happiness – Rooted Gracefully

Early Spring Recap

So remember around January 1st I posted about my New Year’s Resolutions? Remember how one of them was to be more consistent with the blog? Oops! I guess life just gets in the way sometimes and you have to roll with the punches. Lately, that means not opening my computer for any purposes besides work and studying. It’s not pretty or fun to think about, but hopefully it will get better soon.

While I have a few minutes, I wanted to share some of my favorite things that have happened over the last couple of months since I posted!

My aunt, uncle, and cousins came to visit me! We only got to spend a few hours together, but I loved having them here none the less.

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2. I discovered one of my new favorite places in Massachusetts – Birth Tree Bread Company. Since visiting, I can’t stop thinking and talking about how I would love to open a coffee shop just like this one – homemade pastries, fresh bread, delicious coffee, and craft beer. All of this along with the cozy atmosphere and the farmer’s market downstairs — I am in my element!

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3. Mom, Dave, Ant, and Dan came down for a long weekend in March. We had a great time despite it being one of the last freezing cold weekends that we had. We spent our Saturday night at Maxwell’s Tavern and ended up front row at a country concert. It was a bizarre twist of events, but we had fun being front row at a Drew Baldridge concert.

4. I visited Departed Soles Brewing Co. in Jersey City with a friend from college, her boyfriend, and Dan. It was so great to catch up with her after months apart! The brewery that we went to was such a unique and quirky little place – but the beer that I had was fantastic. She loved it because they have gluten free options, which is nearly unheard of for a brewery. Since we went around Easter, the specialty beer on tap was infused with marshmallow peeps. Now I know that this sounds strange, but it may very well have been the best beer that I have ever tasted. I’m still kicking myself for not buying a case!

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5. My five best guy friends from college came to visit me a few weeks later and we had the best weekend. We started the weekend off with a delicious Italian dinner at Margherita’s Pizza Cafe and it was a fabulous choice. All weekend everyone raved about the meal that they had here – myself included.

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On Saturday we spent the day walking around and exploring NYC. We went up to the observatory deck of One World Trade Center, visited Ground Zero, Wall Street, Central Park, and Trump Tower (or as all the guys kept saying, “White House North”).

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It was a full day of walking but we had a blast. I was so grateful to have them here for the weekend! I always find myself feeling so lucky to have such solid friendships that all started 5 years ago in our college freshman dorm.

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6. Last but not least, Easter weekend! I got into MA around 11 PM Friday night and immediately went to bed. I was exhausted after working all day and traveling all night, but it was more than worth it. On Saturday morning, I took a ride to Birch Tree Bread Company (surprise, surprise) for iced coffee. They had a farmer’s market downstairs where I picked up two bouquets of tulips from Fivefork Farms in Upton, MA – one for my mom and one for my grandma. The photos don’t do them justice because they were absolutely breathtaking.

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On Saturday afternoon, my Dad and Peggy stopped by to have an early Easter lunch with Ant and I. They brought us the most fantastic Easter baskets, as always, and I’m mad at myself that I didn’t get a picture of it. I was clearly too busy inhaling as much candy as possible, as fast as possible (LOL). We went down to Brew City on Shrewsbury St. for lunch and had a great time catching up.

After returning from lunch, we decorated cupcakes, easter eggs, and made chocolate covered strawberries with the boys!

Sunday morning we woke up early to have kielbasa, coffee, mimosas, and butter braids and it was the perfect relaxing start to the day before heading off Grammy’s house!

Here are a few of the photos taken from the day…

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That’s pretty much everything that has been going on for the past few months around here. I always find it funny how I can get so bogged down with the little details of my day to day life, yet looking back the weeks are filled with so much happiness. Writing recap posts like this really helps me put into perspective how blessed I truly am. God is so good.

xo,

Jaclyn

Friday Favorites

Yay for the weekend! Tomorrow is my big test and I am SO excited for it to be over with. Here are a few things that I was loving this past week. 🙂

1. This week I really loved some of the excerpts that I read from my book before bed. They all focused on having faith rather than planning for and worry about the future. They spoke about how God has a plan for us all that is already set and will be slowly revealed to us moment by moment.

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Some days I like the readings more than others, and this week I felt like they really were all things that I needed to hear.

2. On Thursday night my Dad and I went out to dinner in Hoboken to a restaurant called “Margherita’s Pizza and Cafe.” I had been looking forward to our visit all week! It was nice to get out of the apartment and spend some time catching up.

