I’ve had a lot of visitors lately. One of which is my dear old Canadian, Tim. Love this kid. And the fun part is that I didn’t always. You never know who will turn out to be a really loyal friend, especially when you maybe did NOT like them at all when you first met. Haha.

So… Timmy. He has a new appreciation of Brooklyn after I showed him the beauuuuutiful Brooklyn Heights Promenade at sunset:

And here’s me:

Another awesome thing we did: Skating at Rockefeller Center

I think Tim forgot I used to be a figure skater because A) He was really impressed by some of my skills (hence the photo) and B) he showed up in a suit (per usual) while I was in Lululemon pants and a sweatshirt ready to SKATE. We raced around a few times and tried not to run over anyone, which we did pretty successfully.

Who is going to visit me next?

1. Blue Bottle Coffee Co

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. If I ever leave the office to go get a coffee beverage of sorts, it’s probably not the best day. I REALLY needed a pick-me-up. This particular day and this particular coffee drink was the worst kind of dashed hopes disappointing day. But as you can imagine, I (gasp!) got through it and am still alive. And a little coffee drink helped. Actually, to make matters worse, Blue Bottle is for real coffee aficionados, of which I am not. They didn’t have any chocolate of sorts and this beverage, while sweet, did not do the trick for me. But it sure was pretty!

2. Stumptown Coffee Roasters

I love me some Stumptown. And I love me some Ace Hotel lobby, in which Stumptown is located. I get my dad different kinds of coffee beans every Christmas and he really liked the Stumptown varieties, so the last time he was in town, I made sure we checked out the Ace Hotel. Enjoyed our beverages in the lobby, where there is always some quality people-watching, and then surprised him with tickets to that night’s Rangers game. That was a pretty damn good day.

3. Think Coffee

One of my favorite iced mochas at the moment is at Think Coffee. It’s a cool space and there’s a few located in the city, one pretty close by my office. This particular day with this particular iced mocha wasn’t a bad day, but I had a meeting off-site and wanted to make the most of it.

4. Brunch cocktails at Colonie

Stop the press, here’s a drink with alcohol! When my mom was in town, we had a boozy brunch and got tooooooootally wasted. Just kidding. But we did get brunchy cocktails. Mine was a Perfect Pimms and I basically really like any sort of Pimms drink ever. And with a cucumber in it!? How could I go wrong?

And there you have it, folks. Four Beverage Photos of the Week!

P.S. These were not taken the same week. At all. But we can pretend.

P.P.S. My other little splurge was nail polish. :)

My homegirl Michelle came to visit this weekend and one of the many awesome things we did included a trip to Yankee Stadium to see The Detroit Tigers (and they won!). We got some garlic fries and moved to the lower level and had an overall good time. She’s easy to hang with when she’s here, I don’t have ro run around like a chicken with my head cut off so I really appreciate that.

Here’s a work-related photo of myself that I really dig:

That’s me, on the internet. Or more specifically, that’s me being projected onto a wall at the latest Zagat 30 Under 30 party in New York. Holla!

Speaking of 30 Under 30, after the event (and after the after-party), a group of us headed over to Parm for some late-night eats. These eats included ice cream cake, as you do.

Well, hello.

And finally, the last picture I’ll include in this update is me and some of my girlies after Easter brunch at Almond. My dad was in town for Easter and was really impressed with Almond (as was I, great place!) and so here I am with some of my girls.

Good times!

I  may have some other updates in the pipeline here, but this is all for now. Good night!

I just had the strangest birthday weekend (or week, actually) and I can’t even talk about it.

Here is a photo of me (from the fabulous Kelly Purkey) at a birthday brunch of sorts. What you can’t really tell from this photo is that the candle is stuck, not in a cake, but in macaroni and cheese. Macaroni and cheese with a fried egg on it. Yep. Process that.

Birthdays are fun but I’m actually happy to have all of the birthday celebrations over. It felt silly to be celebrating a week after the fact, but since I had to push everything back with my last-minute work trip, that’s what happened.

And for the record, here’s a picture from my actual birthday:

Yes. You may not know this about me but Tigger and I are best friends. Since I was in California for work, I was lucky enough to have my birthday fall on a Sunday and be able to drive up to good ol’ Disney with miss Jackie. And it was fantastic.

Here’s to another great year!

So I’m in LA now, on the second leg of this work trip. And now, let’s talk about hotels.

Stayed at the W in SF and I thought the rooms were really nice, as you could see from the photo  in my last post of my dearest Jackie sitting on our window seat doing some work at whatever hour that was. Loved that seat. Also loved the colorful/crazy design in the elevator:

Oh look, there’s me and Jackie. We’re on our way to a very late dinner.  This elevator made me feel fun and fancy.

Now I’m in LA and it’s a bit of a change of pace. One thing I do like: chandeliers. I’m pretty sure we’ve covered that before. And I like this white chandelier at The Bazaar by Jose Andres in the hotel SLS:

I’m really digging that chandelier with the white tabletop and the light chairs. Really digging. And then the rooms…

A little less my style, but I’ll take it. Oh and also hello, Timmy. One really great thing about this trip to LA is I got to hang out with my really good friend Tim, who recently (or not so recently, I guess) left the East Coast for the West. It’s nice to see him on his new turf and get a little tour from him and hang out and all that good stuff. He waited for me at the hotel today when we were getting ready to go out and I appreciated that a lot.

