Hi, friends! Happy Tuesday! This post was actually supposed to go live yesterday but unfortunately, my draft mode didn’t work. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday weekend and were able to enjoy some time with friends and family. After enjoying five days of relaxation, Monday was a VERY busy work day. I can’t remember the last time I took five days off of work, blogging and most social media without an actual vacation. This Thanksgiving staycation was exactly what I needed. Now, I get to kick off my favorite month of the year, December, energized and ready to accomplish everything on my personal and professional to-do list between now and the Christmas holidays.
In fact, I disconnected so much that when I went to my iPhone just now, to download images for this post, I realized I took a grand total of six pictures over the past five days.
Wednesday I spent the day relaxing in the city, casually running errands and enjoying a few things I rarely have time to savor and enjoy. I took a mid-day Strength class at Uplift, enjoyed a leisurely lunch at ByChefChloe, got a hair cut and watched a movie.
Thursday I started Thanksgiving with the fun and festive Prospect Park Track Club Turkey Trot 5-miler. This year my sole goal was to enjoy the race and gorgeous weather with my good friend Mary. We chatted the entire five miles, keeping a 9 minute jog/1 minute walk pace since neither of us have run very much lately. If you stay in New York City next year for Thanksgiving, I highly recommend this race. It’s very reasonably priced AND runners get great swag including a winter hat and medal.
The rest of Thursday was spent in the kitchen with Bo as we prepared a Thanksgiving feast for six. We kept things simpler this year since we were hosting a smaller group and two of our guests were coming directly from a Thanksgiving lunch. Our menu included: perfect roasted turkey, stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, green beans, sweet potato casserole, corn bread and pumpkin cheesecake.
After cleaning up from Thursday night’s festivities, Bo and I spent the rest of Friday and Saturday together enjoying the sights, tastes and sounds of Manhattan and Brooklyn together. We went for a run together, took a special, 60-minute Turkey Burn Flywheel class with our favorite instructor, Josh Arden, tried a few new restaurants and went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. We ended Saturday with a combined birthday and anniversary dinner at Battersby, a wonderful restaurant that has been a neighborhood highlight since it opened in 2011.
We started transitioning from vacation mode to work mode on Sunday, spending much of the day running errands, doing laundry, cleaning the house and finally decorating our home for Christmas with Russell and Meg. The four of us spent Sunday evening decorating, catching up and laughing our way through Die Hard. Somehow, Meg nor I had ever seen the movie and after questioning how it was listed as a holiday classic Bo insisted we watch it.
