Movin' On Up!

Summer has been in full swing in the Seattle area. Weather has been sunny and gorgeous, and of course I haven't had a free minute to relax. My sister in law's wedding is this Saturday, so we've been full on wedding mode since early May. Bachelorette/Bridal Shower/Bridal party mani-pedi day. I'm exhausted! The Favors family is ready for Saturday to come and go, let me tell you!

On another note - shortly after returning from NYC we put our condo on the market - July 3rd to be exact. By July 10th, we were in mutual acceptance with a buyer and decided that if we're to close at the end of August, we should probably figure out where WE are going to live...After a day of house hunting together, Hubs and I had narrowed it down to 2 - both in Puyallup. One in the valley area and one in South Hill (if you aren't familiar with the area, South Hill is more towards downtown and the main street in Puyallup, Meridian. This area is constantly growing and several developments are in the area with neighborhoods. It's starting to get a little crowded..The valley has that undeveloped look, it has more greenbelts so you don't feel like the houses are building on top of each other, and just has a serene/peaceful feel to it). We LOVED the location of the house in the valley, but for the price, the South Hill home just made more sense. Both are brand new (the house we chose is still being built - construction is supposed to be completed the end of August). After a weekend of going to each house with different people, we finally decided on the South Hill home. It's 4 bedroom, 3 car garage, 2 story Craftsman. There was a buyer's bonus when we made an offer and they agreed, so all appliance are coming with the house (refridgerator, washer and dryer you usually have to buy separately), and we asked that the yard be landscaped and a fence be installed with our purchase price. At first the developer said no to the landscaping and fence, but because my husband is a master negotiator and they finally agreed.

Here are some of my favorite things:
1. The outside looks nice. This is the model home, so our house is going to be brown, and the 3rd car garage and porch are flipped.

Source of photos: D.R. Horton Homes. Images found on Redfin.com

 2. The floorplan. At first I didn't like that all the bedrooms were on the same side of the house, I would have liked for the master to be on the opposite side as the others, but after walking through I decided that was such a stupid thing to be picky about. And it's great that the laundry room is upstairs!



 3. The kitchen is so much more functional than our condo with the pantry actually IN the kitchen and not in the dining area. I know it sounds silly, but after having our teeny tiny pantry in the opposite corner, it gets really inconvenient. And this way, I have a wall I can create a coffee bar area {:)} The island bar is also oversized and so that will be nice. I like that our house will have a nice gas range which is what we have in our current home. I've gotten used to it so it will be nice to keep. Our cabinets had already been upgraded to the espresso color so we won't have to pay for that. The floors will match as well.

 4. The master bathroom. We will have two sinks, and they'll be far enough away from each other that we both can get ready in the morning in the same bathroom! I get shunned to the guest bathroom now, which is a drag. I also love that the tub and shower are separate. And it's a soaking tub, hallelujah! What you cannot see in this photo is the toilet is in it's own little room so someone can be using it and the other person can still be doing whatever it is they want to with the rest of the bathroom. The cabinet color from downstairs is carried in here, so it will be the dark wood. The mosaic tiling in the shower and by the tub is standard, but the tiling beind the sinks is an upgrade. They already made the decision to do the mosaic stones as the sink backsplash so another upgrade that we don't have to do. Yay!

 5. Along with 4 bedrooms, this house has a large media/bonus room. I think we will be putting the video game console systems, blu ray player, surround sound in here. I love the fact that we can grow into this home and still have plenty of room.

NYC

I've finally found the time to recap our AMAZING vacation to NYC. We were blessed with free lodging at one of the top hotels/apartments in Manhattan, The Sherry Netherland. If we had not had free lodging, I don't think this vacation would have been possible.


View of the Sherry Netherland from Central Park

WednesdayWe left a dreary Seattle early in the moring. We arrived in Newark, NJ in the afternoon (we lost 3 hours, poo...but gained it back by leaving late on Sunday). We hired a driver to take us into the city because we had no experience with taxis over there (This was both our first time), so we didn't want to get suckered. Our driver, Lydia, was great, but a very aggressive driver. I think I held onto the door the entire time. As we were driving through the Lincoln Tunnel, two window washers at the Hearst building in midtown were stuck on a scaffold that had collapsed on itself, so traffic was INSANE. Where they were was very close to our hotel, so every route to get to that area was completely jammed. Thankfully these two men were resuced after an hour and a half of being trapped.

After finally getting out of traffic and to our hotel, we checked in, basked in the amazing view the place had and then headed out to go exploring. One of the main things Hubs and I do on vacations is walk everywhere. We don't plan to do a lot of things, a few bullet points here and there, but walk until something catches our eye. We walked down 5th Ave (As Mickey would say, "F---king 5th Ave." (She was not a fan of this busy street) and explored F.A.O. Schwartz (saw the big piano! Didn't play on it though because a little girl was busy with it :( ), saw Radio City Music Hall, Rockefellar Center, Rockefellar Plaza, experienced Mr. Softee ice cream (really wasn't impressed with it, I was disappointed I must admit). We headed back to the hotel when it was close to 5pm because Mickey was going to meet us after she got off work. Once she arrived, we decided to go to a BBQ place her coworker performed at every week. He is from North Carolina and this BBQ place specialized in NC bbq. He and his band (Him and two other guys) played some instruments, I'm not really sure which though, I wasn't paying attention, and did some covers. They were really good though, I enjoyed them! Since we had been up since 3:45, Hubs and I were exhausted and I fought falling asleep at the table for about an hour.

