Tag Archives: slice of life

A beautiful day full of love.

Posted by sunshineandsometea in Friends & Family and tagged with , , , , , ,

As a follow up to my last post, I thought I would share some of my favorite pics from the beautiful wedding we attended on Sunday!  It took place at the Dr. Phillips House at the Courtyard at Lake Lucerne, a breathtaking historic inn right in downtown Orlando.

Dr. Phillips House

Beautiful courtyard for the ceremony…

Happy couple…

In lieu of favors, they had a cookie/pastry bar with personalized take away boxes.

Fancy living room/parlor. Check out that fireplace!  And antique furniture everywhere.

First dance! Awww…

Loved spending time with some of my closest friends too!  These are some of my favorite people on the planet.

Cheers!

Boston in Photos

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I am back from Boston and miss it already!  This is the first time in about a year and a half that I haven’t had a trip to New England in the works, and I’m sad!  We first started planning my August 2011 trip to Boston/Vermont (where I was really just a tag-a-long with my parents who were headed up for a wedding) back in November 2010, and before I even took that trip, I knew I would be coming back for this trip in April 2012.

Our main reason for this trip was my grandmother’s 90th birthday!  My dad’s entire side of the family was in attendence, which is a rarity.  All of my cousins on that side got together the night before and it was so nice to spend time with family and catch up.  We also spent one day doing the tourist thing in Boston, and spent time visiting other relatives while we were in town.

I took a ton of pics, but compiled the ones I took from Instagram to share with you!

UPPER LEFT: Our plane touched down to a dreary day (the only rain we experienced during the trip).

UPPER RIGHT: Boston skyline from the Avis car rental lot.

LOWER LEFT: TD Garden celebrating the Bruins in the NHL playoffs.

LOWER RIGHT: Brooksby Farm is a historic farm extremely close to one of the houses I lived in as a child.  I used to ride my bike from our house to the farm when I was 7 or 8, and we used the fields and hills for kite-flying in the spring and sledding in the winter.  It’s mostly an apple orchard, but they have expanded to grow other fruits and even some animals.

UPPER LEFT: Dormant apple orchard at Brooksby Farm.

UPPER RIGHT: A seal on the outside of the Brooksby animal barn.  Peabody is the town where I grew up.  Both Peabody and Danvers used to be part of Salem before they became their own towns.

LOWER LEFT: A newspaper dispenser for the Salem newspaper.  I love how everything in this area has witches on it!

LOWER RIGHT: My Great Uncle Rudy makes his own anisette, and when we visit, he always encourages us to have a shot or two of it.  The recipe has been passed down through generations.  He also makes wine!

  UPPER LEFT: One night we visited Kowloon, which is a big, fun tiki-bar-style Chinese food place.  Boston has THE BEST Chinese food!

UPPER RIGHT: Map of the T (subway), from the beginning of our day in Boston.

LOWER LEFT: The gates of Harvard University!

LOWER RIGHT: Old South Church off of Copley Square.

UPPER LEFT: During our day in Boston, we decided to forgo paying the fee to get to the observation deck of the Prudential Tower, and opted to have a drink at the bar at the Top of the Hub restaurant on floor 52 of the tower.  Same view, no cover charge, and we get a beverage too!  I had a strawberry basil lemonade and it was delicious!

UPPER RIGHT: The guestbook table for my grandmother’s 90th birthday party.  I bought the letters pre-painted from JoAnn Fabrics to spell her name, and decoupaged floral scrapbook paper onto them.  They got lots of compliments!

LOWER LEFT: Our last evening, we spent shopping for souvenirs at the mall and ended up at Legal Seafood in Burlington.

LOWER RIGHT: At Legal Seafood, Tadd ordered a drink special called a Watermelon Crush (you can see it in front of him in the pic on the left).  It was made only of muddled fresh watermelon and vodka and it was DELICIOUS.  We had some time to kill after dinner, so we sat at the bar to watch the Celtics game, and I just had to order one for myself.  I will be trying to make this drink on my own this summer for sure.

UPPER LEFT: The shirt I picked out during our shopping trip as my souvenir.  Go Sox!