Other things I appreciate:

Mexican Coke! I’ve been able to get it once or twice in New York but Mexican Coke is all over California (for obvious reasons) and it is the bomb dot com. It’s made with real sugar instead of whatever else it’s made of when it’s not Mexican (high fructose corn syrup, I believe). So it tastes great. I had one earlier today at Umami Burger, where I did a little celeb spotting with Tim. Real photos of that meal are to come.

And now it’s time for one more thing: Guess whose birthday it is! Mine. Since I’m posting this at 2 in the morning, it is most definitely my birthday. And when I wake up I am going to Disneyland to meet Minnie and that is not even a joke. Good night!

Hello, hello. I’m going to try a new thing. Since all the photos I take on my phone automatically upload to a private album accessible on Google+ (Yay, Android!), I’m going to start grabbing them and putting them up here. We’ll see how this goes. I’m also taking photos on my regular camera so those could very well be additional posts for when I get back. I’m in San Francisco on a kind of last-minute work trip. The good thing is I’m here with some really great people, one of which is my work bestie Jackie, who came into town with me a day early so we could do some galavating. We’re already having a blast and we’re already exhausted. Our first meal was at Flour & Water. We got there at 5:30 and had to wait an hour and a half. It was worth it. Above is what was left of our chocolate bundito dessert. Yes.

Here is myself taking a look at things from Coit Tower, in which we had to walk a thousand steps to get to. A thousand steps along different kinds of trees and different kinds of houses of different colors and on different height levels because we were going up a hill. It was really cool. And the view was nice when we were up there. Oh, and yes, I did buy this jacket at Forever 21 because I had no idea San Francisco would be as cold as it would be. My choice of shoes that I brought is really unfortunate.

 

Hello, hello. Just taking a moment to stop by City Mitten with an announcement… I’m still here!

I haven’t blogged in over a month. It’s a combination of work and a kind of broken laptop, and the fact that I need to figure out where to house all my very large photo files before my personal laptop really goes kaput. Any suggestions?

But things have been good, good, good. Above is me at the office and my homegirl KP stopping by to say hello. Fun how many people want to visit your office once you start working at Google. :)

I have some photos from my New Year’s Eve trip with Norabear to Texas, and my goal is to start having some ready to put up by Monday! Big goal!

5 highlights from the last month or so which I have no photos for:

1) Renting a car and taking a min-roadtrip to Westchester with my girlies for some hockey, as well as to New Jersey for Jason Wu for Target the next day

2) Having a new favorite bar that is literally across the street from work (Hello, Tippler!).

3) My Zogsports volleyball team. It’s my second season with this crew and we actually have a winning record right now! I’m very excited to be with these people because it’s so fun and I hope I play with them every season for my entire life. Ha!

4) Taking a limo across town with a few friends a couple weeks ago after a work event. You can’t fit five people in one cab, so what’s the next best thing? A limo. With half-full bottles of bub.

5) Weekends. My favorite! Whether it was going to friends and family at Talde or spending time at the New York Aquarium and walking a very abandoned winter Coney Island Boardwalk, I think I’ve been taking pretty good advantage.

More to come!

Hello, hello.

We like eating cupcakes but we also like to *make* them. I bought a Groupon (one of maybe three I’ve bought my entire life, FYI) for a cupcake class at Butterlane almost a year ago. Finally got to use them when my mom and sister came to town. Cupcake 101 aka Frosting.

The class made three different frostings: vanilla, chocolate and cream cheese and then the head baker, Sunshine, taught us what you can mix into these basic frostings to give them more flavor. It was a short class, next time I would have opted for one a little more longer and more in depth, where you’re measuring the ingredients yourself but it was still fun! And yummy, of course.

Frosting the cupcakes was the fun part although I could NOT get their signature swirl down for the life of me.

I love this picture.

Cupcake anyone?

I realized I had not yet posted a photo of my tree fully decorated and lit up. I went for a bit of a color theme this year since I was starting with only two ornaments to my name. And also Macy’s had their ornaments on sale for 50% off. I was a little disappointed I never found a magenta, red, or even white or silver star for the top. Maybe next year. Except next year we all promised the littlest Spurlock that we’d have Christmas in Birmingham so we wouldn’t be using my ornaments at all.

I think my tree turned out quite nice, actually. It’s one of those things where I’d kind of like it to stay up forever. I’m giving it another week before we take it to the mulch station a few blocks away set up by New York Parks, which is good knowing your tree will be useful after you throw it out.

Oh and a bonus cakepop of sorts from one of the bakeries in Chelsea Market, Ruthy’s. He was so cute it made it (almost) impossible to eat:

Le Parker Meridien is a fancy hotel. With a fancy restaurant called Norma’s that supposedly has a fabulous brunch that I will hopefully be lucky enough one day to try for myself.

But Le Parker Meridien also has a secret divey hamburger joint inside it as well. And it’s called Burger Joint. Also, it’s not so secret anymore. The first time I tried to go it was at lunch time during the week and I walked in with my coworker and we walked right back out because the line in the lobby was HUGE.

*Also, Anthony Bourdain recently blew up the spot even more on his NYC episode of The Layover, my new favorite show.

But, when I had my family in town we wake up super early and get out the door super early which makes us the first in line for a lot of things. In fact, Burger Joint wasn’t even open yet. But eventually it was and we got inside and snagged a booth first thing.

The menu is not so huge, obviously. You’re there for the burger. The messy, messy burger:

Oh, yes. I love hamburgers. The fries were good too.

The only bummer was that they currently weren’t making shakes when we were in.

Dang, guess I’ll have to go back.