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