UPPER RIGHT: Our day of departure was also Foursquare Day.  On Untappd (which is a location-based app for beer lovers), you got a special badge for checking into a beer and pushing your location to Foursquare.  When we had time to kill before our flight, we decided to earn our Foursquare Day Untappd badges with some preflight Wachusett beers.  Blueberry for me, Green Monsta IPA for Tadd and my brother.

LOWER LEFT: One last glimpse of the skyline from our departure gate at the airport.  I love that Logan Airport has such nice views, so that this is the first and last thing you see when you arrive and depart Boston.

LOWER RIGHT: Self-explanatory.  Taken from my seat on our way home.

Instagram Link Party: Easter Recap

Posted by sunshineandsometea in Friends & Family and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  I thought I would share some of the Instagram pics I took over Easter.  As mentioned previously, Tadd and I exchanged baskets, then went to my parents’ house for a big family dinner.  I brought my chocolate chip cheesecake to serve for dessert (which was a hit!).  My mom also put together a little basket for all the “kids”, including a very cute UCF necklace for me (and a UF necklace for my sister)!

Linking up with the weekly Instagram Link Party at a {little} dash of ash!

An Instagram Hodgepodge Post!

Posted by sunshineandsometea in Local Central Florida and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

I realize things have been kind of slow lately around these parts.  Work is still crazy, and it’s still leaving me mentally exhausted every night when I get home, although it’s starting to calm down a bit.  At least for now.

As tired as I am today, I need to go shopping for 1) sewing project supplies and 2) Easter basket stuffers!  So after work I will be swinging by Starbucks for a jolt of caffeine, followed by a trip to a few stores.

I thought that today I would just share what I have been up to lately via my most recent posts on Instagram.  I guess you could say that this is in honor of the brand new Android app that Instagram released yesterday.  I am an iPhone girl, but I am happy that my Android friends can now join in the fun!

Last week I decided to try a tutorial I found that promised 3 cosmetic cases using 2 fat quarters.  I only had 1 matching zipper on hand, so while I cut out the pieces to make 3, I only actually sewed one.  And while I love the prints I used and the size, my own botching of the construction left a lot to be desired.  Still working on getting used to sewing with zippers!  You can’t really tell how badly I screwed this one up from the pics, since my hand is artfully covering it.  Still, at least it’s usable…Just a little wonky.

Saturday we drove over to my parents’ house to do our taxes (procrastinators, I know…), and I spied their lovely poinsettia plant still blooming away in their yard.  I know it’s almost Easter, but how pretty is this?:

Sunday night was dinner with the girls!  We ate at Sushi Pop in Oviedo, which I have discussed is one of my favorite quirky local places.  My favorite beverage to order there is the raspberry saketini.  It’s sake mixed with fresh raspberry puree served in a frosted martini glass.  So yummy!  I also love their truffle salt edamame, and the Oviedo chicken roll!  It’s was 80′s pop star night (every night is themed at Sushi Pop), so the wardrobe of all the waiters/waitresses was very sparkly and bright.  Perfect for girls’ night!

Monday night, we went to the Wine Room on Park Ave in downtown Winter Park to support my friend Lara, who was hosting trivia!  Tadd and I love any excuse to have a relaxing evening on Park Avenue, so I picked him up after work (he even got out early!) and we strolled around Central Park a bit before going to trivia night.  This is the main fountain in the park.  It was so peaceful and nice in the shade (but too hot in the sun!).  Incidentally, the Wine Room’s mushroom truffle flatbread is amazing.  As is Southern Tier’s Mokah Stout beer.  Yes, I had beer at a wine bar.  But it was REALLY GOOD beer!

Follow me on Instagram!  I’m “sunshineteablog”.

A quick (but exciting) shout out!

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Work has been brutal to me this week.  I have not had the energy to do much of anything after work aside from try to regain my strength and sanity.  It’s always tough to get posts out everyday or even every couple of days when I have weeks like this.  So thank you for bearing with my lack of posts the past few days.

I did make it out Tuesday night for an impromptu date night with the husband.  We went to Macaroni Grill and had TERRIBLE service (our complimentary bread wasn’t brought until halfway through the meal…I asked for chicken marsala and they tried to bring me mushroom ravioli…also, they served me wine in a water glass?!?!), but as always the company was lovely and made up for the lackluster meal.  You know how they encourage you to draw on the tablecloths?   I was looking at the menu, not paying attention to what Tadd was doing, and when I put the menu down, this was next to my place setting:

Awwww…Sweet guy.  I’m a lucky girl.

