Posts tagged weekend

Oh hello! It’s been quite a while since my last post, so I thought I’d show you what’s been going on over here. I actually drove down to Durham this weekend with my roommate to see some of our friends, and of course visit our boyfriends.

Friday night started off with a bang at Andrew’s favorite Mexican restaurant, Monterreys. Delicious food, margaritas muy fuerte, and giant beers…what more could a girl ask for?

We followed it up with some dancing at Kildares in Chapel Hill…a nice “one, two punch” as Andrew likes to call it!

Saturday morning, we had Tutti Frutti for breakfast/early lunch before heading over to Andrew’s parents house to borrow the puppy for the weekend.

The original plan was to take him to Guglhupf for some sunning, eating, and studying, but by the time we got there, it was already pretty late. Here we are, all bundled up and waiting for our food to arrive.

We had a low-key night with lots of Jersey Shore (which I had never watched before) and Rockin’ Rio Rancho Pizza from Tomato Jakes (sooo good!). Andrew also got his early birthday present- a Michigan pillow pet named Brady, and pillow cases to match the duvet in the picture (that I got him for Christmas).

The following day, Andrew told me that he knew the perfect place to take Ollie for a walk, but that it was a surprise. After a detour through Duke Forest, we ended up very close to my friends’ house. Unable to put two and two together, I pointed out that we were really close to their house, and directed him towards their street. He asked if I wanted to see if they were home so that they could come walk Ollie around with us. When I knocked on the door, everyone jumped out and yelled “Surprise!” It was a surprise brunch for me! 

Adria and Joel made brunch pizzas and dessert pizza (and Whitney made the homemade pizza crusts). I seriously have the best friends EVER!! Everything was so delicious that we didn’t remember to take pictures until afterwards.

We ended the perfect afternoon with a stroll through Duke Gardens with Ollie, and then Jen and I headed back to the cold. 

Hope you all had a lovely and relaxing weekend as well!

Sydney

Hi friends! Happy New Year!!! Can you believe another year has come and gone? This year was my first year celebrating NYE in a big city, and it was amazing!

We started out at a pre-party in my apartment building…

And then made our way into DC by metro! I seriously heart the metro.

NYE always gets a bad rep for being overrated and overhyped, but Andrew and I had a great time ringing in the new year (we made it into the club about 5 minutes before midnight!), and dancing the night away at Fur with Morgan Page.

The venue was huge, with a capacity for up to 2,500 people, and several dance floors with different types of music.  (Photo via)

Now that NYE has come and gone, it’s time to start thinking up those new year’s resolutions!

(Via)

Cheers to the new year,

Sydney

Andrew drove up to visit again this weekend (making it the 3rd weekend in a row that we’ve seen each other…NUTS!), and we had tons of things that we wanted to do and see.

Friday night, some folks from my program had a Christmas tree decorating party, complete with “spirit ornaments” that they had picked out to represent each of the party-goers. Can you guess which one is mine?

If you guessed “neon green high heel shoe with rhinestones covering the heel,” you would be CORRECT! I thought it was such a sweet idea.

Here’s the tree all lit up, decorated and lookin’ mighty fine. 

On Saturday, Andrew and I headed to the Newseum, which is definitely one of the best museums in DC. Andrew had a lot of fun at the sports photography exhibit.

Here we are with our sweet glasses for the 4D movie. 

The 9/11 exhibit has one of the Comcast towers that was on top of one of the World Trade Center buildings, as well as a display of all of the front pages of newspapers describing the event.

After the museum, we met up with Kaley and Eric for some ice skating and hot cocoa in the National Sculpture Garden. It was the perfect double date spot!

On our way to Chinatown for dinner, we saw a cute little Holiday Market!

We had some thai food at Kanlaya (thanks to Kaley for the suggestion!) and looked at funny presents at Urban Outfitters :D.

Hope you had a lovely weekend,

Sydney

Andrew’s parents asked him to dog-sit and house-sit this weekend, and we had a BLAST! I had such a good time with the pups, and can’t wait to have one of my very own.

We took the boys on a long walk in Downtown Chapel Hill and on UNC’s campus. Isn’t Andrew super cute with his two little white fluffies?

This one’s Ollie. He’s the chonker.

This one’s Ziggy, my little shadow. We had some quality bonding time this weekend. I didn’t even mind too much when he started scratching at my head to be let out at 6AM in the morning.

He even napped on my lap while I studied. What a cutie!!

Hope your weekend was equally fluffy!

