Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Small Cool 2014

hey guys! did you have a great memorial day weekend?  ours ended with a fun neighborly bbq last night downstairs.  anytime i can eat bbq, drink wine, AND cuddle with a baby i'm pretty much in heaven.

what else is new?  go over to apartment therapy today to vote ( click here to vote! ) on our home for the small cool contest!  we're featured in the "little" category.  although our home is big(ger) than the last, it still qualifies, because it's only 675 square feet!  help us out, friends! ...or, just go over there to see a mini-tour ....

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happy monday (well, tuesday, but it feels like monday)!

cheers.
jenn

Monday, May 19, 2014

wedding bells are ringing

no, not ours (yet) but it certainly was a fantastic wedding!  many familiar (and fun) faces make weekends like this one so fun.  the wedding was for our friends dan and meredith, friends we met in jersey city through friends (of friends of friends… that's how it goes sometimes!)  the ceremony was held at the temple to music at roger williams park in providence, and the reception was held at the aldrich mansion.  the weather was beautiful, the sun was shining, and the day was nearly perfect for their special day!  we were so happy to be included in the celebrations and certainly enjoyed seeing a few (ok a lot) of those we don't get to see very often.  the last time we saw most of them was in barbados !

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now for a photo dump….

may date: our first vacation, just the two of us

...well... not technically.  let me explain.

since the time hung and i started dating, we have traveled a lot.  but, we've never traveled alone AT ALL.  as in never ever.  we once spent the night in a hotel room together, but it was only because i was in a wedding that was too far from home.  when we went to san francisco last year, we even flew coast to coast to share a leather couch together in a 4 bedroom house with some of our closest friends (hey, we weren't going to make the pregnant one sleep on the couch!)

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this time wasn't exactly a just-the-two-of-us vacation either.  but it was for the first night.  so we'll claim this as our "first vacation together", even though it wasn't even a full 24 hours.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

the proposal story...

we've been asked many times, and have told it many times, but now's the time to tell the story on this space!  here's our proposal story, as told my hung himself:

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The proposal story:
So this was planned out for a while now, but I wasn't sure when it would happen until our home closed. Since it happened on a Wednesday (March 12th), I decided that the proposal had to happen soon. I had to the find the right time to do it, and what better time than on Saturday (March 15th) when we had tickets to the Opera from my bosses that I had already planned our monthly date night to. They gave us awesome seats, and though Jenn didn’t understand the first two acts, (she didn’t know there were subtitles to the show) she wasn’t really into it. I was a bit worried since we just sat through an hour and 15 mins of a show that she had no idea what was going on, I thought she was going to want to leave the rest of the show which would have ruined any timing I had for our day. Luckily I told her about the subtitles and she was ready for the final two acts (dodging bullets).

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instagramming our excitement for the opera, pre-proposal

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

it's here! it's here!

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it's finally here! i've been waiting since last july for this beauty.  when our offer was accepted on the house, we immediately took a trip down to the of iron and oak showroom to test out the cococo home sofas.  i knew exactly what i wanted, but my only stipulation was that we had to close on the house before we made any moves.  it's a good thing we waited because we didn't close until NINE MONTHS later!  we were the first customers at the showroom back in july (our names are the first on the sign in book!) and they were happy to see that we returned with our promise to buy a sofa when we closed.

although it was a bit of a splurge, it was exactly what i wanted.  we worked with the guys at of iron and oak to create our custom sofa, picking out the fabric, the length, the depth, the feet, the cushion material, the cushion length, the spacing of the tufting, the locations of the tufting, the upholstery pins used for the tufting.... we could have created anything, the options are endless.

it's made in america too, so a part of me is giving myself a high five for that fact ;)

now our home is feeling a lot more like, well, "home".

cheers.
jenn

Monday, May 5, 2014

5 minute monday

groggy-eyed and barely moving, i'm exhausted from our weekend with friends.  we didn't really do anything that was physically tiring, it's just the staying up late, the eating out, the laughing, the city walking, the being on my feet that wore me out. but a weekend with out-of-town, rarely-get-to-see-them friends is totally worth it!

a few things of note from the weekend:

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1. walking through the streets of new york is meditation for me.  whether it was the bustling neighborhoods of hell's kitchen and chinatown or the more serene, calming sunday afternoon walk through soho and west village... i love it all.   i need to spend more time doing this.  i've (almost) come to accept that my life is one that will just always be on the go, and if strolling through an inspiring neighborhood makes me smile more than sitting at home watching reruns of friends or reading a book, i'm ok with it.