Anyways, the main purpose of this post is to thank Kristi at Addicted2Decorating.com for featuring my DIY terracotta coasters on her blog!  I can’t say how honored I am.  People seem to be really excited about this project on Pinterest too.  Exciting for me and my little blog!  If you haven’t checked out Addicted2Decorating yet, you should.  Lots of great ideas!  Especially the hallway project she has been working on for awhile.  She hand-painted her own beautiful argyle on the wall!  Stunning!

Instagram Link Party: St. Patrick’s Day at Epcot.

Posted by sunshineandsometea in Local Central Florida and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hope you had fun this weekend, especially Saturday for St. Patrick’s Day!  We spent ours at World Showcase in Epcot, celebrating many different cultures around the world.

My St. Patrick’s Day celebrating started early…Friday night, I was drinking iced tea from one of my favorite pint glasses…Mickey makes a cute leprechaun, don’t you think?

Saturday morning, we woke up, put on some green clothing and accessories, and hit the road for the 45-minute drive to Walt Disney World.

We spent pretty much the whole day in World Showcase, starting with having one of my favorite beverages, a blood orange margarita at La Cava de Tequila in the Mexico pavilion.  We got our favorite booth against the back wall of the bar, and chilled out in the air conditioning for awhile.  I really love that place!  So cozy (and so air conditioned…it was HOT that day!).

In addition to celebrating St. Patrick’s Day at Epcot, we also got to take part in the International Flower & Garden Festival, which runs from now until May 20th.  Everywhere you looked there were fun topiaries, like these pandas outside the China pavilion.  I have many more pics of the various topiaries around the park from my regular camera that I will share later this week!

While in “China” we stopped to check out the Tomb Warriors exhibit, which I love.  These are smaller replicas of the life-sized Terracotta Army sculptures that were buried with China’s first Emperor Qin Shi Huang back in 210 BC!  What I love about them, is that, while they are all in uniform and appear standing in a regimented fashion, no two warrior is the same.  They all have different expressions, facial features, etc.  Read more about the Terracotta Army on Wikipedia.

Eventually we made our way over to the UK pavilion, and of course, we had to stop in for an Irish beverage.  I had a Guinness (Wish a shamrock drawn into the foam!  Wish I could have gotten a good pic of it…), and Tadd had a green beer.  Some of our group of friends had green cocktails, Irish whiskey, and even one green Sprite.  We were all very festive with our beverages.  And, of course, as expected, this was one of the most crowded spots in all of Epcot that day!  But we just had to brave that long line…  Well, technically Tadd braved the line for the both of us while I waited off to the side and took pics of the madness.

As I stated previously, there will be more Epcot Flower & Garden Festival photos to come this week!  So stay tuned…

This post is linked to the weekly Instagram Link Party over at a {little} dash of ash!

Things I am excited about this spring.

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I was just sitting here thinking about all I have to look forward to this spring.  I thought I would share.

St. Patrick’s Day at Epcot

Click for source...The Official Disney Parks Blog.

Epcot Flower & Garden Festival (click for source, wdwinfo.com)

When I saw that St. Patty’s Day fell on a Saturday, I knew we had to take advantage and do something fun.  What better place to celebrate than Walt Disney World?  Especially Epcot!  Chances are there won’t be anything big or special going on for the occasion, but I hear they might have some kind of small celebration or acknowledgement in the UK pavilion in World Showcase.  Even if they don’t, we will be wearing green and drinking Irish beer in a multicultural atmosphere.  Works for me!  As a bonus, the Epcot International Flower & Garden Festival is going on right now (through May 20).

Easter

It might sound dorky, but Tadd and I exchange Easter baskets every year.  It’s something I always have a lot of fun with.

Visiting friends and family!

We have a couple of short trips planned to see some of our favorite people this spring.  One trip for family and one trip for friends.  I can’t wait!

Star Wars Weekends

We got to meet Warwick Davis! Remember him from the movie Willow (Harry Potter too)?

