Life 2.1

All of my New Orleans friends have awesome photos of Mardi Gras posted on Facebook. I looked at them longingly, thinking of how awesome it was when I went in 2010, right before I moved home.

Dave received the following email and thought of me:

He promptly made reservations when he saw me light up at the mention of crawfish etouffee.

We arrived to a very festive atmosphere last night and lots of purple, green and gold and I had a great view of SportsCenter so I was a happy camper.

Then they rolled out the menu. And do you know what I had?

One of everything.

Seriously. I was under the impression we picked from each category. Nope, not so. We were served everything, family-style. Though Dave and I are convinced they pre-portioned everything for groups of four so the two of us got huge portions of everything.

Take a look at my dinner menu last night (and subsequent lunch today).

Yea. All that.

In a shocking turn of events, we left completely stuffed.

In other news, I miss easy access to crawfish.

2 Comments | In: Social Adventures | tags: Cajun cuisine, Farmstead, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Napa Valley. | #

With all the wedding activity that immediately followed my mid-week birthday, I didn’t have a chance to recap the fact that I’m 29.

Yes, I’m 29. Next year will be 30. Next year I’ll have a party or something. 29 just seems like a non-event in comparison.

Since it was a Tuesday (read: a work day) and of course because of Murphy’s Law, it was the busiest work day I had had in a long while. Phones ringing off the hook, meetings galore…you get the picture.

Dave took me out to dinner at a new restaurant neither of us had tried…Brassica is the new Cindy Pawlcyn place that features Mediterranean-inspired dishes (it used to be Go Fish, which had an awesome lobster mac-n-cheese).

It wasn’t bad; I had braised beef and Dave had the roasted chicken. All was tasty and the portions were ridiculously large. We enjoyed dessert, which was something that looked like flan when it was served but had the consistency of creme brulee. It was delicious and mocha-y and cinnamon-y…yum!

We asked the server to take our photo but she accidentally took a video; here is the screen capture of that since the video looks similar, only with Dave and I smiling, asking each other through gritted, smiley teeth if we thought she had taken the photo yet.

Corner Booth – prime for people watching

Dave knew that the weekend coming (wedding weekend) would be far too busy to continue the celebration, so being the thoughtful one that he is, he booked my birthday present– a massage at The Meritage Resort in Napa– for this past Saturday. The day turned into a one where we played tourist, doing all things Napa Valley and taking advantage of the things that we never get to do despite living here.

The massage, to start, was flippin fantastic.

Because he is a smarty, Dave booked it for 11 so I could sleep in, then informed me that I had access to their spa, jacuzzi, steam room, etc. for the rest of the day if I was so inclined. I thought that sounded good but I haven’t ever done anything like that so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The massage itself was an hour and it was so relaxing. Following that luxury, I helped myself to some lemon-water and hung out in the steam room for a bit. My skin felt amazing and so clean. 2 hours later, I was showered and felt so rejuvenated that I debated putting make up on because my skin actually felt like it looked good enough to forgo. Then I thought it was probably the fancy spa lighting and I dabbled a little bit on for good measure. Good thing too, because we went out to lunch at Fremont Dinner afterwards, which meant being seen in public, something for which I prefer to be wearing make up so as not to look like I just rolled out of bed.

It was such a gorgeous day, we decided to cap off our afternoon with some wine tasting at Artesa since I had never been and the views were amazing, especially on a clear day. It is down in Carneros and so high above the valley floor you can see for miles. I had no idea!

The picture doesn’t even do the view justice–it’s awesome

It was such a relaxing morning/afternoon…

No Comments | In: Social Adventures | tags: birthday, Napa Valley. | #

Let’s be clear with the title of this post– it was my cousin LEIGH’S wedding weekend that just took place. As such, I was her Maid of Honor and this of course comes with VERY important duties, such as her bachelorette celebration! Leigh is in retail and October-November-December are essentially akin to my August-September-October, which is to say, insanely busy and not so easy to plan a getaway. So to work around her (and selfishly, my “busy season” I opted to do a spa day the morning before her Big Day to try and help her relax and get ready to be a bride. This was especially appropriate because she had literally been working every.single.weekend.ever and I thought it would be a good idea to get her out of her work mind and into bride mind.