Reunited and it feels so good!

I loved my swizzle stick

Thursday
Our first stop for the day was trying to find a Starbucks. I know that no one on the east coast drinks Starbucks, it's all about Dunk'n Donuts, but I have a Starbucks gold card. If I could my card there, I'm golden. I hate having to use real money when buying coffee, don't ask me way. As we were walking around, a terrential downpour started. We thought we'd be okay since we're from Washington. Let me tell you, west coast and east coast rain in completely different. We walked around the block and gave up and went back to the hotel where we could pop our clothes in the dryer. Hubs definitely wasn't embarrassed to carry an umbrella with us the rest of the trip. After the rain let up, we ventured back out. We had tickets to see Chicago that night, so we decided to walk around again, this time to Times Square area, as well as Macy's (which was like 30 blocks from our hotel). Macy's was CRAZY. It's 2 buildings that are together and 9 stories high. Since we were there over Father's Day Weekend, there was a huge sale and it was just crammed with people. Didn't help that they were remodeling, so a lot of the store was blocked off. We spent the majority of the day going though every floor of Macy's, it was that big!! Since we were going to be walking back from the show Hubs didn't want me to wear the heels I had brought with me, I needed to buy sandals that would be dressy enough to match my dress, but still comfortable to walk in. I found a pair of Nine West sandals that were pretty cheap because of the sale (cha-ching!). I love those sandals too. I've been wearing them on the days here that have been nice. After walking back from Macy's we had just enough time to relax a little before having to get ready for dinner. This was the one days I planned on dressing up and I purchased this super cute dress from Express, and an adorable bubble necklace from Franchesca's before we left.

We went to a restaurant close to the Admiral Theater that was playing Chicago, I wish I could remember the name because it was the best meal I've had in probably my life. I had lobster fettucine and Hubs at the veal chop. Hubs still says that if he had found a way for it to be socially acceptable, he would have knawed on the bone after he was finished. Also, if we were back home he would have asked for a doggie bag to take the bone home to the dogs.

As for the show, I enjoyed Chicago, but I didn't love it like the previous musicals I've seen (Wicked, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Mary Poppins). After the show as we were walking back, it started to downpour again. The great thing about east coast rain, was that it was raining, but it wasn't cold out. I'm always cold, so being able to walk around in my dress and not shiver was a great feeling. My feet were slipping to the sides of my sandals though because suede and rain really don't mix.

Friday
One of Hub's requests for this trip was to do Shakespeare in the Park. Every summer Central Park puts on 2 Shakespeare plays throughout the summer. While we were there, they were showing The Comedy of Errors - it was a really cool take on it where they set it to Swing Dancing in New York. There were two actors that looked familiar to me, Jesse Tyler Ferguson from Modern Family, and Hamish Linklater (he looked familiar to me, but I had no idea from where. It wasn't until later I was told he was on The New Adventures of Old Christine). One of the front desk workers at the hotel had told us that we needed to line up early if we wanted to get some free tickets for this show, the box office didn't open until noon but the line usually started at 8am. We got in line around 8:30am after a little stroll through the park. After 3 and a half hours we recieved our free tickets to the show (I think it is AWESOME that they put these shows on for free. It was definitely worth the wait), and went off on our merry way to enjoy the park some more. We saw Belvedere Castle, which was awesome to look it. Gorgeous view from the top, a movie being shot by the Alice in Wonderland statue that had Emily Van Camp in it (from ABC's Revenge), and really awesome/creepy looking bridges. I've definitely seen way too many Law and Order SVU episodes because everytime we came to one I had flashes of being mugged, raped and dragged into the brush. Speaking of Law and Order: SVU, we ended our night with a drinking game set to the marathon that had been playing all day. Needless to say, we all fell asleep pretty fast.

Saturday
Saturday was our walking/subway excursion with Mickey. First we grabbed real NY bagels (plain with cream cheese), Dunk'n Donuts coffee and then headed to Grand Central Station. We also explored Little Italy, Chinatown, The Village, and had macaroons and madelines at a super swanky/famous bakery. The madelines were better than the macaroons in my opinion.

 Little Italy!

Washington Square

Saturday night we decided to make our own pub crawl. We started on a rooftop bar. It was nice to see a great view of the Empire State Building, but it was way too trendy for us. We then went to an Irish Pub where Hubs was very upset with his service and actually emailed the owners the next day he was so angry.

Sunday
I was incredibly hungover thanks to our makeshift pub crawl, I literally couldn't get out of bed. 30 minutes before we were supposed to catch a cab to head back to the airport I had Hubs go down to the nearest pharmacy and pick me up some anti-nausea meds. Until they kicked in, it was again Law & Order: SVU marathon. Seriously, does USA play anything else?!?

Please note: I literally started this post on 6/28/13 or so...and I'm finally finishing it on 7/8 to post. Yikes, I've been busy!