Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Random Fall Pics

Since our apartment is on the 6th floor, we have a view that is never-ending. Our view, that was breathtaking enough during the summer, is full of trees that have changed color. Its a wonderful combination of greens, reds, oranges, and yellow...

 



As Amit was getting ready for class this morning, he got this photo of the sunrise.


Monday, October 26, 2009

Fall in the Blue Hills

One of our favorite things to do together is go for walks. We walk around the park by the marsh, walk along the beach, and when we plan ahead, we walk in the Blue Hills.

So today we went for a walk in the Blue Hills, because I wanted to check out the trees and its more of a hike than just a walk. Here are some of the pictures we got during our walk.





And we drove around, to see if we could find any better trees.




I love this shot!

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Our First Nor'easter

This morning we woke up to another high tide and rain... Lots and lots of rain. Normal people would want to be curled up on the couch reading a good book, but not us! We headed out to the beach to experience our first nor'easter as a married couple!!

We have to give you a little background about this beach. A typical beach day at Wollaston Beach would consist of very little wind, calm water, and about 20-30 yards of sand between the water and sidewalk. That was so not the case today!! Today it was in the 40's with 40 mph winds!
The waves nearly reached the concrete barriers!

We were so surprised to see the water that high, that we decided to brave the wind and rain. We got out of the car to get some pictures. Yes, we are that crazy, but we weren't alone, there were a lot of families running around by the water!
In some places the waves crashed onto the sidewalk!

It was an awesome sight! Some of the parking lots were flooded and we walked through some huge puddles to take pictures. On our way home, they had to close the lane closest to the water because it was flooded.
No, we weren't brave enough to walk past, driving was the drier option.

Amit took me to Nut Island because we were hoping to see some huge waves there. Even though they weren't as big as we hoped, we took this video. Hopefully it will give you an idea of how windy it was!

Saturday Fun Day

Another highlight of Boston, is our group of dental school friends. They are absolutely fantastic!! We've started to hang out at least once a week and usually it involves food. We have family dinners, make day trips, and occasionally go a little crazy, like we did on Saturday.

First off, Amit and I decided to go for an hour long hike in the Blue Hills... Well, instead of just going out for 30 minutes and then turning around, we decided to try to find a short cut. Bad idea! Our hour long hike ended up lasting for 2 1/2 hours!! It was an adventure and a lot of hiking! We wil definitely not make the same mistake again.

So Saturday we went to our friend's place to watch the Notre Dame/USC game and eat some fabulous food. The boys discussed the game at school and wanted Tamsen to make her famous wings, so she did! So we went to Costco to buy the wings and ended up buying WAY more than necessary (we didn't know how many wings we'd it, so we overestimated. Tamsen made about 170 wings and all 6 of us ended up eating almost all of them. Amit ate a ton of them!
She made hot wings AND honey garlic wings

You can see in that picture that we also had guacamole, made by Mel. It was delicious, I love guacamole!! That wasn't even all that we had... The BEST part of the whole day was Tamsen's incredible cinnamon rolls! Nathan and I love going to Cinnabon, and I have to say these were even better! She even said I could come over and learn her recipe, woo hoo!!!
I had two!! They had homemade icing and everything!

So all in all, it was a great food day! Amit and I enjoyed it that much more because we had gone for that 2.5 hour hike, so we didn't feel a bit bad about eating that much food.
Amit's third plate (his first roll)

I just had to blog about this once I learned the menu, how can you go wrong with wings and cinnamon rolls?? It made me think of Nate! :-)

Friday, October 16, 2009

View from our window...

We love our view. We have the Boston skyline in the distance, a beautiful view of the Neponset River and some of the harbor islands, and can see all the way down to Hull. We can see everything!!

Although all of that is exciting, our favorite spot to watch is just under our window. Its a small portion of the last saltwater marsh in Boston and is frequented by several cranes, ducks, and the occasional heron. Today when I woke up, I looked out the window to see a very flooded marsh, it was obviously high tide. It was cool to see, because the water almost reached the road.
Since we've moved in, we have never seen the water this high!

So things settled down throughout the day and I was able to get this shot of the marsh during low tide.
A much more normal view...

