Weekend Fun

I have to say this past weekend was one of the best weekends I have had in a while. It was completely unplanned, spontaneous and everything you want right smack in the middle of two crazy work weeks. My weekend started a little early with a farewell lunch at work as one of our team members has moved on to another roll outside the company. One of the great things I love about where I work, is they aren't bitter or rude when someone decides to move on with their career. They are so supportive it is truly amazing! After that the afternoon was a blur and I headed up to Soho for some Restaurant Week action! If you don't know what restaurant week is you can browse here and read allll about it. They have it in a bunch of other cities around the country. Basically, you get to dine out at places you wouldn't normally eat at for a set price (lunch and dinner) and enjoy an appetizer, entree and dessert. It's pretty great and we always make a point to take advantage of the deal. Plus it just gives us ANOTHER excuse to eat and drink with friends!

We headed to Mercer Kitchen in Soho and it was delish! Our apps were actually bigger than our entree, but I didn't mind since I was already full! Hence the name, we sat in the restaurant as normal but the kitchen was wide open for us to watch if we wanted to. It was just a different atmosphere to enjoy, and that we did - duh!

Saturday morning we decided to wake up early and head down to the beach for the day. My parents had headed down the night before and since I had no plans it was the best day to do it. The boy, my cousin, my brother and I loaded up the truck and headed down the highway. Unfortunately we got stuck in some serious traffic, but what better way to pass the time than with the license plate game! We were hysterical laughing the entire ride down - we aren't competitive at all. Sarcasm. My brother ended up half in the front seat at one point to see a plate! It definitely make the traffic time move quickly and to top it off I won. :)

Once we finally made it down parking was a nightmare but the beach was a dream. I love laying in the sun chatting with the fam and just enjoying being outside! I am such a summer babe. It stated to get a little cloudy and I think we were getting antsy from sitting for so long we went off to play some mini golf. Again - I swear we are not competitive. Winna Winna Chicken Dinna!!!! Loser had to buy a round of drinks and coincidentally three of us tied and my brother lost by one stroke. Ha! I am still laughing about it. There is something about the little brother and kicking his but that still makes me grin from ear to ear! Never forget I'm the big sister!

We headed over to another beach town to spend some time with my other cousins and my aunts and uncle. Like I said I was planning on spending the day, which turned into drinking all night and not leaving until 8pm Sunday night. I haven't laughed so hard, cried from all the laughs and just enjoyed spending time with family like I did this weekend. It was like we were all 7 years old again and drinking - our parent were good parents I promise. We had races to the ocean, races on the beach walking path - okay we may be a little competitive - and my cousins and I just had the best time together. I can't wait for this week to fly so we can have another weekend just as fun and just as competitive.

Your all going down on mini golf round 2!!

Anyone else hit the beach this weekend??

Kitty Purry

To say the weekend after last was exhausting is an understatement, however it was a blast! A few months ago the boy had begged me if we could go see ..(cough cough) Katy Perry. Sorry babe, your secret is out! He has a thing for her big boobies blue eyes. As the good girlfriend that I am I look for some tickets and happen to find some not so terribly priced floor seats. I mean if the guy has the hots for her the least I could do was give him the perfect opportunity for them to fall in love at first eye sight right? So off we went, July 11 to see his other girlfriend.

 

Our seats were actually 52469658942 times better than I had thought they were when we first bought them, and now that we were sitting in them I was getting exciting! Her show was actually really entertaining, and it doesn't hurt that I know every single song she sings which always makes for a good time! It was a little strange to be at my first concert where I felt like the old lady in the front rows, but it was well worth it! The only thing that was a little sucky about being so close was that she was either in the center of the stage a little too far away for being able to touch the part of the stage by us, I swear I'm not trying to sound spoiled :) or she was behind us at the end of the catwalk. But I promise down below you can see how close she actually was to us when she strolled on by!

Overall we had a great time, boy was in love for a few hours, but sadly he ended up coming home with me! Ha! Stay tuned for the second half of this party weekend!!

Anyone ever been to a Katy Perry concert before??

Jeff Koons Balloons

Is it seriously the end of July already?! This summer is flying by and I can't seem to catch up. I did get a nice relaxing weekend - finally. The weather was warm, but not our typical hot and humid summer days. My and the boy took advantage and decided to spend the day in the city. Going into the city is the best in the summer, especially on the weekends. All the Manhattan-ites rush out on Friday afternoon to head to the shore or the Hampton's and the city becomes calm, well a form of calm, with less traffic and a little less crowd.