Another one of our springtime traditions.  This is a special event held every year at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.  It includes chances to meet celebrities, cute photo ops with the characters, and a great parade.  It’s fun to see everyone all geeked out at the parks.  We pretty much always go the first weekend, which is almost always right near my birthday, and it usually marks the last time we go to the theme park until mid-August (we skip visiting Disney during the summer, too hot and crowded!).

What are you most looking forward to this spring?

More from my semi-productive weekend.

Posted by sunshineandsometea in Crafts & Decor, Recipes and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

The weekend is almost over.  It seemed so much shorter than normal, even though it’s only technically shorter by one hour.  I don’t know about you, but daylight savings time always takes several days for me to get used to.  I am a much bigger fan of “Fall Back” than “Spring Forward”.

We have continued our weekend of doing not much of anything.  We did get out and run some errands this morning, which was nice.  I get cabin fever if I am cooped up in the house too long.  One of our stops was at JoAnn Fabrics, where I certainly bought some stuff.

I think I am starting to develop an addiction to fabric.  It’s terrible…I go into the quilting section, and immediately want to buy everything I see.  All told though, everything pictured (about 3 yards of fabric total) cost about $10 thanks to sales and coupons.  Not everything here has a purpose yet, but I’m sure I will find ways to use all of it.  For my next new project, I intend to try making a simple apron, so at least one of these fabrics will be used for that.  Also, can you tell I love graphic florals?  I need to start branching out into some polka dots and stripes.

Last night, I decided to try an idea I found on Pinterest.  My husband loves peanut butter anything, especially when combined with chocolate, so I knew it would be a big hit.  Just take canned crescent rolls, spread with peanut butter, and sprinkle with chocolate chips.

Roll up, bake at 375F for 11 minutes.  The result: YUM!  The peanut butter and chocolate get all melty and warm.  I had a very happy husband.

Oh, and at my husband’s request, I finally made him his very own manly coffee sleeve.  He had been requesting one for himself since I made the first one about six weeks ago.  Took me long enough to get around to it!  I hope he likes it.  I know it looks huge on the small coffee cup, but it was the only thing I had on hand to serve as a “model”.  It’s really the same size as the other ones I have made.

Instagram Link Party: Celebrating and sewing.

Posted by sunshineandsometea in Crafts & Decor, Friends & Family and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

We spent a lot of time celebrating this weekend.  Saturday night, we had dinner with some friends at one of our favorite local spots, Pannullo’s, and got to celebrate the fact that one of them is starting a fantastic new job!  Sunday, we had a belated celebration for my brother and father’s birthdays.

We actually already had the dinner plans in place for Saturday night when we heard that my friend got the new position, so I decided I wanted to use my (limited) sewing skills make her a little gift to bring to dinner, just to let her know how thrilled we are for her.  I had gotten such positive feedback on the reusable coffee sleeve I had made a few weeks back, that I decided make one especially for her, using a cute fabric in her favorite color, purple (which is also my favorite color!).  There were some really cute prints on sale at JoAnn Fabrics, so I bought a few that caught my eye, including the perfect purple fabric for my friend’s gift.

I am sure when she starts her new job, she will be enjoying plenty of coffee, so I figured it was an appropriate gift.

And again, if you want the original tutorial that I used to make these, please click here!

I actually made another one on Sunday for my grandmother in the same pink paisley fabric as the original.  And I have plans to make a few more.  They are small, cute, and not too difficult, and they allow me to practice my sewing skills on something not too overwhelming.  After my third time making these coffee sleeves, I can tell I am getting better, little by little.

Linking this post up with the weekly Instagram Link Party at a {little} dash of ash!

Instagram Link Party: Orlando Staycation

Posted by sunshineandsometea in Local Central Florida and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tadd and I had plans to go to Hilton Head Island, SC this past weekend.  Unfortunately, they had to be canceled due to a family emergency that required us to stay closer to home, just in case we found out we had to leave town quickly.  We decided to make the best of it and our romantic weekend getaway turned into a last-minute “staycation” in the Orlando area.

We booked an inexpensive room via Priceline.com‘s name-your-own price feature and spent two nights staying very close to Walt Disney World property.  When we checked into our hotel, we really had no plans aside from dinner Saturday night at Il Mulino at the Walt Disney Swan Resort.  We were just going to play it by ear, and have a fun, relaxing weekend away from the stress of life, and focused just on each other.

