My Ideal Fall Weekend Getaway

Fall is my absolute favorite time of year.  The leaves changing, the various fall-scented candles, football, and cooler weather are all so appealing to me.  So what would be a better time of year to get away for the weekend to really enjoy the season?

If I had a chance to go on a weekend getaway this season with my husband, I would undoubtedly choose a small cabin in the woods (but not entirely secluded- I’ve seen too many Criminal Minds episodes).  Ideally, it would have a little fireplace, a cozy living room, one bedroom, and an eat-in kitchen.  It would be cozy but quaint, and it would have just enough room for two of us.

The cabin would be surrounded by beautiful red and orange leaves.  We would have the opportunity to go hiking one morning and see the foliage.  We’d spend the afternoon pumpkin or apple picking nearby.  We would eat a romantic, candle-lit dinner at the cabin.  We’d end the night by watching a rom-com while sipping on wine.  We’d talk about life, love, family, our hopes and dreams, where we want to be in 5 years, houses, kids, etc.  Maybe we’d even have enough time to sneak in a nap!

The weekend would end by cuddling and watching football together at home with my favorite pumpkin spice candle burning.

With that being said, what’s your ideal weekend getaway?  Is it similar to mine or do you prefer doing something different?  Let me know in the comments below!

Update on life

To those of you who read/liked my post earlier this week, thank you for the love!  It’s always hard starting up with writing again after a long hiatus, and you have given me more inspiration to consistently write.  Again, thank you.

Over the past few months that I have been MIA, I’ve actually been quite busy with life. I thought I’d share some updates with you as to what I’ve been up to so you get a little glimpse into my life.

• 5/20/17- Harrisburg Comic-Con: So, as an early wedding gift for my then-fiancé Kyle, I purchased tickets from a comic con in Harrisburg, PA.  This was only Harrisburg’s second year for doing a con, so it really wasn’t anything spectacular, but I wanted to go for the sake of getting photo ops with both David Ramsey and Matt Letscher who were two scheduled guests making appearances.  For more explanation as to who these actors are, David Ramsey plays John Diggle on Arrow, and Matt Letscher plays the Reverse Flash on The Flash.  Both of the panels were extraordinary.  David Ramsay’s panel was filled with non-stop laughter and Matt Letscher’s (who teamed up Michelle Harrison who plays Barry’s mom on the show) gave hints to the season finale.  Funnily enough, since this was my first con, I didn’t realize that when purchasing photo op tickets, you can have between two and four people in the photo per ticket.  I accidentally bought two photos per actor (aka four photos altogether), and even though I wasted more money than I should have, the results of the photo ops were incredible.   Oh, and one even blew up on Twitter!  Honestly, it was just a great experience, and I’d love to go back next year if they have other amazing guest stars in attendance.
• 6/3/17- I GOT MARRIED: What an incredibly amazing day.  I’m not sure that all of you know this, but I got engaged in May 2015 to my best friend, Kyle.  We had always planned on waiting two years to get married (i.e. to save money), so we planned our wedding for June 3, 2017.  It is insane how much planning goes into a wedding just to have that wedding fly by in a blink of an eye.  Co-workers, friends and loved ones joked with me prior to the big day saying that it was going to go by so quickly that I wasn’t even going to remember half of it.  I laughed with them, thinking they were wrong but boy were they right!!  I can’t even tell you much about what happened at my wedding, but I do remember a few details.  One, I completely forgot to wear my veil.  I didn’t notice until someone asked me about it after the ceremony as over.  Two, I wasn’t aware that in a Catholic wedding there are two times you are supposed to kiss your spouse.  I totally missed kissing Kyle the first time by giving him my cheek to kiss instead, resulting in both of us and our guests to burst out into laughter.  Three, we cut the wrong part of the cake at the reception (the top tier instead of the bottom).  Four, I was so dehydrated that I didn’t have one sip of alcohol (minus the toast)- I just chugged water.  Five, Kyle almost passed out several times because he hardly ate or drank anything the whole night.  Six, when we got back to the hotel, all we cared about was eating.  We had Wendy’s at 12:30 a.m. with my sister and brother-in-law.  Overall, it was an incredible day with silly little mishaps that just make me love it even more.  I hope you enjoy these pictures!

