treasure hunt adventure

today is our three year anniversary.

our wedding day was so amazing, i love going back and reliving it.

we are more in love at this point in our relationship than we probably thought possible when we married. marriage is a funny thing. i really do fall more & more in love with my husband everyday. he never ceases to surprise me or make me laugh (usually about some dumb joke), he supports me in every way possible, he's truthful even when its hard to hear, but important to know, he's loyal and worships me, reminds me how beautiful i am several times a day. he is caring and will be an amazing father one day and i love thinking where our relationship will go in future years. 

i had to work today, but when i got home at noon there was a bouquet of beautiful pink & purple wild-looking flowers with a note on them that was the beginning of a treasure hunt around our new neighborhood! how cute is that! i had no idea he was planning this nor was i expecting anything because we mutually agreed not to get each other anything or do anything crazy today, but he really went above and beyond to make me feel special and loved and to create something fun for us to do. 

i'd love to share some photos from my little treasure hunt adventure, if you would like to see! dekel followed me around capturing my confusion. some of the hints needed a little further explanation, let's just put it that way- haha!

gorgeous bouquet. husband did good.

clue no.1 

 i found clue no.2 pretty easily, behind a 'parallel parking' sign

in search of clue no.3

 found clue no.3 & a little friend

 clue no.4!

 looking for clue no.5 by the "blueprints" sculpture at the circle

clue no.5 led me north, past polk-a-dot bakery, to find a park bench with the number 825 on/near it

 found! clue no.6

 clue no.6 6 led me southwest from where i was to another park to locate a black light post. do you see how many black light posts are in the below photo? there were tons...guidance was necessary!

 clue no.7 led me to some trees under the addison water tower, where my treasure was waiting for me! dek sneakishly got my favorite kind of white wine, Gewurztraminer, and printed a sticker label with a photo from our wedding day on it. really special touch! funny note: the wine was in a bag with a note on it explaining that it was a valentine's day gift and to please not touch, since it was sitting out in a public area, haha!

 he even brought glasses! we sat in the park and reminisced about where we were 3 years ago and how far we've come and where we want to go. i love making plans for our future and being so aligned with him.  

 after the little treasure hunt, we decided to grab a bite to eat at a place by our apartment, the lion & crown. it's an english pub located on a corner with an amazing wrap-around outdoor patio that we sat on to enjoy the 70 degree weather! 

my handsome husband

 for him: hoegaarden from the tap, for me: melon fizz 

 dek had the french dip sandwich with au jus & i had the brat on a bun with stoneground mustard 

 neighborhood kitty we call "fat cat," i want him to be my friend so bad but he doesn't trust me yet. 
it will be a love like this one, i can already tell. 

thanks for reading!

happy valentine's day & have a wonderful weekend!

home decor DIY

initially inspired by these, i knew i wanted to use small, wooden crate-like boxes to assemble a "centerpiece" for our living room area. since we live in a simple studio apartment and the floor plan is open, our whole place is basically just one big room, which we love. it feels open, inviting & homey. but there was just one big wall we weren't sure what to do with. we were on the search for free or cheap wooden boxes, i mean we could have made them, but luckily dekel's friend had 5 that he didn't need and they were exactly what we were looking for, so we took them on as the DIY project i have always been wanting to do!

we were going to my grandmother's house today to do some yard work & around-the-house chores, so we brought our boxes and some black spray paint to do this potentially-messy project in a corner of her giant backyard. we first removed leftover stickers that were on the boxes and sanded each box down. then we took a slightly damp cloth to the boxes to wipe them down from debris. to avoid painting the grass black, we cup open a few 45 gallon trash bags and found some weights to hold the bags down. we decided to take advantage of this spray painting opportunity to DIY some patio chairs as well. my sister gave them to us for our little outside seating area and they are perfect, besides the color and the fact that they would leave green residue when you touched them, so a coat of black paint was a necessity & i think they came out great! 

the next step was to decide how wide we wanted the v-shape format on our wall and just nail them in! we honestly just eyeballed the heights, so they might be off a tad, but it looks amazing to me & i love the result! to finish off our centerpiece, we added something to our wall that we've been wanting to mount for a while now, our scratch map! i got this for dekel for his birthday 3 years ago and finally it's up:) (you can find one here!)

dek sanding the boxes

  

 

the straightening tool is crucial so you don't have uneven boxes, really helps!

we need to scratch more countires...i think costa rica will be the next one!

hope you liked this post!

stay tuned if you'd like to see how we decorated our small space of the world; full apartment tour coming up this week!

movin' on

well hello there ! 

i feel like we haven't talked i haven't blogged in ages, and it really has been a few weeks but there's good reason! 

we moved!

dek & i found a quaint studio apartment in addison at the post and have been busy moving/ situating ourselves since. we moved in on saturday the 24th with help from my sister, mirelle, her boyfriend randy, and my mom. i double booked myself and attended an intense class at beyond 500 hosted by andrea that same morning, which left me so worn out and sore (photos here & here!), and then spent 5 hours transporting heavy objects, so needless to say i could barely walk on sunday. ha!