We wound up in Downtown Disney Friday night.  Dinner at Paradiso 37 (which was better than I thought it would be!), followed by desserts from Goofy’s Candy Company.  They have this create-your-own treat thing, where you fill out a form and choose an item (apple, rice krispie treat, marshmallows, pretzel rods, or ginger bread cookie), then you choose to dip it in white, dark, or milk chocolate, then choose a candy topping (M&Ms, Oreos, peanuts, Reese’s Pieces, etc), then you choose a chocolate drizzle for the top.  It used to be that the marshmallow option was only $2.95 so it was a great bargain, because when they were done being dipped in everything they were enormous and they presented them to you skewered on a Mickey head crazy straw that you could keep.  Now they are $4.95…Not a bargain, but still a generally affordable treat.  We got ours to go and brought them back to the hotel room.  On the way out of Downtown Disney, we decided randomly to stop by guest relations and make reservations for the Sunday morning Keys to the Kingdom tour at Magic Kingdom.

Saturday we really weren’t sure what to do, but in the end decided to go to the Premiere Outlets where Tadd got some new bright green hi-top chucks at the Converse store (they are awesome…I need to get a picture of them), and I almost got something on clearance from the Coach Outlet, but ended up with a new Vera Bradley bag that I adore (an angled tote in Baroque), plus some extra stuff for gifts (everything in the VB Outlet was buy 2 get 1 free).  Then we set off to Celebration, FL for an afternoon of lunch at Celebration Town Tavern (which made me homesick for Boston), relaxing by the lake, Starbucks, and getting Tadd’s hair cut at a charming little place called S. Todd Esq, Barber!  We made so many Sweeney Todd jokes before and after the haircut…could not resist!

Saturday night, we had reservations for dinner at Il Mulino for that evening, so we went back to the hotel room, got gussied up a bit, and drove over to the Swan & Dolphin Resort near Epcot (refered to by locals as the Swolphin).  Il Mulino gets somewhat mixed reviews on Yelp and other places, but I have to say that we had a fabulous dinner!  They won us over with all the little extra surprises that added to the experience, including an appetizer of thinly sliced Italian sausage and eggplant caponata provided to us “compliments of the chef”, a tiny bottle of Rosa Regale included with our special Valentine’s Day dessert, and concluding the meal with a complimentary limoncello.  We had a head waiter & assistant waiter doting on us, and the manager came over twice to make sure we were happy.  These little extras really made our dinner special!  We felt like royalty.

We were thinking about walking over to Epcot for Illuminations after dinner, but when we left the restaurant, it was getting cold (and I had bare legs in a dress & heels!) and we had about 10 minutes before they started.  So we decided to go to the bridge between Disney’s Yacht Club Resort and Boardwalk Resort, and watch the fireworks over the treeline.  We were almost completely alone, huddled together in the cold, with a great view, and it turned out to be a very romantic moment.  I’m so glad we decided to stop there instead of rushing all the way into the crowded theme park for the show.

Sunday morning, we woke up bright and early, checked out of our room, and headed over to the Magic Kingdom for our 9AM Keys to the Kingdom tour.  Wow, was it cold!  I think it was 33F when we left our hotel.  We arrived at the gates of the park just after 8:30, and because of our tour, were allowed into the park before the masses.  Getting to see Main Street Town Square totally empty was a treat!

We had a fabulous time on our five hour tour, which included lots of history, trivia, VIP front-of-the-line guided access to a couple major attractions, and we were also allowed backstage to see how the park is run from behind-the-scenes.  It also included lunch at Columbia Harbor House.

I don’t want to give too much away regarding the tour, since part of the fun is not really knowing what you will see next, but if this kind of thing interests you, then I definitely recommend it!  Our tour guide was Robert, who was a lot of fun, enthusiastic, and very sweet.  The tour brought back a lot of happy memories for Tadd, who was a WDW cast member about 12 years ago.  We both really, really enjoyed it.

Thus ended our impromptu romantic staycation weekend.  I am sad that we didn’t get to go to Hilton Head, but we still had a great time together and made some special memories.  Valentine’s Day is important to us because it’s the anniversary of the day Tadd asked me to marry him, so we always try to do something to celebrate.  I think our weekend was more than befitting of the occasion.

This post is linked to the weekly Instagram link party over at a {little} dash of ash!