brooklyn, brooklyn, take me in.

sometimes i miss new york. and i realize that sounds crazy, considering how many times i complained about living there. but sometimes i miss getting a slice of pizza from a certain place near our apartment, or a cup of coffee from a deli on the way to work. sometimes i miss the random cobble stone streets and grabbing a magazine from a street vendor. sometimes (um, all the time) i miss having a subway stop on every corner, and sometimes (um, all the time) i miss how in new york, i'm not bitchy...at least i'm not any more bitchy than the next person. sometimes it's hard to be the only person who walks really, really fast and sometimes being landlocked makes me want to scream. sometimes i miss the feeling that something really big is happening nearby. sometimes i miss gypsy cabs and walking across the brooklyn bridge and wearing whatever i want (usually something crazy) and having no one so much as bat an eye. i miss the spot where i got engaged. i miss the F train. i miss silent raves in union square. but mostly...i miss the brooklyn flea and that one vendor who sells vintage yves st. laurent blouses.

new york state of mind

our little weekend jaunt to new york was so fun.

we walked around the village. we had drinks on the lower east side. we split a ginormous cupcake and we had a yummy brunch at the montauk club (where we're having our wedding recepion).

i'm looking forward to going back new york for our wedding in just 40 days!

brooklyn

jim and i are in brooklyn for the weekend...

....finalizing wedding plans and all that jazz.

in a taxi on the BQE this evening, jim looks at me and says, "i will always love new york because it reminds me of you."

and i will always love new york because it's where we fell in love.

we went on a horse drawn carriage ride...

...through central park with jim's family on saturday.

at the end of our ride our driver (is that what he's a called? a driver?) got out of the carriage to take our picture from the sidwalk. while he was snapping away, our horse decided it was time to go and started clomp clomp clopming down 5th avenue. molly, scott, jim, and i were all, HALP! WE WANT TO GET OFF THIS RIDE!

it was all good in the end. but secretly? i wish i could have ridden the horse to the country to live with a nice family on a farm. he looked sad and unnatural next to all the beeping cars and dirty buses. ugh. heart hurts.

cupcaking

i went to Magnolia Bakery (first time!) last night to meet an old friend and catch up over cupcakes.

(if the name sounds vaguely familiar to you it's because Magnolia is the place Carrie Bradshaw made famous in 2000 which then kicked off a big cupcake craze which, according to the New York Times, has spread to the Middle East. viva la cupcake!)

i had a vanilla cupcake with chocolate buttercream frosting.


(there are two because i had to bring one home for my fiance. awwwww)

my friend went a different route and got the mini red velvet cheesecake.



and you know what? we weren't that impressed! i mean...the cakes were good. (let's be honest...anything frosted is good.) but they weren't that good. i think it was the frosting...i don't think i'm a buttercream kind of girl so much as a "this is so sweet i think my back molars just fell out and i've developed type 2 diabetes" sort of girl.

so i think i need to find my most favorite cupcake in all of NYC.

possible stops on the tour will include:

Magnolia Bakery (been, obv, but we shall go for my cupcake tasting teammates)
Crumbs Bake Shop
Buttercup Bake Shop
Cupcake Cafe (Sharon, have you and i already been here? i forget.)
Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery
Polka Dot Cake Studio

who's with me?

Mohonky honk bodonka donk

i was going to post some pics from my work retreat earlier, but i left my camera in a cab on my way home! lucky for me, i was sharing a ride with Kelley and she saved it for me. thanks, Kelley!

anyway, work retreat. it was super fun! it was a lot of work during the day (those video games aren't going to just sell themselves) and a lot of play at night. because that's how we roll.

on our way upstate to the Mohonk Mountain House, one of my coworkers told me the hotel we were staying at was the one from The Shining. turned out that was not true, but i sort of believed him because...






...it's a little creepy.

but it was also very pretty.







it was nice to see all my coworkers and it was nice to get away from the city for a while.

it was also nice to come back to NYC, jump in a cab, and have the cabbie give me a big eye roll when asked to go make two stops in brooklyn. ahhh, home!

i heart new york because...

...sometimes there are just CUPCAKE TRUCKS parked on the side of the street.



happy friday! eat a cupcake today!

fair enough

Colorful New York

i'm heading out of town this weekend for Jim's family reunion in Pennsylvania.

thought it would be a good idea to soak up a little NYC before i go...








i heart NY! (and my Apple white iPhone who took most of these pics!)

subway art

every single subway ad in new york city gets defaced. seriously, i've never seen one left intact. and usually the vandals are totally uncreative...adding mustaches to pictures of pretty women, coloring teeth black on a toothy smile, maybe adding a hairy mole or two. amateur stuff, right? but i found one defaced subway ad that is AMAZING.



so if you're not from NYC, i'll explain...the original ad is one of those "safety on the subway" campaigns showing a man walking into the subway car and holding the doors open (a no-no). our creative vandal took the face of Harry Potter from one of the movie ads in the station and pasted it over the door holder. i think the wizard's hat and wand is a nice touch too. now the words..."Not even magic can bring the fare down" refers to the recent increase in subway fare. the green letters were taken from some very wordy ad hanging next to this one and pasted on.

i stand in front of this ad every day while i wait for the G train in the Carroll Street station. (and maybe i touched it once just to make sure it's real.) and i think other people must admire our creative vandal's work too because it hasn't been defaced further.

p.s. i think this person's work is totally inspired and i think maybe one of his/her's biggest inspirations was how freakin' bored a person can get while waiting for the G train on off-peak hours.

apparently several trees grow in brooklyn

more pics from our adventure at the brooklyn botanical gardens...


(jim looking adorable in the Japanese garden)








(this is how i like my nature...pretty, with a couple apartment builds in plain view.)










(kiddie garden. love the bunny sign!)


(jim gets his ESPN fix on taxi tv.)


(me looking forward to a nap in front of Law & Order.)


(proof that i sometimes wear jeans!)

flowerific saturday

jim and i went to say hello to the flowers at the brooklyn botanical gardens today.



all that nature and fresh air really wiped me out. we came home and i promptly passed out in front of an old episode of Law & Order.

hope everyone is having a lovely saturday!

Pirates on the high seas!

...or maybe just a boat full of tourists on the Hudson.

(we snapped this pic from the Staten Island Ferry a couple weekends ago.)