priced shopping that is available in NJ. While at Century I plan to thoroughly expand my collection of mismatched, brightly colored socks. (That will make sense to my fellow flyers out there!)

Phew, I'm exhausted just thinking about what's in store for us tomorrow! OH, who am I kidding? I can't wait!! I'm like a kid on Christmas Eve. This is going to be a very productive weekend and I can't wait to get it started...

living the busy life

Not only has work work been outrageously busy lately, but wedding planning is going into full swing! I'm headed home this weekend for a FULL itinerary of to-do's but since I'm taking the train right from the office tomorrow evening, I have to do all my preparation today and this evening. I'm headed to trapeze class tonight after work and hopefully I'll catch the return bar. Last week, as you can see in the video below, I tapped the bar for the first time! It was a very exciting milestone and I'm thoroughly enjoying the recent growths I've experienced on the rig.

When I get home around 8:30 tonight I'll throw some dinner together and get to packing my weekend bag. I've had a hard time trying to decide what I should wear. I want something simple that won't take up too much room in my suitcase. Especially on Saturday, when I am dress shopping in New York City, I want to look polished and presentable. The ensemble needs to be easy to put on and take off because I'll be visiting three bridal salons and trying on TONS of dresses. Plus, this outfit has to transition to a steak dinner that night! Not that I'm complaining, for I have been looking forward to wedding dress shopping in New York City since I was 15 when I went into NYC with my Mom during her fittings!

After packing my bag, I'll be painting my fingers and toes. On my fingers I'm planning to use a neutral nail polish, I've got a Deborah Lipmann pink-beige that will work great. I'm going to add a glitter accent on my ring finger as well! No harm in calling attention to my favorite finger and favorite accessory (my engagement ring!) while wedding planning :) Since my toenails haven't completely healed from my running regiment, I'm leaning towards Wicked by Essie.

Something tells me I won't be getting to sleep until after 11 o'clock tonight... Better put some eye cream on. No bride wants circles under her eyes!

trapeze show

At my last class I gave my trapeze instructors their thank you presents. As a sign of appreciation for all of their support, guidance, and most importantly for sharing their love of trapeze with me. To say thank you I designed and painted an individual silhouette of each of them on the rig. The background of each painting represented their favorite colors and the design was pulled from a photograph I found of them online!! The paintings came out great and my instructors really appreciated them!

Mike Flat.

Brent Catch.

Mandy Sweep.

Since gifting these paintings to Brent, Mike, and Mandy I have decided to sell custom orders! If you or somebody you know is interested, email me at CapturedOnCanvasDC at gmail dot com.

And now it's time for the great reveal...

This past Friday night I had my trapeze performance at TSNY DC. My costume choice was candy dots and I performed (and caught) the Seats Off!

There are two videos I have to share! The first is shot by Lizzie and shared by Brent (catching as the Gingerbread Man!)... thanks so much, both of you! And THANK YOU to Brent for catching this trick with me on Friday evening. The second video was shot by Ross... he was sitting with my Dad, Rosa, and my friends Natalie and Jeff. They were in the first row and had sore necks shortly after the show started, but I think that they really got to enjoy my style in the middle of my trick ;-)

I've previously mentioned that I handmade my costume for the show! When my class decided on Candy for our theme, I did a bunch of research to find a candy that could be easily translated into a costume. As soon as I settled on Candy Dots, I knew I'd have tons of fun putting my get-up together!

My completed costume laid out on the floor. The pink tulle has SO much glitter, I had to lay it out on a sheet.

Close-up of my tutu. I cut white felt into 3" wide strips and used fabric paint  to create the candy dots. With pink, green, and blue tulle I wrapped it around a ribbon then sewed on the felt strips when dry. 

My final costume, post-performance!!

I'm so sad that I won't be in the next IFW but it's time to focus my time and attention on GMAT studying and Tough Mudder training. I'm sure that I'll sign-up for a few classes over the Spring, but I miss flying already. Not to worry, I promise to keep my blog audience up to date on my other daily adventures. Hope you all had a lovely weekend!

december in review

December was a slow month for me blogging wise... after Paris, trips to New Jersey, and getting ready for Christmas, then actually celebrating Christmas there was not a lot of time left over, so here I am in 2012 ready to rock and roll! First, a quick recap of late December...

Ross and I had a non-stop Christmas!! We started with my Dad's family on the afternoon of the 24th... celebrated Christmas morning with Ross' family... and finished off the festivities with my Mom's family for Christmas dinner. It was a lot of moving around, but we had a great holiday with lots of love, family, friends, and presents!!

I was really excited to give out gifts this year because I felt that all of the presents were really special and personal. Some of the best received included electric corkscrews (so fun and easy, plus a great conversation starter!), home-cooked meals frozen in individual portions, Michael Aram Christmas ornaments, and a Stuhrling skeleton watch with Roman numerals and alpha-numeric shown below!

