Brought to You By Other Bloggers

The other day I was in need of some inspiration so I headed over to one of the most inspiring blogs I know: Oh She Glows. Angela is definitely a rock star in the blogosphere and it's pretty easy to see why. Her gorgeous, healthy recipes accompanied by equally gorgeous photos are so inspiring and so easy to whip up in our own kitchens. I spent a lot of time combing through her archives and pinning tons of yummy recipes. I can't wait to purchase her cookbook but until I can do that I'm going to continue to make the recipes found on her blog.

I knew I wanted to finally try some of her recipes this week and since my fruit cravings have been kicked into high gear with this warm weather, I decided on a few fruity recipes. I love everything I've made so far and I can't wait to try more!

I am obsessed with Cinnamon Raisin Peanut Butter and when I saw Angela's recipe for this amazing spread I knew I HAD to make it. Check out the recipe here!

This peanut butter is DELICIOUS and it makes a good amount. Mine is a little grainy because I don't have a great food processor and it overheated so I didn't get to process it as much as I'd like but the flavor is incredible. It has a hint of salt and some sweetness and the chew of the raisins is such a nice texture. The cinnamon adds a lot of depth as well. This is definitely a recipe I'd recommend to everyone!

Check out these beautiful Healthy Strawberry Oat Squares with Homemade Jam! These bars are so incredible and the homemade jam is the star of the show! The secret ingredient to thicken the jam? Chia seeds! It's genius and delicious.

Another winner for sure. And you can make any flavor of jam you like! Someone had even recommended making these with pumpkin and that sounds so incredible to me. These are a great snack on the go and also a yummy treat for breakfast.

The last recipe I wanted to try was the Apple Pie Chia Seed Jam. I LOVE apples and the jam was so intriguing to me and I felt like it was a really versatile recipe so I decided to go for it! Look how beautiful it came out. I decided to leave mine a little chunky and I have a few different meals planned with this gorgeous jam that I will show you next week! And the best part is that it truly tastes like apple pie filling. The only difference is that you can enjoy it without any of the guilt!

I can't wait to show you how I enjoyed the jam and the peanut butter next week but I figured I'd show you a little teaser ;)

This comforting meal of toast with Cinnamon Raisin Peanut Butter and banana with strawberries on the side was absolutely perfect.

Check out the raisins in the peanut butter. So freaking good.

So there you have some sweet recipes I've tried from Angela over at Oh She Glows! I can't wait to try some savory dishes as well. I definitely recommend all three recipes and would love recommendations of which of Angela's recipes I should try next!

Hope you are all having a great week so far!

Catching Up Instagram Style

Hey friends! Happy belated Mother's Day to all of the Mommys (Mommies?) out there (of human and/or fur children). I hope that you all had a really nice day. I spent the day with the family which was really nice. The only small issue was that my body didn't enjoy spending a few hours outside amongst the ridiculous amount of pollen and I had a bit of an allergy (read: swollen throat) situation last night but it's better now. And today is Monday which means it's time for "This Week On Instagram!" I have a few old pics and a whole lot of randomness but I guess that's what makes these posts fun, right?

On the heels of Mother's Day, here is a pic of me and my mom at my brother's wedding a few years ago. Minus the hair in my face it's one of my favorite pictures of us. I'm so lucky that my mom isn't just an amazing mother, she is also one of my best friends. We are lucky to have a really close relationship and while we drive each other crazy at times, she is honestly the most amazing woman I know.

And now onto the randomness ;)

There have been tons of bunnies running around my neighborhood lately. I got super close to the guy and he was so cute but I wasn't about to get any closer. 

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I worked a wedding for the first time in a while. I was at a catering hall that has peacocks randomly roaming around the grounds. I've had many run ins with the peacocks (they have a white one too) over the years... including one time in the parking lot where I had to wait for 5 minutes him to mosey along until I could leave because he was just standing in the middle of the lane just staring at me.

Here he is again. Those doors lead into the reception room so I'm sure it's fun for the guests to be able to look out or walk out of the door and see it. I hope that they treat them well and take good care of them. I wonder where they hang out during the winter as well.

