Home for the Holidays

After a crazy fall of storms, bad weather and craziness, I am so excited to head home and see my family. This break will be one of my last times visiting LA before I officially move home. Enjoy your holidays everyone!

Holiday Parties

Right after Thanksgiving it is already time for Holiday parties! This week we had a city-wide student holiday party at a fun restaurant in midtown and then a few days later we had a school event, followed by a work party. After three parties I decided to host two nights of hanukkah, starting with a Mexican themed night, to feel at home with a skirt steak taco bar, blood-orange margaritas and of course potato latkas. For the second night I did Italian food, with chicken marsala, vegetable latkas and quinoa with veggies and lemon vinaigrette along with a white prosecco pear sangria. Its been a fun two weeks of holidays during a chilly New York winter. Happy Holidays everyone!

My Favorite Family Dinner!

Everyone knows that Thanksgiving dinner is my favorite meal! After a crazy few months, I am so happy to be home for a few days. After preparing and decorating it was time to sit down with the whole family and enjoy some turkey. With an new addition to the family, everyone seemed to have baby fever all night. A baby always makes the holidays more fun and brings some new energy to the group. After lots of prime rib, turkey, stuffing and sweet potatoes it was almost impossible to eat dessert, almost. Im a sucker for pumpkin cheesecake! The best part of the night is when my closest and oldest friends come over for dessert and catch up on three months of stories, along with photos and home movies! Since we were stuffed and had to move around, we decided to attempt the black friday midnight shopping. Just an all around bad idea. After sleeping all friday, I got to visit with friends and enjoy a sunny weekend before I head back to NYC. Saturday night we went out to dinner for my mom's belated birthday at Osteria Mozza, Mario Batali's amazing Italian restaurant. Enjoying fresh made pastas and mozzarella, delicious wine and dessert. A great end to a great long weekend with the family!

I learned what it is to be a tough New Yorker this week, so many incredibly sad images from this whole disaster, but I found this cover to be the most amazing of them all. Just thankful to be safe and warm. Watching and waiting for the city to get back to normal.

Chef-lebrity and Fashion Filled Weekend

        One of my best friends flew in for a quick weekend vacation so we hit the ground running! We started our weekend off at my favorite place, Trattoria Del Arte, only the best Italian food in NYC, there's a reason every celebrity eats there. Then we were off to some retail therapy and window shopping. For dinner we went to Mesa Grill, one of Bobby Flay's tex-mex style restaurants and had a fantastic margarita and dinner. The next day we wandered around the village and rested up for a crazy night. We started off with dinner at Morimoto, Iron Chef's very modern sushi bar and restaurant, the food was incredible and so were the drinks, we ordered Morimoto's 'chicken soup' and fish along with the most interesting presentation of gyoza I've ever seen! Don't forget to check out the bathrooms when you visit!

Then we were off to the Gansevoort rooftop for drinks VIP style, and then off to a club! For our morning remedy we went to Buvette in the West Village for France's version of ham and eggs. The of course off to do some more shopping up town, where we fell in love with some more shoes that neither of us need, but desperately want, landed in designer heaven and just couldn't stop ourselves. Thankfully she had a flight to catch before either of us did any more damage! Gotta love part two of girls weekend!