Fun Friday: RISE of the Jack O'Lanterns 2018

Hey you guys! Happy Friday! I hope you are all doing well! I am SO EXCITED to share this post with you. I went to the RISE of the Jack O'Lanterns at Old Westbury Gardens last weekend and I loved it just as much as I did last year! For those of you that don't know what the RISE of the Jack O'Lanterns is, basically it is a walk set up (in the most amazing location I must say - Old Westbury Gardens is incredible) with tons of the most intricately carved lit pumpkins. They have themed sections and as you'll see in the pictures below some of the themes this year were right up my alley! I was so impressed by everything and I absolutely could not wait to share it with you! It was so hard for me to narrow down the photos to my favorites but I chose the ones that really spoke to me most to share with you. With that said, this is still going to be a long post!

Before we went to the event we went out for dinner (I went with my family by the way). I figured I may as well show you what I had, ha! I had a really delicious salad with some field greens, avocado, pear, tomatoes, carrots and balsamic vinaigrette. I had to leave off the cheese and I added the avocado and it was absolutely incredible. Yes, I know there are tomatoes but I've decided that I feel no difference in my pain removing nightshades (plus more research has led me to believe the the nightshades being inflammatory is kind of not really proven at all - plus I have a hard time believe tomatoes are bad for you) I've decided that I'm ok with nightshades. I'm still sticking with gluten free but I'm going to include some nightshades back in my meals. Anyway, the salad was delicious and I'll definitely be recreating it at home.

These are the welcome pumpkins. I thought it looked really cool.

One of the first little collections was an adorable animal collection! For the sake of the length of this post I grouped them together into a little collage for you but look how cute they are! I couldn't wait to share these with you guys.

So up next was my absolute favorite section. I am really fascinated by astrology, the zodiac, and mystical stuff and they had an entire section devoted to all of that. I am not sharing everything with you here for the sake of space but in addition to what I have below there was about 5 or 6 tarot card jack o'lantern sculptures that were incredible.

Up first was this amazing ouija board! How cool is it?!

Up next we got into the zodiac sign pumpkins. I love the depictions of each sign and that they included the constellation as well. The attention to detail is seriously amazing.

Capricorn and Taurus.

Aquarius and Pisces.

Libra and Gemini.

Aries and Virgo (it was cute too because the other family member that was super interested in this section was an Aries - I love that we shared a pumpkin!).

You know I had to get a closer look at my Virgo girl.

Cancer and Scorpio.

Leo and Sagittarius.

Another amazing zodiac inspired sculpture.

How amazing is this Winnie the Pooh pumpkin! I'm a little bummed out that they left Eeyore off (I mean typical - no wonder the poor guy is always sad) but otherwise the pumpkin is incredible.

I think this Where The Wild Things Are pumpkin is also incredible. That detail!!

Every year that have a group of jack o'lanterns memorializing some celebrities that we had lost that year. I was hoping that they would have one for Anthony Bourdain and I was not disappointed.

How beautifully done is this pumpkin? It looks exactly like a photo of him. I'm so glad it was done well (let's be honest, sometimes the depiction is a little wonky) and that they honored him in this section.

They also did a really great job with the Stephen Hawking memorial pumpkin. 

Puffins!!!!!

I am obsessed with this pumpkin. It is so freaking well done and the little dudes are kind of adorable.

Lastly I just wanted to share this awesome walkway that you go through to get to the last section of the walk. It is so beautiful with the tree lined path that is perfectly lit.

I don't know if you can tell but I seriously love this event, ha! I am definitely hoping to make it an annual tradition because it's just my favorite way to celebrate the Halloween season. I am really glad that I got to share it with you and I hope that you all enjoyed the pictures! There is so much more that I didn't share because the post would be SO FREAKING LONG. If you live in the Long Island area I highly recommend this event.

Thanks again and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

This and That

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend. I don't know about you but we have had a ton of rain lately (some crazy storms!!) and it has helped cool off the area a bit and I couldn't be happier. It has been high 70s over the past few days and it has been wonderful. This is my favorite type of weather. I had a great weekend and while I don't have tons of meals to show you, I do have some random bits and bobs to share. These kinds of posts can be fun so I'm excited to share some randomness with you!

First up, I do have some food to share:

This was one of the most random meals I've ever thrown together. I had some tempura cauliflower from Trader Joe's left in the freezer so I had that (sans sauce) and some refreshing watermelon on the side. It was actually really great despite being an odd combination.

One Sunday I went to late lunch with my mom and my brother at a Turkish restaurant and had the most wonderful meal!

I started with some Shepherd's salad and it was so yummy. I added some hummus to the plate when it came to the table but I had already started eating so I didn't take a pic. 

OMG you guys. I normally get falafel but I didn't want to eat fried food and have that heaviness in my tummy so I went for the veggie kebabs and you guys. Check out this feast for $12!!! It came with pickled cabbage, salad, bulgur, rice and two huge skewers of grilled veggies. It comes with eggplant, red and white onions, tomato and mushrooms (and peppers but I asked for no peppers). It was delicious and perfectly cooked. The eggplant was so tender and amazing. I am so glad I chose this!

