A Day in the City

Daniel and I traveled to NYC on Saturday for a day trip. We had the chance to go because of our work offering bus tickets into the city for $25 round trip. I loved the city my previous two times visiting and knew I couldn't pass up a deal like that so I bought us tickets.

It was about a two hour drive into the city. It's still odd for me to think that I live that close! We got to the city around 11:30 and stayed until 7 pm. Besides the fact that it started raining around noon and didn't stop even when we left, we had a delightful day.

Our NYC day in a nutshell:

First we visited the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. I don't have any pictures from the 9/11 Memorial and Museum out of respect because it just didn't feel right to publicize what I was witnessing in the museum. Hearing the voice recordings from that day and seeing artifacts from the buildings brought me to tears. The Memorial and Museum were so well done and so respectful. It really just made the attacks of that day seem so much more unreal.

On our way to and from the Memorial and Museum, we wandered around NYC on the streets and subways. We wound up at this little hole in the wall Falafel restaurant that Daniel found on google. It was so small it only had enough space to order! It was delicious though.

Christmas trees for sell NYC style -- on the side of the street!

We also got to see the famous tree in Rockefeller Center. It was raining so we didn't get a good picture together but the tree itself was breathtaking. Probably the only thing I've scene in NYC that the movies didn't lie about in size!

(Wizards of Waverly Place, anyone? Daniel didn't get it)

Radio City Music Hall and Time Square were both really packed areas and the umbrellas didn't help the chaos of people. We played a lot of umbrella wars.

Chrysler Building looking awesome against the rainy sky.

I wanted to find a pastry shop so badly. I had my heart set on Magnolia Bakery, but it was packed, so we googled some places and found Paris Baguette. It was delicious! Daniel and I ate the macarons (each for the first time!) on the bus ride home after having our delicious bento boxes.

Overall we had a wonderful wet day. At the end of it I was sufficiently soaked (you can just see the water on my face above!) but extremely happy. I hope we can find some way to make a trip back soon especially since it's so close!

Dean's List VoxBox

I was selected for Influenster's Dean's List VoxBox! This is my second box of goodies to try from Influenster, and I have to say, it was my favorite one. The products in this box were things that I could see myself buying if I came across them in the store, and now that I have owned them I know I will be buying them again.

The items in the box were:

• Playtex Tampons
• Airheads Bites
• Luden's lozenges 
• Softlips Cube
• Sinful Colors #NoTextRed Polish
• KISS Looks So Natural Lashes 
• FriXion Clicker (Erasable Pens)

My favorite items out of the bunch have to be the FriXion pens, Sinful Colors polish, Luden's and the KISS Looks So Natural lashes.

First off, the FriXion pens... they actually work! They are erasable pens that are actually erasable--they aren't like the crappy "erasable" pens I remember having to buy when I was in elementary school! 

The Sinful Colors polish is just a no brainer for me. I already loved Sinful Colors when I happened to find them in the store a few years ago. It's so cheap but is a great quality polish and they have probably every color of the rainbow. I'm excited to have their #NoTextRed color, especially since they are raising awareness to the dangers of texting and driving with the color.

Luden's was already a favorite product of mine. Whenever I get a sore throat, this is my go to product. I usually got the cherry flavor, and I like it, but it did get to be a bit too much cherry if I was sick a lot. I love that Luden's decided to come out with new flavors. The watermelon stays true to the original Luden's that I fell in love with and it's great. I've already needed to have a few drops because of scratchy throat due to weather changing. I don't even mind however, because they taste great and work so well.

I have never used false lashes beyond the crappy kind they sell at the Halloween store, and even those I think I only used once. That's why I was so happy to get my hands on KISS Looks So Natural Lashes! The only thing I was worried about was applying them. Turns out, it's pretty easy even for beginners! All I had to do was pull the lashes from the packaging, put on the glue on with the easy applicator, wait for it to turn blue, and stick them on my eyelids right above my existing lashes. I also used an eyelash curler to curl my natural lashes into the false ones. You can see the final result below:

It was really fun to wear them for a night out.

All of the products in this VoxBox were great and if you happen to pick one of them up the next time you're at the store, I know you won't be disappointed!

**I received all products free from Influenster to test and/or review. All opinions are my own**

Adopting Opal

If you know me, you know I am a total cat lover. I've grown up around them my whole life and always knew I would want a kitty of my own when I 'entered the real world'. So when I moved in with Daniel, one of my first questions was, "When can we get a cat?"

Fast forward a few months and Daniel decided to surprise me with changing his answer from 'we're not ready' to 'yes' (and without me even asking first!)