I scored this on Gilt!

Also, here are a few things I got in December that I have on me today and I want to talk about...

Orange is my favorite color right now!! It's so bright and friendly ...a fantastic "pop" color. Which is why I was beyond ecstatic when I saw this Hermes Collier de Chien cuff in my stocking!! It's a great statement piece and I can't wait to wear it through all of the seasons. (Just thinking about it paired with white jeans, a white t-shirt, and gold sandals on my upcoming trip to Cabo makes me want to start packing!!)

I also got a Missoni knit scarf :) The instagram filter makes the colors pop a bit more, this scarf is more muted than shown above. It has a great palette with beige, heather gray, black, slate blue, rusty orange, and lavender so it will go with everything! I was glad to have this with me today... the wind whipping around on a 30 degree morning is not pleasant! And now that my hair is a good 4-inches shorter, my neck needed a little more coverage!

The hot pink lipgloss you see is something I'm really excited to talk about! This sample sized Jouer came from Birchbox, and is appropriately called "Birchbox Pink." For my birthday, my friends Steve and Genevieve got me a three-month subscription to this site! Each month I receive a box of samples of high-end beauty products. This let's me try out products before I decide to purchase them. But more to come on Birchbox later... (it deserves it's own post!).

And last but not least... here's an instagram of my new haircut! Truthfully, I'm not crazy about the two blunt layers. I'm more of a blended, long-layers kind of gal. But give this a month to six weeks and I know it'll grow in just right :)

shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall!

Such a sweet boyfriend
taking care of the luggage!

The first of my recent travels away from DC was down to Vero Beach, Florida!! This is a town I've been frequenting since the ripe-old-age of four. (On my first plane ride down I asked my grandfather if the white stuff outside the window was snow!) My family lovingly nicknamed it "Zero" Beach because of the entertainment and action (or obvious lack-there-of) this beachfront town has to offer. In high school I even convinced my friend Elizabeth that the sidewalks were rolled up at 6PM. When she looked out the front door she was unaware that my grandparent's street never has sidewalks... though she caught on the next morning ;-)

Our three day trip was highlighted with a handful of fun-filled family activities; a celebration dinner for my grandparents 60th anniversary, and the real reason everybody made the visit; my Aunt's wedding!!

Unfortunately we were not greeted with warmth and sunshine, as I had expected, but rather gray skies and hurricane-like conditions. But, alas, the show must go on!!

Me and Ross ready to
party with the family!

We snuck in this picture before the rain started... though the sky was plenty gray at that point!

The cake at dinner featured Nannie and Pop-Pop's wedding portrait!! I actually have pictures of me and my cousin trying on my grandmother's wedding dress. It is a beautiful yellow silk, but boy is it heavy!! And, wow she was skinny. I've got about a six inch gap across my rib cage where I cannot close the darn gown.

For the plane ride down to Florida I downloaded the user manual for my camera. I have a Nikon D80 but was not well versed in all of its features (I hadn't read the manual in four years) so I thought this was the perfect opportunity to brush up on my photog skills ;-) The pictures turned out great, and I've included a handful below!

All the grandkids!! This is a fun crowd :)

Pop-Pop and Nannie with my mom, aunt, and uncles!

My aunt put together a great slideshow...
video from my mom as a baby. So cute, mama!

And now, on to the weekend's feature event!! My aunt got married to a great guy who works in DC... this means I get the pleasure of seeing my family more often :) With all the rain, thankfully they had a tent set up outside for their ceremony. However, the guests had lifted and shifted their chairs toward the center that when the ceremony finished there was no more aisle for the bride and groom to walk out!! It worked out well though, because the fastest and most efficient route to the inside was up by the "altar" area.

Here comes the bride -- and groom!

My cousin did a great job helping out Reverend Frisby

First kiss!

Delicious AND beautiful cupcakes served on a tiered tree.

Escort cards with names on front and table assignment inside.

Following the ceremony and a lunch the family had originally planned a boat ride and pool party... this quickly turned into bowling and a clubhouse barbecue. Fine by me! (Although my little rental car wasn't going to make it through the flooded streets and I had to skip on the bowling part.) We all finished the night off with family and friends, some delicious barbecue (I'm craving mac-and-cheese right now), and a fantastic game of charades!! (Thank you "Lava Lamp" for instigating that one!)

scrapbook scissor design nail art

Last night I got to play with a bunch of new polish colors!! I picked up another Seche Vite fast dry top coat, a small brush white for french manicures, a bottle of Power Clutch (from Essie's Fall Collection). Also, Mom passed on a bottle of blue polish from Avon (Inspiration) and a purple from a new company. (Will provide pics and more details later.)