 

Saturday we decided to take the bus in, since there was no traffic but our driver had other plans. Now I have taken the bus an uncountable amount of times into NYC and it's the same route every time, traffic or no traffic there are no detours made. This driver took us up and down and around all over the place before heading into the tunnel and once we were out of the tunnel into Manhattan when the sign said "Port Authority Buses - Left" she went right. We went towards downtown, right on 33rd street then up 10th Ave then we stopped - stopped? Where the heck?! We ended up getting off the bus because I had had enough and I have been in this city enough to know I can get out and walk on this beautiful Saturday afternoon than drive myself nuts thinking about what this driver is doing.

 

I swear I am not a backseat driver. Swear.

 

As we started walking around, we came across the Hells Kitchen Market. I absolutely love little markets like this! You never know what you are going to find and even if you go back every week, there is always something different to see. Some call it junk, some call it treasure. We saw so many great things that were so old! And the gentleman who was working this stand had so many stories to tell about some of the pieces. It really makes you appreciate things more when they have a special meaning attached to them.

The boy really LOVES photography and has been getting pretty serious about it the last few years. We have been all over the place looking for old cameras and we always come up short or they are way too expensive but we have never come across something as amazing as this! There were so so so many old cameras that he just about fell over in love..shock..no definitely love. The pricing wasn't even that bad and I sure we could have negotiated something. Unfortunately, since we weren't expecting a market stop we didn't have any cash on us. :( Boo! But the market is here every week so we plan on taking another trip to pick up one of these bad boys.

 

Next stop, Rockefeller Center to see the Jeff Koons masterpiece! Jeff Koons is an America artist most known for his stainless steel balloon animals - or the Jay-Z song Picasso Baby "Jeff Koons balloon, I just want to blow up".  Kidding...kinda. Anyway, he put this scultpure of sorts in the center where the Christmas Tree usually takes it's place and it was huge! I know the tree is huge, as it should be, but this was a lot bigger than I had originally thought. The piece is called Split-Rocker, as you can see it looks like the head of a rocking horse split in half. Which is it, the left is the head of a toy rocking horse and the right is the head of a toy dinosaur and it meant to look ill-aligned and not perfectly symetrical. It is made up of about 50,000 flower and if you get close enough you can look inside and see an entire internal irrigation system to feed the flowers for the next several months.

 

 

I know all you OCD bloggers are going nuts that it is not perfectly aligned, and to be honest I wanted to jump up there are push that rocking horse's nose up to meet the dino, but it just makes the piece what it is. Just keep scrolling it's almost over. 

 

Some of you may have already seen this photo on instagram (if not you can follow the adventures @cdelv2) but I had to again show this cutie and myself in the center of it all!

 

Since the weather was so nice out we decided to walk around and we made our way down to The Highline. Surprisingly, many people don't know what that is. Thank god I'm here huh? If you ever visit New York you must take a relaxing stroll on The Highline. It used to be an old freight rail line that was converted into a public park. There are flowers and plants, grass areas and benches for anyone to come up and just get out of that "city" feel of things. Although you can still see the tall buildings all around you, it is just peaceful enough to almost forget you are in the concrete jungle.



As we were walking through, we found so much street art. Some call it street art others call it graffiti and mass destruction - to each their own. I call it street art and some of it is absolutely beautiful. When you begin to really follow artists who do such pieces, it is so fun to recognize their art throughout the city and all the hard to reach places they manage to get to. Here are some pieces we found just while walking The Highline.

That gentleman is not street art, but a street performer. It is amazing that you can visit someplace in New York a million times, and every time you go you will see someone or something different. We came across an amazing chello player while walking The Highline and he was just that...amazing. I came home last night and Googled him and apparenly he is pretty popular to passerbys.

The Highline left us in the Meat Packing District and we decided we were pretty hungry, so we sat down a little restaurant for some dinner and just enjoyed our city day as it came to end. I love coming here, and like I said, no matter how many times visit there is always something or someone different to see. I will never get bored of this place. Ever.

How was your weekend?!
Do anything different or the same or anything at all?!