Anna + Dennis Tie the Knot

This weekend was our good friend Anna & Dennis' wedding. We packed up the car and headed up to MA for the festivities. Anna and Dennis chose the most beautiful, rustic barn setting for their nuptials. It was such a beautiful venue and so perfect for them! They put such a personal touch on their entire wedding, from the brides choice of music and getting their string quartet to learn a Dave Matthews Band song, to their featured drink, and so much more. Even the menu was quintessential New England serving clam chowder as the first course. And I loved the cider donuts for dessert too. The whole evening, event, and of course the bride was so beautiful! We had such a great time celebrating, here's a couple pictures from the wedding!

Gotta photo stalk the bride for a few pictures of her beautiful gown, perfect for the setting

 I love that you can see how happy they look in this picture! 

How Far We've Come Book Club

I'll make this a quick one, no fun pictures or anything, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Exactly 18 months ago this month I met two strangers for the first time to discuss a book. None of us had ever met before or had any mutual connections, just shared a love of books. It's amazing to think that we have met once a month for the last year and a half. And sometimes we met twice a month, we've added monthly wine tastings to our events. At least two of us have met every single month with maybe one exception, I think Christmas of last year.

It's hard to believe that 3 girls who were complete strangers have turned into so much more. I look forward to our adventures every single month, always trying fantastic new restaurants that were hidden gems to us before, and when possible tying it into our book that month. From meeting for Indian food, a new excursion for me, to fantastic mojitos, French wine and more, each month has brought a new adventure and always great company!

This month instead of wine tasting they had a craft beer tasting so we invited the husbands along as well. This was the first time all of us were meeting together as a group of 6. We wanted the boys to know who were spending all our time with every month. I'm happy to say we of course had a great time and it was so much fun to get together with friends that have now become such a big part of my life. I just thought it was worth mentioning before our next book club adventure which I already can't wait for, French wine in the city again!

Christmas Eve 2012

Catching up on a couple more Christmas pictures. We try to divide up our Holidays amongst the two families. It was a little bit different this year since I hosted Christmas at our house, but for Christmas Eve we went to my cousin's house. We've tended to do Christmas Eve in Long Island with my family and then Christmas Day in Jersey with Mike's family. This year we had two brand new editions to the festivities  little Zoe & Harry! These two little cutie pies were the hit of the evening. But clearly even Harry ate too much and was passed out, as was Mike after Christmas Dinner! I do love our Christmas Eve dinner, it's quite the feast and always includes my Aunts famous Swedish Meatballs, I look forward to those guys all year long! 

More Party Pictures!

I was so blessed to have so many wonderful family and friends come to my 30th Birthday Party! Because I have so many great pictures with everyone I thought I would post some pictures from the party separately. This is just a small sampling of all the great people that came to the party and helped me to celebrate. Second to our wedding, we had so many of our family and friends all in one place! I still can't believe how many were there! Although at first we thought it was going to be a bit tight, it all worked out in the end and everyone hopefully had a fantastic time celebrating and drinking lots of wine and eating lots of cheese, among the many things we had that night! 

My 30th Birthday Wine & Cheese Party!

Even though it's been over a month now since my birthday I certainly couldn't go on without writing about this momentous birthday and party. I don't know how to begin to capture what an amazing birthday it was and how truly blessed I feel. It was THE BEST birthday and party I ever could have imagined or asked for, it really was.

Second to that of our wedding, it was one of the best nights of my life! I think mostly because we had so many of our wonderful family and friends all there in one place to help me celebrate that made it so amazing. That everyone traveled from near and far to be there!  From all of my aunts and uncles to family friends, to all of my closest friends, I can't even begin to thank everyone for coming!!!

The party itself was everything I ever could have wanted for a wine and cheese spread. Before the party Mike and I went shopping for all the wine and cheese. The guy at the wine store helped us to pick out some of the best wines and also helped us to pair each of the cheeses with the wines we specifically bought making a really nice spread! I also made little cards to describe each of the wines and cheeses which everyone loved. We set everything up along the bar for a beautiful presentation.

Then we had SO MUCH food. I mean more food than we possibly knew where to put it, these pictures don't even capture half of the food that we had. Everything from all the appetizers to the heros to the hot catered food, and all of it was so delicious! We had so much fun wine and cheese themed foods to pick on from the baked brie to the fruit and nut plates to the antipasto skewers my Mother in Law made.   Everything was incredible.

It was a little bit chaotic at first when everyone started arriving and piling in and of course being near all the food and drinks. Not going to lie we were all a little nervous and overwhelmed at first but once everyone spread out thankfully it all worked out and every ate and drank plenty!

I feel so grateful to my amazing Mom and Husband who put this whole thing together for me. They really gave me the best birthday party of my life! I wonder if I can get another wine and cheese party in 10 years for 40..... I doubt it, haha!

Pictures of everyone at the party to follow in the next post!

For now here is part of our delicious spread!!!

Two of my favorite wines of the evening! 

And I can't forget about my designer Birthday cake!!!! This was all my wonderful husband that researched birthday cakes for me all on his own. He called The Pink Cake Box and worked with the team there to get me a custom designed cake that was a quilt of all different wine bottle labels. It was amazing. It was a seriously legit cake that he got just for me!!! It was so thoughtful of him to do that for me and I loved every delicious bite of it. It was the most incredible red velvet cake you've ever had! 

BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!!!!!!!!!