I have a family reunion and wedding this weekend and I couldn't decide whether I should paint my nails on Monday night (last night) for that trip or do something fun and repaint on Thursday. After being so inspired with nail art designs on Pinterest the last few weeks, I decided to go with something fun and change it up before my trip!

So I decided to try the method with cutting scotch tape with scrapbooking scissors. Unfortunately I didn't have a scissor cut I thought I did, but I got to chose between Scallop, Zig Zag, and Wave. I ended up going with Scallop which reminds me of the edges on stamps or old photos.

First, I painted a base coat, two coats of my color (Topless and Barefoot by Essie) and a top coat. I waited a few minutes for the top coat to dry. While I did this I started cutting pieces of scotch tape (one for each finger) - also, I highly suggest cutting all ten at this point! I did not and later found it rather difficult to cut new tape with wet fingers and long pieces of tape sticking off the edges of my fingers.

Stick tape onto your nails when they're dry. (Do just one hand at a time! Painting with tape on your fingers could prove to be tricky.) Be careful to press it down close to the edges! Nail polish can get under here and make your design look sloppy. This is also a good time to decide if you want all ten fingers to be set up exactly the same (highlight on the left) or if they should parallel each other (highlights on the outside of nail). I went with the outsides of my nails... this proved to be an interesting decision because if I tilt my hands a certain way I can't even see the detail. 

Paint a coat of polish in a downward motion, covering all the exposed nail surface. Wait a few minutes for the paint to dry! Peel off the tape, slowly, and VOILA!

I've received a number of comments on these. I like the colors, I think the grey-green and pink-beige complement each other well. Also, I like the theory of this design, it certainly is fun. However, it will be removed before my trip this weekend... I'm leaning towards a classic french manicure! After all, I need to put that new white polish to use :)

how to unplug

 This past weekend Ross and I spent time with his family in the Charlottesville area! It was really great to unwind, without a cell signal, all weekend. We spent Saturday afternoon cider tasting... this was a great alternative to wine tasting and something I highly suggest if the opportunity arises.

We stopped first at the Albemarle Cidery. Their site is a beautiful, large white barn! They were setting up for a wedding, so I couldn't help but sneak a peek. The tasting room is off to the side with a side patio overlooking pastures and a still lake out back. We only saw a few sapling apple trees on the lot - but the plot is huge. See what I saw in the next three photographs, below.

 Three of the four ciders at Albemarle were sparkling and quite tart as they were made with Pippin apples. The last was flat but lacked some flavor. 

Such a beautiful patio to enjoy a bottle of cider together!

Next we were off to Albemarle Ciderworks. These were tasty ciders with quite a bit of flavor! Our favorite was the "Ragged Mountain" - their most traditional of flavors. Not as sweet as the commonly found Woodchuck, but you can really taste the apples in here.

All in all, glad we did cider tasting! And hope to do it again soon but maybe we'll hit up a brewery first!

turkey sandwiches and other random thoughts

So I have a thing with sandwiches. They must be made in a particular way. I'm not quite sure how or when this particularness formed, but over this years it has certainly become more defined. Last night as I was making my (and Ross') lunch for today it dawned on me as I asked Ross, "how do you like your turkey laid on your sandwich?" His look of confusion illustrated a thought passing through his mind... "is that a serious question?" 

But yes, if I have the option and I have my way I like my sandwiches made in a particular fashion. As follows...

• Mustard (or mayo, but usually mustard) smeared on the top half (Ross likes mayo smeared on both sides)
• Turkey placed on the bottom half - it is very important NOT to simply lay it flat and fold the turkey, I don't like flat turkey on my sandwiches. Can you picture the Boars Head ads? (Which by the way, Board Head Oven Gold Roast Turkey is the only turkey to buy. No questions about that.) I prefer to have my turkey sort of dropped and draped onto the bread, just like in the ads.
• Cheese goes on top of the turkey. Folded or placed so that not much hangs off the sides. (It's cheese, people, you can break it and fold it there's no reason for it to stick out an inch!)
• If there are additional toppings; lettuce, onions, olives, pickles, etc. They get put on top of the cheese.

So there you have it: bread, meat, cheese, condiment, bread. Sometimes (yes, I know this makes me a brat) if my Mom makes me a sandwich and it's not in that order I'll take it apart and reconstruct it. Or turn the sandwich upside down if the mustard is on the bottom. However, I do recognize this is fairly rude so I don't take this action unless it's Mom's sandwich... afterall, she has to love me unconditionally ;-)

And to end my rant... here's a picture of my parent's dog, Lucky. He's eating a frosty paws shortly after getting some of our New York strip steaks on Sunday. He's spoiled and oh so loved!! 

What a cutie!! :)