I saw these gorgeous blossoms walking back to my car after a visit to my Dr. I thought they were so gorgeous I had to take a bunch of pictures of them. 

This is another picture of the gorgeous blossoms. The sky was so blue that day. This is one of my favorite pics I've taken and it's now the wallpaper on my phone :) It just makes me happy to look at the beautiful blossoms.

That's all I have for you this week. Not a ton of pictures but I hope you enjoyed them. I went grocery shopping this morning and did some prep for the week so I'll show you what I made on Wednesday! I hope that you have all been well. Sadly I think I have to put the mansions on hold for a few weeks until I get my allergies under control because the throat swelling is really uncomfortable but I can't wait to go to my second mansion and will do so as soon as everything is back on track.

Hope you all have had a great Monday! See you on Wednesday!

What I Ate Wednesday

Hey guys. I only have a few meals to share with you today because I've just been lazy and my appetite has been weird but I figured a few meals are better than none! Things have been crazy lately because of a major change in my work situation so I'm just trying to readjust and get used to my new workload...

Anyway, here are a few meals... very few ;)

Honestly this was probably my favorite meal of the week. A big bowl of strawberries and a banana. The strawberries were so sweet and delicious. I have been craving a lot of fruit lately so this was a perfect meal for me.

Been eating lots of salads. I love this new container because you know I love my compartments. This salad is romaine, grape tomatoes, cucumber and sun dried tomatoes with Isa's Classic Vegan Caesar Dressing. Carrots on the side.

I saw this sign in one of the Bagel Boss locations and was really excited! Not a whole lot of bagel places out on Long Island carry vegan cream cheese so I was glad to see this. 

A week or two after I saw that sign I decided to have a Shen inspired meal! I saw this exact meal on her blog and thought it sounded delicious. I am a plain or pumpernickel bagel with plain cream cheese gal but I thought this combo sounded great so I opted for an everything bagel with tofu scallion cream cheese. It was such a yummy combo but those giant globs of cream cheese in the middle were removed because that is a bit intense.

Since this was a Shen inspired meal I figured I'd photograph it on the gorgeous Vegan Dish that she gifted me. I love the dish so much and it was the perfect vessel to deliver this meal to you :)

Finally, a quick meal on the go of red and green apple slices and Justin's Maple Almond Butter. It was a delicious combo and I had forgotten how much I loved this almond butter. 

That's all I have for today! I should be back tomorrow with another Throwback recipe! I think they are almost all transfered which is good because I think my other domain expires in July! I'll have to make sure I'm on top of that ;)

Hope you are all having a great week!

Show & Tell Sunday: Lush Haul & Review

I first discovered Lush many years ago when backpacking the UK and Europe with a friend of mine. We went in and were amazed by the amount of beautiful products lining the shelves and counters and by how AMAZING it smelled. For those of you that have never heard of Lush, it is a company that makes fresh, handmade cosmetics, hair and skin care, and beautiful bath products. They use mostly natural ingredients with "safe synthetics" in there only when necessary.

On the heels of finding out that I have a chemical allergy and knowing that I'm susceptible to develop more, I made the conscious decision to cut the chemicals and do everything I can to use natural ingredients. I have only ever purchased one product from Lush and it was years ago but I knew that going to a company that makes all of their products by hand with natural ingredients was the way to go.

After working a wedding I decided that I was going to use that money to pamper myself. I've been really stressed lately and that has led to stress breakouts on my face, yuck. I decided that I was going to completely revamp my skin and hair care routine to include beautiful products that pamper my skin and hair and leave me smelling amazing. While Lush products are not cheap, I was willing to FINALLY splurge on myself.

Last Sunday I went to my local Lush shop and worked with one of the girl's that worked there to find everything on my list. She was so helpful and explained everything to me and made it a really nice experience. I figured I'd use the products for a week and do a review for you so here it goes!

