Celebrating 8 Years Together

Even though we had to start back over at one last year, Chris and I are celebrating 8 years together today, and I think that is something worth celebrating.

This is one of the first pictures I have of us together. This was closing night of a show I musically directed at a community theater in Brooklyn our sophomore year of college. The cast and crew rented a limo for the night after the performance and we drove all around Manhattan until very early in the morning. I can't believe this was 8 years ago already, and I can't believe how young we look!!

 I think this was after a glass or two of arbor mist...yes. Arbor Mist.

I think this is actually the first picture taken of us. This is how cellphone pictures used to look!

I posted this last year and still love it today.

The Art Of A Good Marriage

Wilferd Arlan Peterson

Happiness in marriage is not something that just happens.

A good marriage must be created.

In marriage the little things are the big things.

It is never being too old to hold hands.

It is remembering to say "I love you" at least once a day.

It is never going to sleep angry.

It is at no time taking the other for granted;

the courtship should not end

with the honeymoon, it should continue through the years.

It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives.

It is standing together facing the world.

It is forming a circle of love that gathers the whole family.

It is doing things for each other, not in the attitude of duty or sacrifice,

but in the spirit of joy. It is speaking words of appreciation

and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.

It is not looking for perfection in each other.

It is cultivating flexibility, patience,

understanding and a sense of humour.

It is having the capacity to forgive.

It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow old.

It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.

It is establishing a relationship in which the independence is equal,

dependence is mutual and the obligation is reciprocal.

It is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner.

<3 here's to many more wonderful years

California Vacation Part 3: Napa Valley

Our second full day in San Francisco was our winery tour of Napa Valley. We arrived at the marketplace at 8:00am to meet our tour. We needed a quick breakfast, so we got an egg sandwich on a croissant and cappuccinos at a nearby place. Once we met up with our tour group, we piled onto a bus and made our way out to Napa.

On our way, we crossed over the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped for pictures. It was morning, so it was pretty gray, very windy, and where we stopped was NOT the best view. (Luckily, we stopped on the other side on the way back home, so I have better pictures later)

Our first stop was V. Sattui Winery, the ONLY winery in Napa that has its own marketplace. This was my favorite stop of the day. We tried 14 different wines here between the two of us and we were certainly feeling happy by the end of tasting.

Coincidentally, the person standing next to us at our tasting, and a part of our tour for the day, was also from New York and lived about 20 minutes away from us! We had a great time getting to know our new friend, Jan, and ended up ordering some wine with him to split the cost of shipping! After our tasting we needed fooood and luckily, this place had a ton of options. Look at all that cheese!

 This was one of the best sandwiches I had of the trip: Chicken Pesto panini

 Tomato, Mozzarella panini

 Desssertttsss...we didn't try any of these though

Next stop was Franciscan Esate winery.

Our third stop was Whitehall Lane Winery and Vineyards. This was my least favorite, mostly because the woman who led the tour was really snotty, and kept putting down the other wineries we went to. She thought she was funny...but she wasn't. They had a cool barrel room though!

Our last stop was Andretti Winery, owned by Mario Andretti himself. This was my second favorite vineyard of the day. It had such a beautiful, calm, European feel to it.

Our new friend, Jan!

I passed OUT on our drive back to San Francisco, so when I woke up, I was surprised to see we were approaching the Golden Gate Bridge. We were supposed to catch a ferry back to the city, which would take us under the Golden Gate Bridge. Unfortunately, we got stuck in some major Mother's Day traffic and missed the last ferry boat! So, we had to drive back into town. The only good thing about this was we were able to stop on the other side of the bridge for some MUCH better views.

We arrived back tired, a little hungover, hungry, had 3 bottles of wine in the mail for us, and a new friend!

For dinner, we stopped at Jack in the Box (because we had already reached our "classy" quota of the day) There, I had a "chicken fajita in a pita" teehee...I giggle every time I say that, and it was actually really good!

And that was our successful day 2 in San Fran!

California Vacation Part 2: San Francisco

After breakfast at Il Cane Rosso, we left the marketplace to find this child performer with quite a crowd going out on the sidewalk. He was amazing playing the trumpet and dancing, and such a cute kid!

We walked along the water and stopped at many places along the way.

Finally, we made it to pier 39, and saw the Sea Lions!

In a spontaneous decision, we bought tickets for a Duck Boat tour of San Francisco (Everyone should ride on a duck boat at least once in their lives, right?!) Before that, we had passes to the Aquarium of the Bay at Pier 39. I got to go inside an aquarium tank (sort of).

 And I got to pet a starfish!

After the aquarium, it was time to go on our duck boat tour!