I arranged a private “retreat” room at the Villagio Inn & Spa in Yountville and we had optional mani-pedi appointments for those who wanted to take advantage. For those who didn’t need their nails done, they joined us for breakfast and hung out in our room. The below documents the girly-ness that went on Click to enlarge photos and an actual wedding post will follow shortly.

PS- I know my birthday was also last week, but given that it was a Tuesday (work day) and the wedding took place Saturday, that post is on hold. Dave and I celebrated with a nice dinner out (more on that later) and he is giving me a present this Saturday, as it’s our first 2-day weekend together in a while. The birthday post will come post-birthday present

2 Comments | In: Living the Vine Life, Social Adventures | tags: bachelorette party, Napa Valley, spa day, Villagio Inn & Spa, wedding. | #

KK kinda reminded me that I have a blog the other day and that it hadn’t been updated in ages. Point taken, KK.

For that reason, let’s do a recap of the 4th of July, shall we? Because I gotta be honest, probably the best one I’ve ever had. Typically, the 4th is always fun, but this particular year, I really enjoyed myself.

Big Metal came to visit from North Carolina and we kicked off the weekend in style by stopping at not just one outlet mall, but two outlet malls. We promptly followed this up with naps. The evening found us at Taqueria Rosita (for anyone that knows me even a little bit, this probably shocks you not at all). We met up with some of my friends and we bar-hopped, or as close to bar-hopping as one can do in Napa, and followed it up with a solid movie night.

Then the 4th fun began. I would have began a pictorial recap at this point but apparently my camera decided to go rogue and change settings by itself so all my 4th pics came out blurry. So you’re all stuck with the story. We went swimming and bbq-ed at the aforementioned friend’s house and followed that up with fireworks on the lawn at my previous place of employment. We brought games and all the items to make ice cream sundaes, because, I happen to think that ice cream is a fabulous way to celebrate this country’s independence.

The owner of the winery of my previous place of employment put on one helluva sparkler show that came complete with a finale they drew our applause, it was that solid. And the fireworks themselves were awesome, since we were literally sprawled out on the lawn and they were shot off overhead.

Post-fireworks, we all headed back to Command Central/Morgan’s house. (Morgan, by the way, gets my sincerest gratitude for letting me crash at her place while she was out of town and get back to my independent roots, if only for a few days.) We all enjoyed the sequel to the movie we had watched the night before (Boondock Saints I and II) and in a shocking turn of events, the first was way better than the sequel.

Monday was spent being lazy, which I can get on board with on a holiday, but Big Metal and I did rally enough to go stroll around downtown St. Helena and look at all the expensive things we could buy for the same price as a down payment on a Ford Focus.

My camera began behaving again Monday afternoon and she and I got a chance to do the whole Napa Valely tourist thing by pulling over to take pictures of ourselves next to vineyards. **Note that I said ‘pull over’. As in, I’m happy you’re visiting my valley but we have lots of wineries and vineyards so please be kind to the people sharing the road with you and pull over when admiring them, as opposed to crawling past them at a snail’s pace. Thank you.

We are soNapa Valley

Yep we ARE patriotic

We followed up the trip around the Valley with a BBQ at the roommate’s house, where the food’s free and the rent’s cheap.

It was a super busy weekend and as far as I’m concerned, Big Metal didn’t stay nearly long enough, but I’m glad she was able to keep our new 4th of July tradition of hanging out together despite that whole 3,000-mile difference thing.

I will have to make time to do another post about how I joined a slow-pitch softball team soon. And yes, it is as funny a story as it sounds, you are correct.

No Comments | In: Social Adventures | tags: 4th of July, Napa Valley, vineyard, wine country. | #