One huge reason why I love Lush is that they are very vocal in their fight against animal testing. Not only do they not use ingredients tested on animals, but they will not buy ingredients from companies that supply ingredients to companies that test on animals. They are loud and proud in their fight and I love that. All of their products are vegetarian and a huge amount of them are vegan. They label all of their vegan products so it's easy for you to tell which are vegan and which are not. In addition to this, they believe in sustainable sourcing. According to their website, "We give our love (and money) to suppliers that respect the environment, as well as the animals and people living there."

As I mentioned before, everything from Lush is hand made. I think it is so adorable that they place these stickers on every product showing you who made your product! It also includes the date it was made as well as the expiration date (all natural ingredients expire!).

Finally, Lush is extremely environmentally conscious. They believe in naked packaging which basically means that a lot of their products have no packaging at all. The bottles and black pots are made with recycled BPA free materials. They encourage you to bring back your empty black pots by offering a free fresh face mask for every 5 pots you bring in. When they ship their products they package everything in biodegradable packaging and use biodegradable filler (packing peanuts that apparently melt in water!).

So now you know why I love the company... now let's check out the haul!

So many beautiful products. I basically got the bare minimum I'd need to start a new hair and skin care routine. I have seen videos of people that essentially hoard Lush products but I don't have the funds for that ;) Let's go through what I got.

This beautiful bar of soap is called Sultana of Soap. It is a creamy, beautiful soap that smells light but sweet. It is a creamy soap with currants, apricots and cranberries. It lathers pretty well and leaves your skin smelling amazing and feeling really soft. The only thing is that it tends to melt pretty quickly in the shower so it is best to cut the bar into little pieces to preserve as much of it as possible.

While I love using the product I probably would hold off on purchasing it again ONLY because I don't really like using bar soaps. I have always preferred liquid soaps so that is the only thing that would hold me back from buying it again.

Something else that is amazing about Lush is that they are so generous with giving out samples. I wanted to try a few out before I bought them for two reasons. Either the products was ridiculously expensive or it contained chamomile. People that are allergic to ragweed can cross react with chamomile so I wanted to do a patch test with the product before I purchased it. I'll talk more about each sample below.

These are my fresh face masks! In my attempt to pamper myself I figured that a face mask would be the perfect way to do it. All of the fresh face masks are made up of completely natural ingredients and have to be stored in the fridge and used with three weeks. They have three vegan face masks and I have two pictured above.

Oatifix: The Oatifix face mask is made of oats, bananas, almond, and vanilla among other ingredients. It is a cooling, soothing face mask that exfoliates and moisturizes. It is safe for sensitive skin and great for soothing red or irritated skin. I was attracted to this one because of my stress breakouts and because I have rosacea and am always looking for a way to soothe that. The face mask is really cooling and soothing while it is on and it smells AMAZING. It leaves your skin feeling soft and supple and exfoliated. It smells like a beautiful, sweet oatmeal cookie. It is a really lovely product and I'm glad I bought it. I would purchase it again in the future if I was looking for a way to pamper myself but not too often since I don't know if I'll even use it all up in the three weeks before it expires.

Catastrophe Cosmetic: The little sample that I have is called Catastrophe Cosmetic. This face mask contains blueberries, calamine, chamomile and rose absolute. It also has a calming, soothing effect on your skin. This face mask is creamy, unlike the Oatifix so it is nice if you want something cooling without the abrasiveness of the oats and almonds. It smells nice but not as amazing as Oatifix. I got the sample of this to patch test since it has the chamomile. I have not done this yet so I can't review how the product works.

These are my FAVORITE products that I purchased!!

Big: Probably my favorite product in the entire haul. This shampoo (yes, shampoo!!) in the open pot on the left is a beautiful, volumizing shampoo. It is filled with coarse sea salt that melts away and citrus juice, seaweed infusion, coconut and avocado oils. The sea salt scrubs away the dirt as well as volumizes your hair, the oils keep your hair soft and nourished and the citrus juices make your hair shiny. Let me tell you, every claim is correct. After I use this shampoo my hair feels super clean. I don't use heat on my hair so I let it air dry and it has TONS of volume and the sea salt brings out my natural waves. It is super soft and shiny as well. It lathers really well in the shower and smells like a citrusy margarita (which I love). I will buy this product over and over again, I am totally in love with it.