We got some great views of major sites in San Fran including the Oakland Bay Bridge

AT&T Park where the Giants play baseball, and lots of various artists sculptures:

After the duck boat, we were hungry, so we went on the hunt for an empanada truck, Tanguito, our tour guide recommended as having the best empanadas! These indeed were AMAZING

Corn and Cheese empanada....amazingness

Also down at Fisherman's Wharf is the famous Boudin Bakery, known for their sourdough bread! We had lunch there the Monday after we arrived, and it was very good:

That about covers Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf. Next up: We spend the day in Napa Valley!

1 Year Anniversary Celebration

While I work out  few more kinks at MyEverydayHarmony.com, I am going to be blogging here from now on. This especially makes sense now because I have so many wedding events coming up in the next few months: showers, bachelorette parties, weddings...I will have lots to share! So be sure to keep checking here regularly for updates.

As you know, we celebrated one year of marriage on Monday! It was a major bummer to get up Monday morning and have to go to work...but since our wedding date isn't recognized as a federal holiday...off to work we went. When we came home, we exchanged cards (and Chris got me dark chocolate, yay!)

Then got to work on making our fresh ravioli from Eataly tossed in our favorite pasta topping ever. I bought a bag of dry pasta seasoning at the marketplace in Florence last year and it is absolutely the best thing ever. You just heat it up with some oil and then mix with any pasta. It's definitely one of our favorite dinners. Unfortunately, I cannot find anything else like it here, so I'll have to wait until I can go back to Florence to get more.

We also popped open a bottle of Chianti from the wine and cooking class we took in Tuscany! I have been steadily enjoying a glass with dinner each night this week. After dinner it was cake time. Awhile back, I had thought that the cake in our freezer wasn't actually our cake. Turns out what I was seeing was just the black band across the bottom and it was in fact our cake! Wahoo! We cut the cake together for old times sake:

And then we shared a piece.

I have to say...this cake held up so well! It was still really good, and didn't have freezer burn at all.

Just in case our cake was bad, and we didn't like it...I ordered a small cake from the same bakery. They make miniature wedding cakes for $8.50 for anniversaries and the cake was even cuter than I could have imagined!

Not surprisingly....we liked this fresh cake a whole lot better and pretty much demolished it after dinner with a glass of milk

I can't believe it's been a year already. I've enjoyed every minute of being married and look forward to many more anniversaries with my husband. Also in case you're wondering: so far, our second year feels a lot like the first. :)

How did/will you spend your one year anniversary?

1 Year Anniversary!

I can't even believe it's been a year already: HAPPY 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY to my amazing, wonderful husband! We had a great past week celebrating in California, where we rode a Cable Car, visited Alcatraz Island, toured some wineries in Napa, and acted like giddy children at Universal Studios!

Tonight, we plan on exchanging cards over our spinach ravioli dinner from New York's EATALY, a bottle of wine from our honeymoon, and of course, have some 1 year old wedding cake!!

Click here to read about our wedding day

Happy 7 Years to my Wonderful Husband

Though we now have to start back allll the way back at 1...today  is our 7 year anniversary, and I still think that's something worth celebrating, don't you?!

The Art Of A Good Marriage

Wilferd Arlan Peterson

Happiness in marriage is not something that just happens.

A good marriage must be created.

In marriage the little things are the big things.

It is never being too old to hold hands.

It is remembering to say "I love you" at least once a day.

It is never going to sleep angry.

It is at no time taking the other for granted;

the courtship should not end

with the honeymoon, it should continue through the years.

It is having a mutual sense of values and common objectives.

It is standing together facing the world.

It is forming a circle of love that gathers the whole family.

It is doing things for each other, not in the attitude of duty or sacrifice,

but in the spirit of joy. It is speaking words of appreciation

and demonstrating gratitude in thoughtful ways.

It is not looking for perfection in each other.

It is cultivating flexibility, patience,

understanding and a sense of humour.

It is having the capacity to forgive.

It is giving each other an atmosphere in which each can grow old.

It is a common search for the good and the beautiful.

It is establishing a relationship in which the independence is equal,

dependence is mutual and the obligation is reciprocal.

It is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner.

4 month Anniversary!

I've been a bad blogger this week, sorry about that!

Last night I came home to these little beauties!

It was our four month anniversary!! I was quite surprised and happy to see these, especially after the awful, terrible commute home I had. I wish I could say that I prepared a wonderful dinner for the occasion....but we still had a perfectly romantic, delightful dinner of....

Pizza Hut. I know...I know...the horror right?! First off - I can't even remember the last time I had Pizza Hut. Truly, I think it was Elementary School or Jr. High. Secondly: I think it's absolutely sacreligious to eat Pizza Hut when you live in New York City where there is amazing pizza on every corner - even in the outskirts of Queens, where we live. We have an amazing pizzeria right around the corner from us that we frequent! However, Chris fell victim to an advertisement on pandora yesterday and decided we had to give it a try - he's exactly the type of person those advertisers are looking for! And I, falling victim to the beautiful flowers that were just presented to me, caved. (He's so smart) So we tried it....and were thoroughly disappointed...and I think we can safely say that Pizza Hut won't be a dinner option again so I'm glad we got that out of our system. Still is was kind of a fun and spontaneous evening. Add a glass of wine and the premiere of Modern Family - and I'd say it was a pretty awesome 4 month anniversary!