We thought that we would go visit the Humane Society to meet some kitties and see if any were right for us, but before we did that we knew we needed to get supplies. I decided to look at prices of things on Petsmart.com that weekend and found out that they were having a sale on a lot of cat stuff so we decided to go pick up supplies at the store.

When we showed up at Petsmart, a local rescue, called Kitty Colony, had set up in the back of the store with cats up for adoption. I asked Daniel if we could look because I saw one that had a beautifully colored coat. I went up and talked to the lady who helps run the rescue and found out the kitty's name was Opal. She asked me if I wanted to hold her and as soon as I did, I knew she was meant to be ours.

A week later, Daniel and I returned to Petsmart to take our precious Opal home with us. We are so happy we found her and she seems pretty happy to have found us as well. I have never heard a kitten purr so much! She also follows us around like our shadow--sometimes it's hard to walk because she's weaving in and out between our legs.

Today we came home from work after leaving her alone for 8 hours and I swear it was like her Christmas morning when we came home. We got so much affection from her.

Having a kitten to come home to makes me so happy. I love her so much already and I still feel like I barely know her. I'm so excited that we found Opal to have with us on our adventure.

 Name: Opal

Breed: Siamese Mix

Age: 6 months

The Sweetest Place on Earth

Over the weekend, Daniel and I took a trip to Hershey, PA to partake in all things roller coaster and chocolate related.

To everyone back in Georgia (or anywhere else) who might be confused about the roller coaster part, Hershey is home not only to chocolate but also to Hershey Park which is a theme park based on the sweet treats produced by the company. Daniel and I were able to snag some discounted tickets through his mom's work, so we drove the 45 minutes to Chocolate Town, U.S.A. and made a day of it. 

The roller coasters at the park were so much fun. It was nice to ride coasters that I've never been on before. Daniel had only been to Hershey Park once before and it was when he was in high school so the coasters were almost new to him as well. The nice thing about the discounted tickets was that it was for a day when the park was opened outside of regular hours, so we didn't have very many times where we had to wait to ride. In fact, we road 3 roller coasters within the first hour of being there, and on one of them we were the only ones on the ride/the first riders of the day!

I also tried my luck at a crane game to prove to Daniel that I have certain crane skills that allow me to win more often than not. I was able to prove myself and win a cute little kiss doll much to Daniel's surprise.

Of course, no trip to Hershey would be complete without some type of chocolate consumption. So we ordered the best they had to offer. Deep-fried candy!

 

I ordered the fried Kit Kat (pictured above) and Daniel ordered the fried Reese's. 

After riding nearly (we didn't ride the Super Dooper Looper) every roller coaster in the park, Daniel and I called it a day before the masses decided to exit at park closing. Since we still had some time left, we decided to check out some shops. I was also determined to find some of the oversized candy I had heard about. We wound up finding our way to Hershey's Chocolate World which is just outside the amusement park. There we went on the free Chocolate Tour and found huge amounts of oversized chocolates. There was also cool chocolates like macadamia nut kisses!

After such a great day, we ate in a restaurant in downtown Hershey called Chocolate Avenue Grill and got to drive down by the actual Hershey Factory. One of the coolest thing about downtown Hershey is that the lights are Hershey Kisses!

We had a wonderful day exploring such an iconic town. I can't wait to go back!

The Perfect Autumn Playlist

With the first day of Autumn just around the corner (Tuesday to be exact!), I thought I would create a playlist of some music that I'm really into right now. They're perfect for listening to while driving around with your windows down letting the cool air whip through your hair.

You can listen to the music on a Spotify playlist here. I hope you enjoy it! 

Do you have any songs that you are in love with right now?

Operation Flying Fish: Success!

Last weekend Sarah, one of my best friends since the 6th grade, came to visit me in Lancaster!

We had a very Lancaster-y weekend complete with Amish, cows, the farmer's market and good food!

Some wonderful farmer's market finds! Sarah picked out the most perfect bouquet of wildflowers (painted with the Waterlogue app above) and we had a lot of fun arranging all the jalapeños in phrases.

We stumbled upon the greatest little shop with all kinds of vintage cuteness and then ran across the street in the rain to this equally cool lunch spot. They were playing Pat Metheny on vinyl, so obviously I was impressed.

We also got super fancy with our gin drinking.

Also what weekend isn't complete without seeing a giant plaster cow being towed on a trailer through downtown? 

 I had a wonderful weekend and am so thankful that I got to share my new town with Sarah!

Goodbye August, Hello September!

August has been a busy month for me. For one thing, I started my "big girl job" as a chemist on August 4th, but I also moved to a new place and have found myself starting to explore and put down roots. Here are my top favorite moments from this past month (in no particular order).