Veganese: I would say that conditioners probably have the fewest vegan options but all you need is this one! This conditioner is light with a beautiful, bright, fresh lemon scent. It has lemon and seaweed that leaves your hair silky and shiny. It pairs perfectly with the Big shampoo, I love the combination of the two.

Moisturizers!

Sympathy for the Skin: The large pot on the left and the body moisturizer that I chose. It contains bananas which are moisturizing and make your skin super soft. A little goes a long way and this lotion is thick and luscious. It smells like a sweet banana/vanilla custard and the scent stays with you for a long time after you apply it. It is a really lovely product that I would definitely recommend. I use it after I shower and my skin feels soft and smooth all day.

Celestial: The facial moisturizer I chose to sample. Since their facial moisturizers are expensive for the size, I decided to try a sample of it before I committed to the full size. This is a sensitive skin facial moisturizer that soothes and hydrates. It contains cocoa butter, almond milk and dove orchid extract. It is a really light moisturizer that smells like vanilla custard. I LOVE this moisturizer. It is really light and doesn't irritate my skin which is really important for me. You'll see how much I liked it in a minute.

Tea Tree Water: This is the toner that I chose to try. It is alcohol free which is great since alcohol can dry out the skin. It is really effective on blemish prone skin and since my stress breakout was driving me crazy I figured I'd give it a try. It brightens the skin, reduces redness and clears excess oils. I love spraying it directly on my face since it is really cooling and refreshing. This is another product I will be incorporating into my regular routine.

Grease Lightning: Spot treatment to get rid of blemishes pretty quickly. It contains herbs like thyme and rosemary, grape juice, aloe vera extract and other ingredients that combine to form a gentle but powerful blemish fighter. I have been using this all week to combat my stress breakout and I am confident when I say that this stuff is amazing. My breakout has improved tremendously in just a week and I definitely believe that adding this product to my routine has helped me calm my skin and reduce the appearance of my blemishes.

Dark Angels: This was probably the product I was most afraid of. It is a facial scrub made of charcoal and black sugar. It is to smooth and brighten skin and reduce redness while exfoliating the dead skin away. Cold pressed olive oil softens and nourishes the skin. Truthfully, I hate the way it smells... which is like a combination of charcoal and licorice and using a black cleanser is messy BUT... it works. The combination of this cleanser, the spot treatment, the toner and the moisturizer has not only helped my breakous tremendously, it reduced the redness in my face as well as smoothed my skin and made it glow. While my complexion still is far from perfect, the combination of these products have definitely helped it improve tremendously.

Rub Rub Rub: The final sample of this haul is called Rub Rub Rub, a shower gel/scrub. I got a sample of this because I wasn't sure how I felt about it and it was pretty expensive. Like the Big Shampoo, it contains salt for its cleansing power and exfoliating properties. The salt isn't as coarse as in the shampoo so it exfoliates gently. It has a refreshing citrus scent and works really well. I want to purchase a full sized pot of this product but it is really expensive so I'm going to wait for a bit. I'm going to stretch the rest of my sample as much as possible ;)

I loved my Celestial moisturizer sample so much and was really happy with my new facial cleansing routine so I went back to Lush this past Friday and picked it up. I picked up a few other things as well as you can see!

Happy Hippy: Since I was going to hold off on Rub Rub Rub, I chose to go with a less expensive shower gel option. This shower gel smells AMAZING. It has a gorgeous and refreshing grapefruit scent. The grapefruit cleans amazingly well, brightens your skin and is the perfect morning wake up scent. The only thing I'm not super thrilled about is that the scent doesn't stay on your skin at all. It's not a huge deal since I use the strongly scented lotion after but I love the scent so much I'd love for it to stay with me for a bit. Honestly, I'll probably use it as a liquid hand soap as well.