As far as bad pizza goes....do you like Pizza Hut or Domino's better?

Anniversary, Flowers and a Race

Happy October!! I think it's safe to say that Fall has officially arrived. I had both a relaxing and intense weekend. Firstly as you know, our 6 year anniversary was on Friday. I told you we had BIG PLANS, and I meant it. We had decided early on last week that all we wanted to do was stay. in. We have been running around nearly every weekend for the past month. Plus, I'm going to be in PA for the next 2 weekends so I really just wanted to stay in, have a nice dinner, and watch movies with Chris...which is just what we did! I came home, put on some Eva Cassidy, which is some of the most calming music in the world, poured myself a glass of pinot grigio, and made mashed sweet potatoes, risotto, and meatloaf (I had made and froze the meatloaf a few weeks before so that was just a matter of reheating, but still it was homemade!).

I loooove Risotto

We sat down and had a nice meal together. No rushing around, no t.v., no having to get ready for work tomorrow, just us. After dinner I rushed over to Stop and Shop because I had a hankering for pumpkin treats this weekend...I'm in full Fall mode. So I bought everything I needed to make pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I made the cookies while we watched Get Him to the Greek (sorry if you liked it, but that was the worst movie I've ever seen) and went to bed at the decent hour of 12:30!

On Saturday, my parents came to spend the weekend. We headed right out to my flower appointment at Pedestals in Long Island. My parents got a little stuck in traffic coming out to New York and we were juuust going to make our 2:00 appointment if we skipped lunch. So, I called pedestals and asked if it was at all possible to push my appointment back to 2:30. They told me it was no problem. However, when I arrived...I felt rather rushed through the appointment because we quote "only have half the amount of time to do what normally takes an hour" unquote (I realize the actual "   ''s are unnecessary in this instance). If I knew I was going to be rushed through my appointment, I would have just had my parents meet me there! So not only was I extremely overwhelmed by picking out my flowers (because I don't really know what I want), I was a little annoyed, too.

We sat down with the consultant and he definitely knew what he was doing, but I'm realizing picking flowers means going by blind faith that the person's suggestions will look good, because heck if I know what any of this will look like! It's very "we can use this type of flower, with this filler, with this accent, and put in a tall vase that will sort of look like this" and I have pretty much 12 different images floating around in my head as to how this could look. I can only hope that I trust the consultant (which I did) with every suggestion he made and say "Yes, that's fine." Luckily, I would see a mock-up of my centerpieces 3 or 4 months before, so if I wanted to make changes I absolutely could.

No surprise here, but I'm going to check out a few more florists before actually signing anything. Not only to do some price comparison shopping, but for "idea" comparison shopping. Think about it: I was able to walk out of there with someone's complete floral vision of my day on paper. If I can get some other people's "visions" based on my colors and what I need, I can pull from each of those and hopefully have a better understanding of what actually is "my vision". So though it was overwhelming, I'm glad I at least have an understanding now of what I need for the wedding, what flowers fit well into my color scheme, and what to look for when I'm scouring over pictures. It was very helpful.

On Sunday I ran the DIVA Half Marathon on Long Island with my friends Mandy and Kate!!!I know this is supposed to be all about wedding, BUT I can't not talk about this amazing experience! Plus, all this running has to do with staying in shape for the big ol' dress fitting in January! We were fabulous and I couldn't be prouder of all three of us, especially Kate and Mandy for completing their very first (of hopefully many) half marathon!

The last half marathon I fully ran was the More Half Marathon in Central Park last April 2009 (I bailed last minute on this past April because of our engagement party, and before that in the Queens Half Marathon my knee bothered me so much I had to walk the last 4 miles!) Though I didn't get an "official" time for the More Half Marathon (due to excessive heat they had to call it a "fun run"), I'm pretty sure I clocked in at about 2:11. I wanted to at least do better than that this time around...so I was aiming for 2:10.

My official time ended up being 2:03:06!!! I seriously did not even remotely expect to knock off that many minutes from last time. All that crazy interval training and tempo runs I did following Hal Higdon's training schedule really paid off without me even realizing it! Here was my official time and placement:

I am so happy with my time and definitely have a new goal for my next one: To break 2 hours! I would absolutely do the DIVA half marathon again next year. It was a lot of fun, it was a great smooth, flat course, it was awesome getting a tiara and boa for the last mile (even though I held my boa because the feathers kept flying into my mouth!), it was very empowering, and I'd love to try and recruit more friends to do it with me and make it a tradition.


Read all about my whole experience running the DIVA Half Marathon on my running blog by clicking here.