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• 6/4/17-6/10/17 Honeymooned in Myrtle: Our honeymoon in Myrtle was amazing.  We stayed at the Myrtle Beach Five Season Resort in the south Myrtle.  We went mini-golfing (I’m undefeated against Kyle for 4 years now), swimming in the ocean, running on the beach, exploring the boardwalk, adventuring at a water park, etc.  We saw Wonder Woman at a movie theater that allowed us to bring Coldstone in.  But there’s so much that we still want to do!  We already booked our anniversary trip for next year and we couldn’t be more excited!
  

  

  
• 6/17/17 Awesome Con: So this was never a part of our plan, but literally the weekend after we got back from our honeymoon, my sister texted me saying for her birthday they were going to Awesome Con in DC.  Kyle and I couldn’t say no, especially because David Tennant and John Barrowman were going to be there!  My sister lived in NOVA, so we drove to a metro station, hopped on a train, and got there around 10:30 a.m.  The line was outrageous and the crowds even more so once we got indoors.  Sadly, Tennant’s photo op was sold out and we got into the venue too late so we missed his panel.  But we did get a picture with John Barrowman (I only bought one photo this time!) and that was incredible.  Towards the end of the day, however, we did get to see David Tennant from afar, and Kyle got to meet some of the voice actors for Dragon Ball Super and My Hero Academia.  Despite the lines and the crowds, it was a great day.  (Side note: I don’t think I’d survive at San Diego.)
• 7/8/17 Wedding in Bethany: Bethany, West Virginia holds such a wonderful place in my heart.  Bethany College is my alma mater, and it’s also where I met Kyle.  We got to travel back only a month after our wedding to celebrate with friends of ours at their wedding.  Bethany weather has such a big reputation for being strange (i.e. hailed at my graduation in 2014, thunder-stormed at Kyle’s in 2015), and this day was no exception.  It was gloomy all morning and eventually started drizzling just prior to the ceremony.  By the end of the ceremony, the temperature rose at least 10 degrees and the sun was beating down on all of us.  It was definitely nice catching up with our friends, as well as the other guests sitting at our assigned table who we had never met/don’t get to talk to that often.
• 8/11/17-8/13/17 Delaware Beach Trip: Kyle’s aunt lives in Delaware, so we attempt to make a beach trip, even just for a weekend, each summer to visit her and her partner.  This trip was more fun than past year’s trips because Kyle’s mom was finally able to come along.  We celebrated both Kyle’s Aunt Marty’s birthday, as well as his mom Nancy’s birthdays while we were down there.  One evening, we went to the boardwalk and played in an arcade for probably almost an hour.  We didn’t realize so many quarters equaled so many turns in skeeball and before you knew it, we were playing skeeball for at least 20 minutes.  Kyle, Kyle’s brother Alex and I all walked away with small nerf guns as prizes after trading in our tickets.  One thing you should know about Kyle and Alex is that they love playing jokes on people.  Kyle had the brilliant idea to use the nerf guns against Marty once we got home from the boardwalk, and that’s just what we did.  The next morning, Kyle woke his mom up by saying there was a fire, woke Marty up by holding a stool over her head jokingly, and I woke up Alex by running and jumping on him.  It was a great time.
• 9/2/17-9/3/17 Moving Alex to college: Kyle’s little brother is finally in college!  He is attending Pace University in New York City for theater set design and he absolutely loves it so far.  Moving him up to college was a challenge, though.  1. Kyle and I drove up separately from his mom, dad, and brother.  We drove up Friday night right after work and we got into the city with no problems just after 9:00 p.m.  By the time we got to the hotel, it was 45 minutes and an anxiety attack later.  I hate driving in big cities, but New York is on another level.  We almost got hit by a taxi and it was impossible to turn left onto the street with the hotel because of a fire blocking off three roads.  In short, it was a mess, but we somehow, finally, made it there.  2. Alex and his mom were at a Broadway show when we arrived, so we just hung out in the hotel room until they got back.  Alex talked our ears off about the show and then said he was leaving but he’d be back later.  Fast forward to 45 minutes later when I woke up in a panic and Alex wasn’t back yet.  I texted him asking him where he was, in which he responded Times Square by himself.  I yelled at him through the messages saying that he was never allowed to go there by himself in the middle of the night (by this point it was close to 1:00 a.m.) just to find out he was in his mom’s room all along.  I told you Kyle and Alex like to play jokes.  Anyway, I told my in-laws and Kyle that I’m never having kids because Alex stressed me out too much.  The rest of the weekend went smoothly.  We all ate breakfast together before helping Alex move into his dorm, and after lunch, we grabbed our car from a parking garage and headed home.
• 9/15/17-9/17/17 Birthday Celebrations: I turned 25 this year, and boy do I feel like it.  I have aches and pains like I’m 25 going on 80.  However, the weekend of my birthday was so much fun.  I ate dinner at a restaurant called Black N Bleu, where I had the firehouse pasta that was to die for.  I received Kyle’s gift that night, too.  So, you all know the trending facebook videos of the people in the t-rex costumes doing ridiculous things?  I am now the proud owner of one!  I told Kyle I want to go running around the neighborhood around Halloween with it on to see everyone’s reactions.  The following day, we went for a morning hike with some friends, following Kyle accidentally hitting a curb and popping his tire.  After hiking, he went and got that fixed and we relaxed all afternoon until dinner with family at Chili’s (their chips and salsa, in my opinion, is out of this world).  Later, we met up with friends at a local winery and had a few drinks and chatted about life and Game of Thrones, which we marathoned on Sunday.
• 9/23/17-9/24/17 Love Celebrations: My brother and his fiance got engaged back in May, and this weekend we celebrated with them.  Kyle is one of my brother’s groomsmen and he and the rest of the groomsmen went to a place called “Top Golf” which is essentially a driving range but you get points each time you hit a golf ball.  The girls, my sister included, hung out at his fiance’s house as we drank good wine and talked everything wedding.  It ended with the guys meeting up with the girls at my future sister-in-law’s place and we ended the night playing Jenga.

