Tag Archives: travel

Where Have I Been?

Lately I have been hearing the same proclamation a seemingly endless amount of times: “You’ve been everywhere!” And I can’t say I’m surprised to hear that. Despite the fact that hearing this proclamation immediately triggers my brain to think, “You’ve been going out and drinking and eating too much and slacking on the gym!”, I’ve been practicing fighting that thought and feeling thankful for all I have been able to do so far this summer.

I’ve been to Knoxville, Tennessee to see my little sister graduate from college…

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Nantucket (with work) for the Wine Fest…

Connecticut for my dad’s birthday and a wedding…

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Giveaway Winner and Off I Go!

I’m popping in to say hi and quickly announce the winner of my giveaway five free product coupons from Dr. Praeger’s. Congrats to Alex! I will be emailing you about claiming your prize!

I’m on the road again, or shall I say the water? Likely when I hit publish on this pre-written post I am either about to leave on a drive to Hyannis, or on the ferry itself to Nantucket. I’ll be pouring wine for 90+ Cellars at one of tomorrow’s Nantucket Wine Festival Grand Tastings, and aside from that will be hanging out on that wonderful island, likely collecting material along the way for another event recap!

The remnants of last year's festival.

The remnants of last year’s festival.

It’s been a week of night out, night in, night out, night in. Monday I stopped by a Boston Bloggers event at Audubon – a last minute decision but an easy one once I found out my dear friend Emily was going. I kept things chill with a couple glasses of Rose, finally met Christina, got a chance to photobooth it up, and grabbed Whole Foods takeout (for the first time ever I was disappointed by it) on the way home. I felt reassured by my ability to go out and not GO all out.

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Just Say No

I’m coming off another weekend on the road, this one spent in Knoxville, Tennessee to watch my little sister Hannah graduate from the University of Tennessee! I am exhausted, and bummed that my work day doesn’t end until 9PM tonight, but am so also glad that I made the trip south to celebrate with my sister and see my family and our friends as well.

Despite the fact that I handled this Tennessee trip better than either of the last two I have taken, I still dealt with the usual anxiety over drinking more than usual, out-of-routine food, and working out less. However I also realized that I didn’t drink or eat a huge amount more than I would lately on a weekend, and the rest day I took was the one per week that I’ve gotten used to taking (and sometimes it’s two).

Manhattans and fried pickles aren’t unordinary weekend occurrences nowadays.

That in itself is perhaps a sign of progress in my journey to stop punishing myself via restriction and overexercising, but more so comes back to my concern that I’ve really been overdoing it lately and need to reel it back in.

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What I Didn’t Plan For

Being a planner is a good and bad thing. Organization can be a key to success. “Fail to plan, plan to fail”, right? Meh. Planning has definitely helped me in life but can also be my downfall. I’ve found in the last year or so that failing to plan can lead to happiness, and ease of mind. This weekend was the perfect example of that. Here are all the things I did not plan for this weekend, that ended up happening. (And look, here I am, still alive!)

Hopping a train from South Norwalk, CT (I was already in the area for an engagement brunch) to NYC to see friends that I’d found out, only the night before, were going to be in town all the way from Ohio.

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#CruisingWithTheCroswells

I’m back, and I don’t just mean back to this blog (sorry about that inadvertent hiatus, guys!), but also back from an amazing vacation with my family. I’m lucky to have parents that love going on fun trips; we went to Mexico last year during my brother’s and sister’s spring breaks (which thankfully fall on the same week). This year we went to Mexico again, but also to Belize, and also to sea…we took our first family cruise!

How did it go? Well, spoiler alert…

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The Most-Needed Trip Ever

Sorry that I’m so late to the game in announcing the winner of my Tuttorosso Tomatoes giveaway! The winner of the prize pack is Amy – thank you for entering and I will be reaching out about getting you your winnings!

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It’s been a busy holiday season with no time to blog much…followed by a vacation during which I did not feel like blogging much. Sorry about that! Long-time readers already know that I go to Florida every Christmas season with my family. We use to split our time between my grandma and grandpa’s apartment and hotels, but now we have a condo of our own in the Palm Beach Gardens area.