anyways, we love our little place & have already hosted a small family meal to thank our mover-helpers :) once i have some spare time i will go around our new neighborhood and take some photos of our surrounds and our new apartment to share with you guys, but in the meantime here are a handful of photos from life lately:

we rented a u-haul to transport our stuff, it was packed full but we forgot to take a "before" photo, so this is me & mel unloading the last item. you really should have seen us wheeling heavy objects and boxes piled high on a dolly of about 4 square feet space down a mile-long hallway trying not to run into walls or drop everything. it was truly a sight. but we did it! and within only a few hours plus one ice cream break. 

the exterior of our apartment building. we reside above retail space, which i absolutely love; it gives our place that "city" vibe! there are restaurants, bakeries, bars, pubs, photography and workout studios, etc... (directly below us is a yoga studio) 

 
sunset view from the rooftop

 testing out the inactive railraod track next to my apartment as a potential #ootd photoshoot backdrop. we approve :)

about to enjoy some white cheddar popcorn (thanks, mom!) & watch some american horror story, i am on episode 6 of season 1 and loving it! i recently watched the 6th season on tv and now i'm catching up on the others via netflix. 

have a great rest of the week !! 

new york day four: new year's day

so, not gunna lie- i had a rough start to this day.
this first photo is a reminder of how nauseous i was that morning, as we walked, again, to zabar's to pick up breakfast of bagels and chocolate croissants. i just could not stand any smells or sights and the hot/cold factor of the weather/ heater made me feel even more dizzy and sick-feeling. so while everyone went into zabar's to pick out juice and breakfast i was squatting outside by the tree in the photo behind me and this nice street vendor man let me borrow his chair for the few minutes i waited. he must have seen how dizzy and hungover i was because i was facepalm at that point. and i just to clarify, i had an entire bottle of champagne to ring in the new year. no lie. nothing even exciting went down, we seriously just hung out at our air bnb apartment and watched the ball drop and made a night of it with champagne (lotsss of it) and vodka shots chased with lipton tea...i vaguely remember that part. but i am a champagne lover! could drink it at every meal and with a straw. but it makes me a mad, yet very lovey and emotional drunk and i'm gunna have to work on that this year. note to self: 2 glass maximum

anyways, here is my batch of photos for our outs & abouts on new year's day in new york.
this particular day, if you couldn't have already guessed, was not my day to play photographer so i did not carry my camera, but i made my best attempt to capture some of the fun things we did later on in the day, as my pounding headache wore off, with my phone.

after breakfast, which we enjoyed i attempted to swallow down back at our apartment and next to the chilly window, but under a blanket (i'm telling you, hot, then cold, then hot, then cold) we ventured off to soho to find this one particular store my mom had been raving about called 'yellow rat bastard,' we made it & loved it! it was totally like an 'urban outfitters' but raunchier. they had hilarious tees & i found this cute souvenir shirt for me & this one for dek (because his name means 'palm tree' in hebrew). after shopping a bit (& walking a ton!) we enjoyed lunch in chinatown. it was a funny experience in chinatown, dining, shopping, everything is so awkward and weird, but it was a great experience and amazing food! after filling our bellies, we headed to grand central station- we all really wanted to go see it in person. the subway took us right to the station and we exited into one of the confusing concourses that headed to the 'main chamber.' it was enormous, beautiful and very detail-oriented, made me just stand, again, in awe of architecture and artistry. it was really packed in there and there was even protesting or something going on, so it was hustle & bustle, but i'm glad we got to see it in person. plus! there is this way cool secret that we tried, hence the photo of my mom talking to the wall below.

after our visit to the grand central station, we walked around times square a bit & then looked up where to go for dinner. mirelle found the meatball shop which was a few blocks away from our airbnb apartment so we made our way there from times square. they had a dim lit setting with festive greenery hanging everywhere, meat grinders hanging on the wall and an open view to where they made their balls. and their balls were damn good! we got balls, mashed potatoes and homemade cookies with ice cream for dessert. highly recommended if you ever have the chance to go!

hope you enjoy photos from my new year's day in nyc!

super hungover, chillin in a street vendors chair in the middle of the sidewalk

beautiful streets of soho

lunch in chinatown

grand central station

family photo!

the whispering gallery

 it's an impressive sight

 bryant park ice skating rink;
we enjoyed a bavarian style sea salt pretzel while watching people fall skate

 times square

 panoramic view

at the meatball shop

the most delishious balls!

 with the birthday girl

 my friend Lauren, brother Ben & sister Mirelle

thanks for reading! 

my last day in new york will be up soon & then i'll continue with regular posting, i just wanted to be sure to document my trip, day-by-day to share with you guys and to be able to look back on :)
hope you've enjoyed it!