Birthday Celebration, catch-up-style

As many of you know, the past month has been super busy for us. Not as busy perhaps as those of you who have multiple kids (or kids period), but busy none the less. We moved out of our apartment last week and the preparations for that kept us quite busy. As well as the 44 private violin/viola lessons I've given in the last two weeks. That and a bit of this and that kept us on our toes and exhausted. I'm starting to get the feeling that's what most adults feel for the majority of their lives. If that's the case, I think I can totally deal with it as long as there's good food, music and company thrown in the mix. Anyhow that is so off track. My birthday was almost a month ago and I managed to snap some pictures of the very special day, complete with flowers from my studly hubs:

Here are my birthday flowers in a vase a made at MICA three years ago. And for the record, these flowers lasted over 3  1/2 weeks! I had to throw them out when we moved, but they were still flourishing  at the time.

Karl made a deliciously fluffy cheese omelet. 

I even pulled out  these too cute paper napkins from Norway for the special brunch.

The brunch Karl made for me: omelet, cinnamon buns, bananas and grapefruit. Yum! On the table you can also see my gift (well, it's wrapped): an awesome heavy duty garlic press! (See how I used it in the post to follow)

Us full of the yummy brunch! (Notice the nice earrings my mom got me for my birthday)

For dinner we went out to a Mediterranean restaurant called Arugula. Everything we had was delicious, delicious, delicious!  For my entree I had pumpkin and ricotta stuffed ravioli with toasted filberts on a bed of....arugula!

Karl had the 1/2 roasted chicken with wild rice and ratatouille. That also was incredibly good.

For dessert we had the stuffed filo with banana and  chocolate filling. 

So that was my birthday- the short and sweet version. Probably two of my favorite birthday gifts was the "karlmark" card (from Karl of  course) and the box of goodies from my mom. What are some favorite gifts that you have received?

Winner and Trip to The American Art Museum

Well, this week has been a busy one to say the least! We have started packing and our apartment looks....well, bare and messy. I think we're up to 34 boxes packed. And even though it's a lot of work, I'm enjoying the process and am excited for summer to be underway. We'll head out to Minnesota to visit Karl's family and then to a music festival for about a month...But enough about that!

I am very excited to announce the winner of the giveaway: Moriah of Josiah's Nest! She will be winning this handcrafted flower necklace.

Recently, we took a trip to the American Art Museum in New Britain, CT. On Saturday mornings between 10-12 it's free and we were more than happy to take advantage of that. Set in a residential neighborhood, it's quite startling to see the modern building:

A large wall designed from disposable paper and plastic cups- each one separately secured on to the wall. (there was a tv showing slides of the mounting process)

A close up of the green section (my favorite color!)

I believe I am about 25 cups tall!

The museum also contained paintings....from the neck down it's female...

I loved this painting! The water in this picture looks like it's actually wet. I love the crest of the wave.

A marvelous glass works piece.

He looked SO real! 

Of course the museum had a lot of these patriotic themed ones, which I also love!

So that was our little trip! Quite fun for a rainy Saturday morning.

Birthday Giveaway!

To celebrate my 25th birthday, I'm doing my first giveaway! I'm hoping to get more followers and  business in my etsy shop (found here: FifteenevergreenOnEtsy). I had meant to post this on Monday, but haven't been able to find the time to actually take the pictures, load them and post them. My excuse is that we don't have internet in our apartment. (That's right, or any TV. Or text messaging on our phones. We save our money and buy Chipotle Burritos instead ;) )

Last week I spent some time making new products for my etsy shop. The giveaway necklace is one of them. Like it?

The grey flowers are made of a wool/felt blend, and the red flower (as well as the red centers) are merino wool from upcycled Banana Republic material.

All three flowers are mounted on a silver clasp chain.

So here's how to enter the giveaway: 

1. Follow this blog and leave a comment

For additional entries:

2. Tweet it

3. Share it with your friends on facebook

4. Share it with your readers on your blog

The giveaway starts today and ends in 1 week on Wednesday, May 11th at midnight. I'll select a winner using a random selector website and announce it on Friday, yes Friday May 13th. (something good should happen on that day!) Just make sure you leave an email address so I can contact you if you win. Also, leave separate comments if you tweet, facebook or blog about it!

Let the fun begin!

Weekend trip to NYC

One of the nice things about living in CT is that it's sooo close to NYC, my lovely hometown.  When we can empty and rearrange our schedules, we love to take a drive down and have a great weekend of feasting and fun. Here are some snapshots from our last visit:

 Fresh Chinatown fish!

For all those sewing crafters out there: this store had a plethora of antique sewing machines. Wonderful decor!

A little wall of sewing machines. There had to be at least 500 or more total-each one so different from the next!

one of the many...

The front window (or at least part of it!)

At the Scholastic Store...Karl is such a priceless fellow! :)

Some handmade leather shoes at a side market- so beautiful!

Outside Strands Bookstore-the $1 books

A sand artist at Washington Square Park.

The cool design. Thank goodness it wasn't too windy that day, or it would have all blown away!

One of the many cool things in NYC- bringing pianos into the public parks for the public to play on and enjoy. This cool dude was playing some Joplin-esque tunes. I just love how the little old lady was standing there listening and watching.

This guy and his daughter reminded me of Luna Lovegood and her father from Harry Potter. The little girl has the cute wild blond hair and they're nesting with gross city pigeons for goodness sake! Love it.

You've heard me talk about Levain's before. Well here it is again. We went back for a different cookie. The dark chocolate peanut butter chunk.

The long line at little Levains.

The soft, chewy, delicious $4 cookie. (yes, it is worth it!)

My FIRST (can you believe it!?!) NYC hot dog!

At Grey's Papaya

Aaand...bite. YUM!

Awesome yummy boat at Sushi Family in Queens to celebrate my nephew's 13th birthday!

The party people! I must say, I love Kar's pinky here. Not really sure what it's doing.

About 20 minutes later.

Lately, Karl and I have been on a Seinfeld streak. I think we've watched...oh I don't know how many episodes the past few weeks. Anyways, this is THE restaurant from the show. So great! The staff was so friendly and the prices were great!

My Big Salad. (remember that episode with Elaine and the Big Salad?)

Karl's order.

The next day we went to a taping of "From the Top" that was downtown. My mom got us all free tickets and we enjoyed performances from a cellist, harpist, pianist and marimbaist. (is that a word?)

Me and my beautiful mom!

No day in NYC is complete without a cone from a Mr. Frostee Truck! (When my mom asked me what cake I wanted for my birthday a couple years back, I said "No cake! Just Mr. Frostee!" I have never regretted it.)

We went to a little restaurant in Chinatown called "Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles." We had seen it on the show "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" as Guy Fieri's top food choice. You can see into the kitchen with the guy pulling the noodles right before your very eyes! So cool.

The noodle bowl we ordered! Although you can't really tell from the picture, this bowl of soup was laaaaarge! So tasty, mmmmmmm....

Even just looking at this picture of duck makes me hungry.

So that was our little weekend, or what I remembered to take pictures of. Oh yes, we also went to Schnippers with our awesome friend, Hannah Chung, and had amazing a yummy dinner and also the best Dark Chocolate Malt you will ever find. If you ever go to NYC, plan where you would like to go to eat-there's so much good food out there!