So that's our view, one of the very cool aspects of living so close to the ocean, and why we love living in Boston. Our view is very rarely the same!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

There's a reason I love Martha...

This post is totally going to annoy Amit, who is hard at work, or sleeping hard, in class. I can't keep track of what classes are his naptime and which he actually pays attention in... I actually woke him up one morning, when I texted him during his class! Since its almost 11 here, I'd say he's awake with a grumbling stomach.

Anyways, back to the point... I love Martha Stewart, well, technically her and the people that work for her. Since I've become a married woman, my goal is to be able to run my house and make it look like Martha did it! Amit thinks I'm crazy, but she does have some great ideas!

I used a Borders graduation present to buy a few of her books, using coupons so I was super excited!

 
I have ZERO experience cleaning different surfaces, appliances, and taking care of a house. Back at home, I used to let Mom do it (which happened 90% of the time) or I would just clean with what she told me to use. I love this book, it has great organizational tips, which helps when you have lots of stuff and little space, and tells me how to clean anything and everything! 



This is the other one I just bought, and I am obsessed with it! She has some great craft ideas in here and I can't wait to try them all out! I love to scrapbook, but I am a pretty incompetent crafter overall, so hopefully this book will help me try out new things.

Anyways... the real inspiration for this post was today's Martha Stewart show. They made a seafood stew that I am super excited to try. It has 6 main ingredients (ignoring the oil/broth stuff that doesn't really count) so that will make it a super easy, delicious meal. So next time you come to visit perhaps you'll get a homecooked meal!

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Fall Foliage Fun Day - Part 2

So after we left the orchard, we headed farther north to the White Mountains. One of our favorite places to hike, we were excited to see what our favorite views would look like in a different color. Well, more like colors...


We ended up finding the Indian Head lookout, which was a tall tower with tons of stairs that we had to climb up. It was worth it once we were up there, it gave us some breathtaking views.
That dark mountain in the middle of the photo is Mt. Washington



Once we came down from the tower, we headed back to the highway and decided to drive a few miles to see a few of our favorite spots and try out some new ones. The new place we found, Echo Lake Beach, we beautiful! It was so isolated and the trees were reflected beautifully in the still water.
 I love the way that the mountains look in this shot!

The trees were so amazing!

 I got this shot as we were heading back to the car!

All in all it was a very successful fall foliage trip! It exceeded my expectations... We're looking forward to the upcoming weeks, since the trees by us haven't really started to change. So stay tuned for more photos of this beautiful New England fall!

Fall Foliage Fun Day - Part 1


This past weekend was the peak weekend for checking out the changing leaves up north, so Amit planned a day trip up to New Hampshire with our friends, Seth and Kirsten. The four of us have gone strawberry, blueberry, and peach picking, so it only made sense that we should go apple picking too. So off we went, first to Contoocook for apples and then to the White Mountains, to check out the trees! 
Our entire drive, we were surrounded by the changing trees.


Those of you who have heard about our previous fruit picking trips, know that we tend to over estimate what we actually want, so on this trip we exercised serious self control and only picked a 1/2 bushel. When we got to the orchard, we were amazed by how many apples were on the trees, it was amazing!
We had so many to choose from... 


Pausing for a photo



Seth also had a request for us... He wanted a Desperate Housewives photo. So here are our attempts:
The boys weren't impressed by our first attempt, so they had to show us the right way to pose.


We had such a fun time in the orchard and finished with a trip to their store, where we bought some apple cider and apple cider donuts. Yum!! The best part about the store (and no I'm not actually talking about the food) was the view.

Amit's Hidden Talent

Here's a preview of the fun we had at the apple orchard, I'll be posting about the entire day a little later.

A New Year's Resolution

Okay, I'll admit this resolution is way premature, but I figured why wait to implement it until after the New Year?

I've been thinking about how hard it is to keep everyone up to date when we're separated by a huge distance, a time change, and our own crazy schedules. I feel like I have been horrible at keeping in touch with everyone and I miss being able to see you all whenever I want! That is why I decided to make this my first New Year's Resolution - to create a blog about our life here in Boston. I hope that this will make it easier for you to find out what we are doing, since we constantly find new places to explore in New England.

So here goes... I promise to give you some great stories, if you promise to be patient with me as I try to figure out this new project!