If you follow along on my Instagram stories, you may have noticed that I was visiting NYC for a quick trip to attend Better Homes & Garden’s Stylemaker conference. It’s become a bit of a tradition to head down to New York in the fall for this event; this was my 4th year attending. It’s my favorite blogger event to attend because I always leave feeling so inspired, energized by the amazing bloggers and editor that I meet, and ready to jump back into work with a fresh perspective.
read more
We shared a quintessential New England tradition with Jane this weekend and took her on an inaugural apple-picking trip. My in-laws live nearby several apple farms outside of Boston, and with the sun-shining on Saturday, we took a drive over to Honey Pot Hill Orchards for the afternoon. Everyone else in the state must have had the same idea because it was packed, but we trekked a little farther into the orchards and plucked a few bags of fresh, juicy apples. Jane loved trying the apples, working on her standing at the apple tree ladders, and her favorite part was checking out the farm animals. These pictures I snapped are killing me, because she looks like such a big kid hanging on the fence and holding the apples — our little baby is growing up!
read more
Have you noticed a little radio silence over here? (I mean, probably not. I never when notice bloggers go offline until they talk about how they went offline.) But it has been quiet due to a real doozy of a week. Life threw me a few curveballs with some big work deadlines, a trip to the ER (thanks to a pretty terrible hand burn from dropping a pot of boiling pasta water) and did I mention we have a teething infant at home? I got in a real slump last night about all of it – Jane had a meltdown and an early bedtime, I got quite stressed out over a few emails in my inbox, and a late afternoon doctor’s visit resulted in news that my hand needs quite some time to heal.
read more
That darn Labor Day snuck right by and I’m in denial about how fast summer passed us this year. It made me think a bit this week about the Summer Bucket List I made at the beginning of the season, and I thought I’d check in on my progress. I did pretty well on my farmer’s market recipe challenge — I added 6 new recipes that were full of local ingredients. We hosted a clambake (two actually!), definitely took some fun weekend adventures, and made use of our beach passes with tons of Friday pizza-nights on the beach. I just scratched the surface of my summer reading list, but got in a few good reads! The Heirs was a great beach read, I’ve been digging into a new cookbook called Feeding a Family, and I’m just about done with my friend Alaina’s debut novel called And Then Everything Changed.
It’s been a few weeks since I shared a Friday Download post here, and thought I’d get one out a little bit early this week before we sign-off for Labor Day weekend! Remember how we just blinked and summer zoomed on by us? I can’t believe we’re celebrating the long weekend already and kids are going back to school and just this week the temperature dropped low enough for me to pull out some jeans and a cozy pullover. I can’t complain though, we’ve had an amazing fun-filled summer. Plus, fall is my absolute favorite in New England. Here’s what’s been going on around the blog the last few weeks, and a few links I’m loving:
read more
This post was created in partnership with buybuy BABY. All opinions are my own.
We have been on the road for what seems like the whole summer. Jane has been buckled in her car seat and hitting spots all over New England since she was born. We took our first trip with her to Vermont when she was just two months old. Last month we spent several days at my parent’s house in New York, and she was on the road again this weekend for some slumber partying at my in-laws house as we headed to a wedding in New Hampshire. We still haven’t tested her travel-experience on an airplane, but she’s been putting some miles on that car seat!
read more
This post was created in partnership with buybuy BABY. All opinions are my own.
In general, food is pretty much universally my favorite topic to talk about. When Jane started to show interest in solid foods I was so excited, because it means we get to talk about food even more than usual. With that big transition came lots of research and questions and frantic Googling (can babies eat greek yogurt?!), so I thought it would be helpful to share a little bit about our experience with Jane and food for others going through the same thing. We have found some products we swear by, and a few favorite foods that helped Jane make the solid food transition jump pretty seamlessly.
read more
It’s been radio-silence over here this past week. I’ve been busy working on some new projects for the end of summer; lot’s more (tasty) content is coming soon. I also took a little bit of time off to head down to New York for family time as we said goodbye to my sweet Grandfather. He was a huge part of my life; I was lucky to grow up on the same block as him and my grandmother and we had a close relationship because of it. We reminisced about his humor, his kindness, and his love for mischief (and whiskey) – a silver lining in all of the heavy heartedness was getting to spend time with family and friends we rarely see. 
read more
I’m having a mild panic set in that Jane will be 6-months old this week, how does time move so fast? Yet I’m writing this post at 8:30am and feel like day has been going on for hours upon hours. What’s that saying about children growing up? The days are long, but the years are short. That is exactly how I feel right about now. At 6-months I still feel like everyday is a new challenge, a new discovery, and even more fascination with this tiny human than we ever thought was possible. When Jane was first born I wrote a list of blog post topics that I found helpful during my pregnancy internet-research bonanza, and noted a few that I’d love to write myself once I had a bit more experience (in fact, I started a new baby section of the site with a few of those posts already!). One of them was a comprehensive review of everything we registered for — all of the baby gear we’ve loved using and the random things that I didn’t even know existed while we were trying to survive those first few weeks.
read more
Our master bedroom project is almost complete, minus a few last details that are getting delivered in the next week or so! One of the best parts of starting to move everything into the new room was getting our brand new his and hers closets organized, which meant a fairly big closet clean out for both me and my husband. We donated bags of old college t-shirts, and I sifted through racks of formal work clothes that I’m not wearing anymore now that I work for myself. I also packed away all of my maternity clothes from the past year, and what was left was a pretty pared down selection of clothes I’m currently wearing. Mostly, a uniform of skinny jeans or jean shorts and an endless supply of navy and white striped t-shirts. Looking at this edited (dare I say, capsule?) wardrobe, I noticed how very blue my favorite pieces tend to be. A sea of chambray, navy, and other blue hues that mix and match pretty effortlessly with my favorite denim. I pulled together a bunch of my current favorite chambray and blue styles for a bit more style inspiration to fill that closet back up after our clean-out! Shop my favorites below: 
read more