I was out running some errands with my mom Sunday morning and we stopped at 7-Eleven for some coffee for my mom. I noticed that they had the Silk Vanilla Almond Creamer so I partook as well!! It is always so exciting to find vegan options popping up everywhere!

After trying and enjoying the almond creamer I found out there is a Hazelnut flavor and you better believe I went and got some! I like it a lot. It's not my favorite hazelnut flavor but it is really good and I'm glad I found it!

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When I saw the double whammy of a hilarious meme and the cutest puppies of life I knew I had to share this here. I absolutely can not deal with this and their faces. They are too much!!! 

I mentioned that it has been raining like crazy lately but I saw the most beautiful rainbow! I was stopped at a red light (and kind of pulled over) so I snapped a super quick pic of it. I don't know about you guys but I love storms (although not driving in them) and seeing a rainbow after is the icing on the cake.

So that's all the random stuff I have to share with you today! I hope that you are all doing well, had a great weekend and have had a great start to your week. I'll see you on Friday!!

Fun Friday: Randomness From This Week

Hey guys! I hope that you are all well and excited for the weekend! Mine starts Sunday and I'm really excited to get into another weekend. I've decided to have a Treat Yo Self kind of weekend after the past week and a half that I've had and I'm pretty excited for it. I'll share what I get and make on Tuesday so yay! I had another day of panic after I posted on Tuesday but I've finally started to calm down and have been ok since then. I'm so grateful for this because it was an absolute nightmare to deal with it for almost two whole weeks but hopefully it is behind me for now.

Anyway, this post is a random mix of things that I've eaten and that have happened over the past week!

This is how we welcome Spring in New York 😂 We had another nor'easter on Wednesday and got a pretty significant amount of snow. Luckily it has been warmish since then and the streets have cleared up quite a bit.

I remember seeing this on Ingrid's blog and I decided it was time to pick it up. The only flavors they had were Raspberry Lemon and original so I decided to pick up the Raspberry Lemon even though raspberry is not a favorite flavor of mine. Turns out the flavor is really light and I love it. It kind of reminds me of a really weak iced tea. I really love the effects of it too. It definitely has a mellowing effect. It doesn't cure panic but it does help me to feel calm which is perfect for bedtime as I'm not the best at sleeping. I would definitely recommend this!

I decided to have some black bean soup from Panera to warm up. The soups are by far my favorite thing to get from Panera. The black bean is great but my favorite is the Garden Vegetable (order with no Pesto and it's vegan!). The black bean was the vegan option on the menu that day so I grabbed it and it was great.

I had breakfast for lunch on the day of the storm and it was sooooooo good. I had some frozen blueberries that I got for my blueberry corn muffins and to be honest, blueberries are not my favorite. I know I won't really make smoothies out of them and I didn't want them to go to waste. I do love blueberry waffles so I decided to defrost them and put them on top of my gluten free waffles and add some maple syrup and it was SO FREAKING GOOD. I'm glad that I figured out a way to use up my blueberries.

Finally. It's not pretty but you guys, it's damn good. This is a PIZZA BAKED POTATO!!!!! I basically baked up a potato, mushed up the flesh, added some broccoli, pizza sauce, vegan mozzarella and garlic powder and put it back in the oven to get it all gooey and delicious and you guys, it was so good. I made the whole potato but only ate half because my appetite isn't quite back yet but the second half heated up beautifully the next night. I highly recommend trying this out with your favorite pizza toppings! The next time I make it I'll get a better picture because this looks terrible but I promise it tastes great!

That's all I have for you today! I'm looking forward to sharing my Treat Yo Self splurges on Tuesday! I hope you all have a great weekend <3

Fun Friday: The RISE of the Jack O'Lanterns

Hey everyone! I hope you are all doing well. I'm doing ok and feeling better, I just haven't been super motivated to take pictures of my food. Mostly because my food has been uninspired. I will post either on Sunday or Tuesday to get myself back on track but I definitely wanted to post this for Fun Friday because it was such a cool experience!

On Monday I went with my family to the RISE of the Jack O'Lanterns at Old Westbury Gardens here on Long Island. The venue is another one of the Gold Coast Mansions and it is absolutely stunning. I'll go back there one day during the day to get some photos for you because the grounds are crazy. I've been there many times when I was working the weddings and it was always one of my favorite places to go. For Halloween they do this amazing event where they have thousands of lit up jack o'lanterns set up along the grounds and you go for a night walk and check out the beautiful, intricate carvings. I took a ton of pictures and had a hard time narrowing down for you so brace yourselves, there may be a lot of pictures.

Can you believe how amazing these are?! And keep in mind, there are thousands of pumpkins there, I just chose some of my favorites to share with you. I will definitely be going back next year, it was awesome and I was so glad to go out and celebrate the season a little bit. 

I hope you guys enjoyed seeing a little bit of the event! I will be back to regularly scheduled programming soon. I hope you have all been well <3