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I had a feeling that the food would be good here because each time that I previously walked by there had been a line out the door. The atmosphere was really cute and cozy and felt like your typical small family owned Italian restaurant.

They started us off with bruschetta and Italian bread and butter. Then for our main meals, my dad had chicken parmigiana and I had raviolis stuffed with eggplant, sun-dried tomato, and cheese. Both of our meals were fantastic!

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We then finished off our evening with a coffee and cappuccino before heading out.

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Overall we had a great time! We hopefully are going to try to do something like this once a month or so. 🙂

3. Lastly, two of my favorite things this week have to do with my bedroom coming along in my apartment. As of right now, the kitchen and living room feel nice and cozy, but the bedroom is a mess. For the past (almost) two months I have had no rug, curtains, or even a bedspread. Luckily that all changed this week!

My aunt had been working hard on a hand-made quilt for my bed for a little while now and she just finished it! I haven’t seen it in person yet, but it looks absolutely beautiful from the pictures.

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My grandma picked out the fabric for me when she was in Amish country this past summer and I immediately fell in love with it. I knew that it would make a beautiful quilt, but I’m not super confident in my quilting abilities yet so I decided to ask my aunt to make it for me. Luckily she said yes and it’s already one of my very favorite things that I own (despite that I don’t actually have it in my hands yet)!

Even the small details are perfect!

To go along with this, I got a nice surprise from my Grandma telling me that she bought me a braided rug for the bedroom as a Valentine’s Day gift!

Screen Shot 2017-02-17 at 8.52.54 PM.png — Here’s the photo she sent me, but I’ll be sure to post actual pictures when I get it!

I had been looking at very similar rugs online for weeks now but hadn’t mentioned it to anybody. I was so shocked when she told me that she bought me one in the exact color that I liked! I am so excited to get it into my bedroom and see how it helps things come together.

I will definitely be doing a post on the apartment in the near future to share my attempt at making this place feel like home!

That’s all for this week. I am so grateful for my fantastic family who truly made this week fabulous.

Have a great weekend!

xo,

Jaclyn

Happy Saturday!

Today is an extra happy Saturday because my mom and my brother came down to visit me! Anthony is working on a paper right now though, so I figured I would hop on here for a few minutes and catch up with all of you.

I am so proud of myself after this week for a few reasons. The main reason being that I finished my first full week of working in and commuting to NYC, as well as living in my very own apartment. I had been so nervous for this week for so long, but now I realize that I had no reason to be. It was a piece of cake…. well kind of. I struggled a bit towards the end just because I was so darn exhausted.

screen-shot-2017-01-14-at-5-24-54-pm — Mandatory first day of work selfie!

The second reason is because I worked out this week every morning at 5:30 before work. If you know me, you know that I would be happy sleeping until 10:30 every single day. This was so hard, but I’m so happy that I forced myself to do it. I loved coming home each night knowing that I had already been active for the day.

Before moving to Hoboken, I did tons and tons of research regarding which gym would be the best for me to join. Unfortunately, fitness is super expensive in this area and as a new grad, I’m still trying to get on my feet. Eventually I hope to start taking classes here and there at local studios (they have barre, yoga, and spin classes that I can’t wait to try ) but for now, I figured a program that I could do for less money from my apartment would be best.

With this criteria, I decided to jump on the Beachbody bandwagon and sign up for a year of on demand workouts. This allows me to stream any workout that I want straight to my TV and includes a great variety. Some of the more popular ones included are Insanity, P90X, 21 Day Fix, and Core de Force. I’ve mixed it up a bit to see how I liked the different programs and I haven’t been disappointed yet.

Right now I’m fully committed to 21 Day Fix and have already finished Day 7/21! I’ve been sore every day and I LOVE that the workouts are only 30 minutes each. I’m not sure I could handle getting up much earlier than 5:30 everyday!

screen-shot-2017-01-14-at-5-36-17-pm — My favorite post-workout / pre-work protein shake 🙂

Now I’m off to the supermarket to get some snacks and games for us to enjoy during the Patriots game. Go Pats!!

xo,

Jaclyn

Weekend in NJ

On Friday morning, I headed out to Westfield State to pick up my brother before we headed to New Jersey for the weekend. We had big plans to visit my dad and visit NYC to try and scope out places for me to live come January.