1) Getting the chance to see Sam for the first time in two years (since we met at the 51st Biennial Conclave) || We went out to the Farmer's Market, mini-golfed in the middle of no where and got a delicious dinner at Lancaster Brewing Company.

2) The Aberdeen Ironbirds Game with Delaware Valley Pro Chapter || I feel so fortunate to live so close to an Alpha Chi Sigma Professional Chapter.

3) Daniel's Family Visiting || We went mini golfing and visited Shady Maple.

4) Turkey Hill Experience || All the ice cream and ice tea you can eat/drink!

(If you don't know what Turkey Hill is it's because it's only found in these states)

August was a great month, I can't wait to see what September will hold.

Homemade Peach Cobbler

A cooking post is not something that I ever thought I would post about on this blog. Mostly because I'm pretty new to the cooking world, considering I'm 22 years old but have only really cooked for the last three years. However, I had a meeting at work Tuesday where there was a potluck gathering of food. I wanted to impress my new coworkers with something inherently Georgia, so my mind set to work.

I soon realized that I should just make something, because after all, cooking is not much unlike chemistry--only you get to eat the product at the end of the experiment! I've been obsessed with the farmer's market peaches and decided I should make a cobbler (to give credit where credit is due, Daniel helped me make this decision)! I found a recipe online (here) that is the recipe for Mary Mac's Tea Room's peach cobbler recipe. And thus my cobbler adventure began!

First I gathered up my ingredients.

Things to make a successful peach cobbler: be southern, love peaches, and have a "can-do attitude." ((The being southern part is actually optional))

Next I had to prepare the peaches.

This was perhaps the messiest I've ever gotten while cooking. The peaches were so good and ripe they had juices going everywhere

Then I prepared the dough for the top of the cobbler (twice, because I misread the instructions the first time).

Then I kept hoping this wouldn't turn out awful while slathering the top with butter (this part came only after slathering the inside with butter). 

And I baked it for an hour and have my apartment smell like the beautifulness that can only come from homemade cobbler.

Then I pulled it out of the oven and marveled at the fact that I seemed to have made a perfectly good peach cobbler, just like Mary Mac's. 

And the next day during the meeting, I realized it tasted just as good as Mary Mac's too.

And to quote the lovely Hannah Hart because this did take me all night to make and sometimes it's just better to make a poor man's peach cobbler because we've all got stuff to do...

"Do you ever notice that when people make things from scratch that suddenly means they're better than you? Just 'cause you made it from scratch doesn't mean I couldn't, I just didn't, cause I was doing other things."

Moving & Settling in Lancaster

I have completed the biggest move of my life thus far. I drove my little Beetle bug 755 miles while my dad drove a budget truck full of my stuff from Atlanta, GA to Lancaster, PA. It was quite a feat that we completed in two days.

The first day started with a sassy gay homeless man helping us parallel park the Budget truck on Ponce de Leon. He got out and stopped traffic in the middle of the road and everything without us even asking! My mom referred to him as our personal parking assistant and we tipped him once we were parked.

Before and after pictures of the Budget truck. The movers packed everything so well it looks deceptively empty!

Probably my favorite moving picture. My dad chilling on the couch on Ponce while the movers pack the truck.

After the movers packed the truck, we began our trip. My mom rode with me in my bug and my dad led the way with the Budget truck. (My mom and I switched off for the last few hours until we reached our hotel in Stafford, VA)

I documented each state line with a video posted to my Snapchat story, which was quite fun--especially when my mom struggled to work Snapchat. I was going to go through and save all the videos, but I forgot within the 24 hours it gives you because of unpacking and spending the last few days with my parents that I would get until a good while.

My parents stayed in the Marriott in downtown Lancaster so while they were here we walked around the city and enjoyed a bit of the nightlife.

Hanging out at the Marriott Bar waiting for my dad to get ready for dinner. 

One of the coolest restaurants ever--especially to me with my newspaper background in high school.

The next day we showed my parents around the countryside a bit in search of covered bridges and took them by where I'll be starting work in August.

I've been settling into Daniel and I's apartment. There's only two boxes left, but there's still a lot to do until we both feel completely comfortable with where everything is. As far as moving states stuff, I've already gotten my PA license and everything is set up for my first day of work! I'm working on the last leg of my to-do list which includes everything involving getting a PA license plate and then I'll be a real resident here on paper. (I keep imagining people seeing my GA license plate and thinking "Daaayummm you drove a long way!")

It's so surreal that my life has taken me on this journey. I'm still in disbelief that I'm here most days. Even in my dreams, I still dream of and in Georgia. Despite my love (and a little bit of missing) for Georgia, I'm so excited to make root here in such a beautiful new city and place!