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.
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We have reason to celebrate! It’s National Coffee Day! I shouldn’t just be celebrating today because there’s no way I would have survived this year as a new mom and business owner without copious amounts of coffee, let alone every Monday for the past few decades. Everyday is a coffee celebration in my book. Seeing that today is the official day for coffee though, I had to do something special, and decided to make a batch of mini-coffee cake style donuts to pair with a strong cup of coffee.
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The weather is really throwing me for a loop. My calendar says fall, my cravings say fall, but the thermometer is reading in the high 70s and I really want to pull out my boots and blanket scarves. We took Jane apple picking this weekend and while we sweated our way through the experience, I left with a big craving for autumn flavors. That is exactly where the inspiration for this recipe came from, an apple cider roasted chicken served over wild rice and asparagus.
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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!
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It’s a rare occurrence that I leave Target without a spin through the home section. I’m about 50/50 on how often I leave with a new lamp or a throw pillow, and I know I’m not alone – you do it too. I’ve recently noticed a few items from new Project 62 line in stores and decided to spend a whole evening combing through every new product online because it’s so good. It’s got the mid-century modern spin that I love mixing and matching in my own home with other new and vintage pieces, and most of the designs look far more high end than their price tag suggests. In fact, after my hours of scrolling, I thought I’d share my 10 favorite items from the new line that are all under $80.
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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.
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Over the weekend, my girlfriends and I hosted a super-colorful, taco and treat-filled baby shower for our best friend Taz, and it was a blast — I couldn’t wait to snap pictures and share them here! When it comes to throwing showers, I always like to think about the guest of honor’s favorite things and build a theme around some of them. For Taz, she’s the queen of color, a collector of all things bright and bold and punchy, and a devotee of guacamole-topped Mexican food. We decided a fiesta-inspired theme would be the perfect way to incorporate some of her favorite flavors with a festive color palette for this celebration. 
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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.
We rely on our grill at our house about 9 months out of the year. If it’s not snowing, we’re out on the porch grilling. I love the charred, crispy flavor you get from the heat and smoke of the grill, and I really love how fun it is to have friends over barbeque. When we host friends and family, I always like to make sure I have food options for everyone, including vegetarians! I got to brainstorming the other day about some tastier vegetarian options to add to my barbeque repertoire and this stuffed mushroom “burger” idea came to mind.
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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:
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