We arrived to my dad’s house around 3:30PM and we were tired. They went out hunting for a few hours and I stayed at the house to catch up with Peggy. Chatting with some coffee, snacks, and wine – what more do you need? We ended up spending the rest of the night relaxing and watching Netflix. We planned to head to NY early on Saturday, so we all wanted to be well rested. Including Sadie…

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On Saturday morning, I woke up only to take my first ever motor cycle ride with my dad’s friend. It was pretty cool – though not something I would ever want to buy for myself! The area where they live is so beautiful, so that was a perfect way to explore.

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Around 10 o’clock, we started out journey towards NYC. I had a few places in mind that I wanted to visit and Hoboken, NJ was on that list. It’s super close to the city and I had heard a lot of good things about it, so we decided to check it out.

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I ended up loving it! There were tons of restaurants, shops, parks, and young people. I really think this is a place that I could see myself spending a lot of time in future. Everyone that we met was so kind and I loved the small-town atmosphere despite being so close to NYC.

We stopped at a small diner called “Stacks “for brunch where I had the most delicious eggs florentine.

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Then we just roamed around the little city before getting back in the car and heading to Carlo’s Bake Shop.

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This is the bakery from the popular show “Cake Boss.” We waited in line for about 20 minutes but it was well worth it. We felt obligated to stop since we were so close. 🙂

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We ordered lobster tails, a mini cheesecake, and a cannoli. Everything was delicious.

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Next, we left Hoboken and headed into the city. I had intentions of looking around the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, and we tried our very best to do so. Unfortunately, it was super chaotic and there were people everywhere. I give my dad so much credit for driving through there.

It was still great to see everything! While I think that I can adjust to city life during the work week, I’m not sure that I can see myself living right in the heart of all the craziness. After we left the city, we headed back to the hotel and we all passed out. It was a long day that took a lot out of us! Around 8 PM, we rallied and headed over to Buffalo Wild Wings to grab some supper and finish off the day.

On Sunday morning, we headed back to Hoboken so that I could get one last look around before going home. We stopped at O’Bagel for (pumpkin spice) coffee and home-made bagels.

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They were so yummy. 🙂

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We all piled back in the car and were able to make it back to my dad’s house in time for the Pats game! I was trying to multitask by studying and watching the game, but Sadie didn’t seem to want that…

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Overall, it was a great weekend!

xo,

Jaclyn

Fall Favorites

Hi all!

I could not have been more excited to find out when I woke up that it was National Coffee Day today! One of my absolute favorite things to do on a chilly, fall day is to sit down with a nice big mug of coffee.

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This got me thinking about some of the other things that I love about fall, and there are lots and lots of them!

In the past, summer has always been my favorite season. I loved nothing more than spending all of my days out by the pool with a good book. Now that I have a full-time job during the summer and no pool to use daily, I find myself looking forward to the fall more and more each year.

Some of my top favorite things about fall:

PUMPKIN EVERYTHING

Even though Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts released their pumpkin spice lattes and coffee weeks ago, I forced myself to wait until September 22nd (the actual first day of fall) to order one.

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Now that that day has passed, I’m enjoying pumpkin fall beverages every chance that I get! Before you know it, Christmas drinks will be out!

2. Layering

I absolutely love being cozy. Whether this means curling up under a thick blanket (which is always my Vermont Flannel Throw that I am completely obsessed with), or bundling up with layers to spend the day studying, I love it. There are so many cute and comfy fall trends that I am completely obsessed with. It’s just so easy to throw on a big sweater and scarf and look like you made an effort for the day ;).

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3. Football

While I will admit that I’ve never been a die-hard fan, I become more and more interested in watching football every year. There’s something about sitting down on a Sunday afternoon (or Thursday night) with a bunch of snacks and watching the Patriots kick some serious butt.

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4. Santa is Coming!

Just kidding! (kind of) I love knowing that the holidays are right around the corner even if it is a little bit too early to start celebrating. Some of my favorite memories growing up coincide with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

Screen Shot 2016-09-29 at 7.34.55 PM.png — Last year’s family wreath-making night!

I love surprising my family with special gifts and just making the most of the time that we all get to spend together. I also love the fact that in just a few weeks it will finally be acceptable to start listening to christmas music again ;).

There are plenty more but I’m going to cut the list there for now and finish up the rest of my homework. Tomorrow I’m going to be sharing some very exciting news, so be sure to check in!

xo,

Jaclyn