My grandparents and I

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Long Newport Weekend

Once I got going writing yesterday’s post, I knew this recap of the long July 4th weekend in Newport, RI would have to be a two-parter. So many photos and so much to say! Thankfully I woke up at 5:30AM for no reason this morning, actually feeling quite well rested, so I was able to sneak in a quick run and sit down here to blog before starting my work day. Let’s pick up where we left off:

Sunday 7/6

So I woke up and despite feeling guilty about what I’d eaten/drank the day prior, I also just didn’t feel like going running or doing cardio of any kind. Our timeshare complex had a gym that I walked into and said…wtf? It had three machines, dumbbells that maxed out at 10lbs (not that I’m strong man or anything, but come on!), and not even a space to do abs and no bench. So I basically did arms for 20 minutes, abs from the now-longer-than-30-days ab challenge, and called it a day. I was happy to be able to hightail it to Mokka Coffeehouse down the street to get some work done!

The shop was adorable as you can see from the above photo, and the iced coffee DELICIOUS. I had it a few other days on my trip and definitely recommend this place, though Coffee Grinder is still my favorite coffee place in Newport simply because of the waterfront seating (unfair advantage). After plugging away for a couple of hours I got hungry and found out my family was having lunch at a diner. I just didn’t really feel like eating diner food, and OK I was having anxiety over it, so I decided to take my current read and check out Newport’s newest farm-to-table (this term is, to me, becoming overused) restaurant – Stoneacre Pantry.

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My First Nantucket Weekend!

This past weekend I had the opportunity to travel to Nantucket for the island’s annual Wine Festival! I worked the Saturday afternoon Grand Tasting pouring 90+ Cellars and Ironside Cellars, but the rest of the weekend was spent tasting wine and food, exploring Nantucket’s shops and restaurants, and drinking champagne. Lots of champagne.

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Jeannie and I hit the road Friday morning and JUST missed our high-speed ferry, but luckily we were able to walk onto a freight (aka slow) ferry so that we could get onto the island ASAP. Our next high-speed ferry option wouldn’t have had us on the island until about 6PM! The crew of the ship got a kick out of us for some reason and invited us up to steer the ship. Okay not actually steer, but I did get to sit in the captain’s chair and use binoculars!

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Getting My Marvelous Priorities Straight

I am blogging today from Mexico and seriously planned for the last week to title this post “Marvelous Mexico”. But I have other stuff on my mind today because I woke up the morning of my departure with yet another illness. Seriously, I never used to get sick and this is the second time in two weeks. Has anyone else ever moved from the suburbs to the city and suddenly found themselves getting sick more often? Let’s hope this isn’t a continuing trend.

Thanks Katie for hosting this link-up every week!

Whenever I go on vacation, I like to work out first thing in the morning so I can feel less guilty about the rest of the day just laying out in the sun, going outside my food/drink box a bit more, and being fairly inactive in general. Some people like to spend their vacations exploring their surroundings and doing outdoor activities. That’s fine, but to be honest I like to sit on my butt in the sun and go out to eat.

i just couldn’t not have a drink with the rest of my family to celebrate our arrival at the hotel, but it definitely knocked me out.

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Best of Each Month in 2013

Thanks for your feedback on yesterday’s post about my 2014 New Year’s resolution! I was hesitant to hit publish because I felt there were a few misconceptions you guys could get from the post. I do not think I’m ugly without makeup or my hair “done up”, and I also didn’t want anyone to think my resolution was vain. But this is my blog and it’s my resolution so I shared, and I’m glad I did. It seems that those who commented get that it’s about how I feel about myself, not how I look to others.

I have been debating for a few weeks now how I would recap 2013 on the blog. Last year I did a top 12 of 2012 but I really think it would be too hard to rank all the great stuff I got to do and the fabulous people I got to see this year. There is so much to look at in the year! So I decided to refine a bit and instead look at each month. I’m going to try my hardest to declare a favorite day/event/occurrence/etc for each and I’ll end up with a list of twelve things, but to be honest I still won’t do an accurate enough job of getting across how grateful I am for each and every person, place, or thing (noun?!) that made 2013 a year to remember.

January

The Mohegan Sun WineFest was a very special event for me! It was my second time there to help Mohegan promote the festival but this year I got to bring my foodie partner in crime Rachel. She got hooked and is taking her boyfriend back to this year’s event! I also met Kaitlin in person for the first time, and we shared a hug that made her boyfriend (now fiance!) think that we had known each other for year’s. It sure feels like it!

Me, Rachel, and our media passes!

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