Sydney 

I just returned this morning from an extended weekend of eating and relaxing in sunny FL. Andrew got a chance to experience his first Changsgiving, complete with paper Thanksgiving hats.

The Changs are so silly!

We avoided Midnight Madness at the Outlets this year, but did some solid work on the shopping front the next morning. We ended a long morning of Black Friday shopping with lunch and gelato in Downtown St. Pete.

That evening, we may or may not have gotten a 1000 piece dino puzzle at Target. ‘Cause we’re cool like that. 

Saturday morning, we took a stroll along the beach at Honeymoon Island, our local state park.

Then we watched the Michigan-Ohio State game at Ozona Blue while I devoured a hamburger flanked by two grilled cheeses.

After Michigan crushed Ohio State (Go Blue!), we paid a visit to Downtown Dunedin and posed with the plastic flamingos.

We arrived at Clearwater Beach as it the sun was beginning to set. It was gorgeous!

Here’s Andrew celebrating Michigan’s victory! He got stopped on 4 separate occasions by people who wanted to talk to him about the game. 

That evening, we went to my FAVORITE Italian restaurant, Casa Ludovico and got all dressed up. Unfortunately, we were so excited about eating that we forgot to take pictures! Booo!

Sunday, we finished off Andrew’s visit with a trip to Tarpon Springs, a little Greek village that’s famous for their natural sponges!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

XO,

Sydney

Andrew came up this weekend and we made some awesome sushi and soy sauce costumes for Halloween.

Of course, we had to get a picture with the couple that went as Pokeman. Apparently it’s been long enough that Pokemon is now retro and cool again.

Ah, yes, the classic prom pose!

How was your halloween?! What did you go as?

XO,

Sydney

Sorry this post is way after the fact- my college roommate was staying with me for a few days last week, so we were busy catching up and hanging out. 

Anyhow, last Monday, Jordan and I headed down to Georgetown so I could show her around. There are so many fun stores down there, and the displays are absolutely gorgeous. Here are some of my faves from the day.

Madewell (aka J Crew’s younger, hipper sister)-

Jack Wills (a new-to-me store that’s kind of reminscent of RL’s Rugby line)-

The Union Jack sign is actually made of a bunch of glasses filled with different colored water…how cool is that?!

Last but not least is Anthropologie. There were a million things to take pics of at the enormous store in Georgetown, but this pug gallery really charmed my pants off.

After lots of window shopping, we stopped in at Baked and Wired (on Kaley’s recommendation, and also because the line for Georgetown Cupcake literally went up the block). We were too excited and forgot to take a picture of the Red Velvet cupcake we shared (thank goodness for Google Images!).

Close up of someone else’s Red Velvet-

Verdict= good flavor, and not too sweet, but the cake was a tad bit on the dry side. The crowd was a little hipster as well, but that’s neither here nor there.

Being the gluttons we are, we decided to swing by Bethesda Row on the way home to see if there was less of a line at that Georgetown Cupcake location. Success! We tried the Milk Chocolate Birthday Cupcake (light brown towards the left with the colored sprinkles). 

Verdict= really moist, but the frosting was a little too sweet (perfect with a tall glass of milk though). Jordan smeared some of the extra frosting on a banana, and claims it was delish! I would probably never wait in line for these, but they are pretty tasty (and a little cheaper than Baked and Wired).

Friday night, I picked my sister Jordan up from the airport. It was pretty late when we got back so we had some Thai Yellow Curry (with chicken and lots of veggies), and watched episodes upon episodes of Giuliana and Bill. Giuliana is ridiculous but never ceases to amuse me!

Saturday morning we slept in and made our way to the National Zoo. Look at these adorable elies! Their tails were swinging in unison!

And of course, here we are at one of our favorite stops at any tourist attraction- the gift shop! The real pandas were adorable but were all sleeping inside because of the heat.

Next, we headed to Chinatown, which is indistinguishable from all of the other parts of the city now, except for the Chinese characters below the names.

We had some Vietnamese soupy noodles (aka Pho), and started to make our way home. One metro stop before home, however, we spontaneously decided to get off at Friendship Heights and check out some of the stores. The Anthropologie store dedicated to accessories and shoes was particularly lovely.

Once we grabbed our car from the Metro, we high-tailed it to Ikea, where we purchased a number of things, like a new duvet cover for me (see a close-up two pictures down), and some other necessaries. And once we discovered that a TenRens bubble tea place we nearby, we couldn’t help but orchestrate a quick stop. 