Let me know in the comments below about any funny wedding mishaps that happened at your wedding or a wedding you attended, your birthday celebrations or really anything else you’d like to share what happened to you over the past few months.

Until next time,

Emily

5 Simple Ways to Unwind After a Stressful Day

Stressful days are not unknown, nor are they uncommon, especially to young adults struggling to get to where they want to be in life.  The past few weeks have been particularly stressful for me due to wedding planning as well as a full workload at my day job.  However, I try not to let my stresses get the best of me.  Here are some of my favorite ways to unwind after a stressful day:

1. Sit out on your porch and get fresh air.  Or, if you don’t have a porch, sit under a tree or on a bench or wherever is most comfortable for you.  There’s something about sitting outside and breathing the fresh air that does wonders for me.  Listening to the birds chirp and the nature around tends to calm all of my worries/stresses.  Ironically, as I write this I’m currently sitting outside on my apartment balcony and I can easily tell you I’m feeling much better than I was earlier today.
2. Read a book.  I know not all of my followers probably read, but sometimes it’s just nice to get away from your life and live someone else’s.  By reading, I escape into another world and focus solely on those characters rather than what’s happening in my life.  I disregard all of my previous stresses of the day and instead attempt to solve the puzzle in the protagonist’s life.
3. Watch TV and drink wine.  If you’re not really into books that much, pick a new show on Netflix or find something on cable to watch, and kick your feet up and relax.  I normally watch one or two hours of TV per day and during that time I try not to work on anything else or even think about anything that’s left on my to-do list.  I normally always pair watching TV with a glass of wine because what’s the harm in that?  Wine helps me to relax, and it makes me tired so I fall asleep easier, which a better night’s sleep would alleviate the stress of being tired the next day.
4. Take a nap.  There is very little that I feel that sleeping doesn’t cure.  Today, for instance, I was so exhausted after my stressful work day that I didn’t feel like exercising or watching TV or cleaning or even writing a blog.  So I took a short 15 minute nap after I got home and I woke up more energized and less stressed.  I was able to finish my workout and now I’m sitting here typing this list up.
5. Exercise.  Last but not least, I love to exercise to alleviate stress.  I know this isn’t for everyone, but exercise does amazing things for my stress levels.  I workout in the evenings for the sole purpose of having the ability to let out all of my frustrations and stresses during my workout.  Using my frustrations and stresses also fuels me and helps me to work out harder and put more oomph into things.  And afterwards I feel more relaxed and calm and am ready to settle in for the rest of the evening.

 

So, after reading this list, are there any things that you do that are the same/that are different than what I do to relax after a long day?  I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts.  Share in the comments below to discuss!