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2. cards against humanity. best ice breaker ever.  but only for those who can find humor in the inappropriate... our small but diverse group that played the game was italian-white, korean, vietnamese, mutt-white, chinese, black, taiwanese, straight, gay, single, engaged, girls, guys, conservative, liberal, priviledged and not... but we could laugh about just about anything that made its way to the table.  we went for the chocolate soufflé, we stayed for the game :P

3. maybe i actually DO like karaoke.  wanna know one of the busiest times for bars in new york city?  when it's raining.  unprepared for rain on saturday afternoon, we dipped into what google maps told us was the closest bar, and we suddenly found ourselves in an empty japanese karaoke bar upstairs above your average canal street trinket shops.  not sure what we got ourselves into, we just went with it and ordered a drink.  two hours and rounds of karaoking to pink, beyonce, spice girls, mariah carey, and the 'cups' song later, we decided maybe it was time to head back outside.  i suppose i don't have to give the stink face anymore when friends say "hey, wanna go karaoking in k-town?" i should give it a shot ;)

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4. vegetarian tacos at orale might be my new favorite.  with grilled peppers and seitan, i was totally in love (and normally i'm an al pastor kind of girl, loving the grilled pork with pineapple!) make sure to go on taco tuesdays.  you get all that above for just $8!

5. catching  up with friends is so nice.  maybe we only get to see them once a year, or for some once every couple of years, but when we do see them it feels like no time has passed.  hung and i both admit we are BAD about keeping in touch with far-away friends. however, we're lucky enough to have some of those far-away friends that feel like we have maybe lost touch with, but when we see them we can have fun and have deep conversations and pick up the face-to-face friendship right where it left off. 

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we're thankful for those who came this weekend, and look forward to our big celebrations next year :)

cheers!
jenn

p.s. check out that VIEW!!

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Friday, May 2, 2014

happy friday

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happy friday! 

it's been quite the week around our house.  between getting ready for guests, trying to get back into a workout routine, and putting in long hours at work, we're SO ready for the weekend!  here are 10 reasons why:
  1.  although it will be busy with everyone in town, we will be doing things for fun. pure fun.
  2. with cinco de mayo coming up, the restaurants and bars are starting the celebration early with events this weekend, used york city has a good round up
  3. the weather is also pretty darn awesome right now, perfect for stuffing our faces at smorgasburg , in my opinion.
  4. hung took the day off to host his friends who came in last night.  they dined at sam a.m. this morning.  getting to spend a weekday morning at that wonderful place is reason enough to take off a day of work!
  5. i made cookies and beef jerky for our visiting friends.  when hung says "babe i want you to make cookies and beef jerky" i know he means these cookies and alton brown's beef jerky .
  6. having people stay at our house is one of my favorite things.  i would have been nice if our sofa had been delivered by now so we would have something more comfortable to sit on.  but hey, custom furniture takes time! (but it will be here SO soon!!)
  7. our first visitors that came last night got to be the guinea pigs in the guest bedroom ! it probably would have been better if it wasn't recycle night.  sleeping with the windows open on recycle night means you get suddenly woken up with clanking glass and metal in the wee hours of the morning. trash and recycle comes at night here.  can't have trash cluttering up the sidewalks during the morning commute or trash trucks getting stuck in gridlock at rush hour!
  8. the second couple coming tonight is also recently engaged ! congrats guys! this means the boys can be boys and the girls can talk weddings.
  9. this isn't anyone's first time in NYC, so we aren't obligated to do touristy things (although sometimes it's ok to be a tourist in your own town)
  10. did i mention the weather!?  after 5 inches of rain in 1 day this week, a clear forecast makes for a happy jenn.  plus, the cherry blossoms that didn't get ruined in the ICE STORM a few weeks ago are finally showing their pretty faces! (cue photo at the top from my walk to kickboxing last night)

cheers to the weekend!
jenn

Thursday, May 1, 2014

come one, come all!

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we now have a fully-functional guest bedroom! i know it's quite a luxury in our downtown jersey city neighborhood, and we're going to take full advantage of it, by hosting guests as often as we can! not that NOT having a bedroom stopped us before, our friends loved setting new records for how many people could sleep in our old 450 SF apartment (the record is 7 by the way, and my previous, same-sized hoboken apartment was even more).

hosting 4 friends this weekend should be a breeze then, right?  well, in theory, yes.