Obviously we needed some late night entertainment, so we picked up Country Strong (worst movie EVER) at Redbox, which we watched while painting our nails. 

Festive right? Also, do you see my new duvet cover? It’s a brownish/gold doily pattern. Loves it! And at $40 (including 2 pillowcases), the price was right!

To be continued…

This weekend was a little more subdued than the last, with Hurricane Irene busting up most of our plans. Friday night, we still managed to rally and get people together for an apartment pre-game before heading out to Public Bar in Dupont Circle. One of the guys in our program got bottle service (I know…two weekends of bottle service in a row, I’m getting way spoiled), so we had a lovely little area on the rooftop. I didn’t take any pics myself, but here’s one pulled from Le Google Images:

Fancy right? It didn’t actually look like this at all because there were people EVERYWHERE. The DJ was awesome and we were tearin’ up the dance floor, but we were feeling so crowded that we had to relocate up onto the benches in our corner (much to the bouncer’s dislike). Finally around 2:30, we decided to try and catch the metro home.

Saturday morning was DimSum at Silver Fountain in Silver Springs.

Very authentic looking, no? (Images from Yelp)

Then after a 4-hour mid-day nap, I awoke and went upstairs for some Poker and Pizza (+ homemade peanut butter banana chocolate ice cream), and ended the night with Catch Phrase. Many things were learned during this game (e.g. Lance Armstrong went to the moon, and magpies are a patch of poo on the ground). Strong work team!!

Sunday was pretty low-key and consisted of sleeping in, running errands, and doing some reading for the upcoming week in lab. The weather was gorgeous though. So glad I didn’t stock up on canned tuna like my boss had suggested!

How were your weekends??

XO,

Sydney

Hi friends! So I’ve officially been here for a little over a week, and I’m loving Bethesda. Last week was restaurant week, so a bunch of the people in my program went to Jaleo for dinner on Friday night. Since I’m brand-new here, I left my camera at home to avoid being “that girl,” so all the pics here are taken the websites (which means that they’re way better than the ones I would have taken myself). 

Anyways, here’s the inside of Jaleo. How awesome is the pattern they made on the columns using colored tiles?

We got to choose 5 items from the menu, one from each of the categories. Some of my fave items were the deep fried bacon wrapped dates, croquetas (still not as good as Adria’s grandpa’s, of course!), and potato chip wrapped chorizo. Their flan was TO DIE FOR though.

And their sangria (though over-priced) was delish too!

Afterwards, we headed to Union Jacks for some 90s music (think Chumbawumba ‘I get knocked down’ and Spice Girls- the DJ was seriously old) and lots of dancing (more like jumping up and down, but I digress). 

Once it closed down, we retreated a someone’s apartment for some Guitar Hero, and being the lame-o that I am, I slunk off to bed around 2:45. 

On Saturday, Andrew came in and we met up with his friends at their hotel (the ‘terrace’ at the Washington Hilton is sooo not worth seeing…TINY I tell you! hehe) and headed to a club called The District in Adams Morgan. 

It was one of Andrew’s friends bdays, and his parents had gotten him bottle service (which I always thought was a huge waste of $$), but it was super fun…and we got a bottle of Patron, so I was a happy camper. We were having wayy too much fun (at one point, someone was holding my honeymoon style and throwing me up in the air and catching me), and eventually got kicked out. Here’s a picture of me getting photobombed while sitting on a traffic cone outside post-getting-thrown-out. 

Lovely, right? Can’t wait to see the rest of the pics from that night! 

Yesterday, we decided to go to Bikram Yoga to try and sweat it all out. I am nervous that I am developing a taste for it, cause it’s a little on the pricey side. It’s a 90 minute workout with 26 poses done in what can only be described as a sauna. My fave poses as of right now are the far right in the first row, and the far left in the third row.

We were so sweaty and dehydrated afterwards, and I still feel a little weird today, so it was maybe a little counterproductive but still a ton of fun!

How was your weekend, my lovelies?

XO,

Sydney

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend! Jimmy was visiting and we had a blast hanging out, cooking (him), studying (me), and going to the holiday cocktail party :)

DukeMed Holiday Party:

First snow of the year. It would not stop comin’ down!

Being snowed in was the perfect excuse to stay in and bake rainbow cupcakes! This one is one of Jimmy’s masterpieces:

Messy boy!

After church on Sunday, we went to Watt’s grocery for brunch. (Confession: we gobbled everything down before I could remember to take a pic; these are actually from brunch at Fosters from last time Jimmy was visiting):

<3 Sydney