Let The Good Times Roll: I was lucky enough to get another sample on this trip and this time I chose a different cleanser. While I will continue to use the Dark Angels cleanser because it works, I wanted to try another one that smells better :X And this one DEFINITELY smells better! I love this scent. My first impression was that is smelled like sweet cornbread. I've heard that it smells like caramel popcorn but I still get the cornbread scent from it. Anyway, this cleanser consists of maize flour, corn meal and cinnamon and is meant to exfoliate and moisturize and leaves you with beautiful glowing skin. The scent stays with you for a long time which I loved. I have only used it once but I liked it. I'm a little nervous to rock the boat on my skin care routine so I may use it as a body scrub in the shower (which is another great use for it!) when my Rub Rub Rub sample runs out.

Popcorn Lip Scrub: Lush is well known for their sugar lip scrubs. It is pretty easy to make your own but I felt like the popcorn flavor was so unique I wanted to give it a try. It is a salty sweet lip scrub that tastes like caramel popcorn. It exfoliates your lips and leaves them soft and smooth. All you do is gently rub the scrub on your lips then lick it off! It works so well and is really yummy too!

So that's everything! Truthfully there is so much more that I want to try but I kept it to a minimum since I'm just starting to rebuild. I'm really happy with the products I got AND I found a way to save money for when I need to re-stock. It is apparently cheaper to purchase the more expensive products from the UK website and I tested it out and added up a purchase of my favorite essentials and including the international shipping (about $13ish US) I would save $35. So I'm going to be ordering from the UK when it's time to re-stock!

So that is my incredibly long Lush haul and review. I hope you enjoyed reading it! I'll keep you posted on any new items I pick up and definitely let me know if you've ever tried anything from Lush or what you may want to try! Also, if you have any favorite all natural hair or skin care products please share them in the comments, I'd love to hear some more suggestions.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Throwback Thursday: Cookie Dough Sundae

I don't know about you, but here in NY I enjoyed a gorgeous, sunny, balmy 72 degree day. As the temperature climbs and we start to thaw from the winter it is time to shake the dust off of some recipes for frosty treats. That is why I decided to revive my Cookie Dough Sundae recipe for this Throwback Thursday. As some of you may recall, my theme for half of last year's Vegan MoFo was restaurant recreations. Included in this series was a recreation of Cold Stone Creamery's "Cookie Doughn't You Want Some." I could have easily recreated this sundae using store bought products but I decided to challenge myself to make a healthy version to enjoy guilt free. Let's stroll down memory lane and celebrate the leap into spring and with this delicious recipe. And the best part? You don't have to worry about bikini season being right around the corner.

So what makes this treat so healthy? That creamy ice cream is actually banana soft serve and the healthy cookie dough recipe comes courtesy of Chocolate Covered Katie (Healthy Cookie Dough Dip)!

Banana soft serve, the quickest chocolate sauce ever and little balls of Healthy Cookie Dough Dip. Probably one of the best recreations ever (if I do say so myself!) 

Vegan Cookie Dough Sundae

Ingredients:

1 1/2 bananas, frozen

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp cinnamon (optional)

1 tsp cocoa powder

1 tsp agave

1 tsp water

1/4-1/3 cup Healthy Cookie Dough Dip, rolled into balls

Directions:

1. Make chocolate sauce by mixing cocoa powder, agave and water together. Set aside.

2. Add frozen bananas to food processor. Process until it starts to get creamy. Add vanilla and cinnamon (if you choose) and then continue processing until it reaches a creamy, soft serve texture.

3. Spoon soft serve into a bowl and top with cookie dough balls and drizzle with chocolate syrup. To achieve a more Cold Stone like sundae, mix half of your cookie dough calls into the soft serve and top with remaining. You can also add chocolate chips if you’d like.

I chose not to use caramel for several reasons, the biggest one being that I felt it was kind of unnecessary. Had I decided to use it, I would have made some date syrup and used that as my caramel. This is sweet enough as is though. 

The best part about this version is that it is…

vegan, of course! 

So there you have it, a decadent sundae made at home with just a few ingredients. A perfect dessert to impress your friends or to enjoy as a treat.

I hope you all enjoyed this trip down memory lane. I hope you've all had a great week. I have Fridays off now so I'm deciding what I want to do tomorrow. I believe it is supposed to be another beautiful day so I'll see how long I can stand being outside before my allergies decide it's time for me to come back in ;)

Hope you all enjoy the end of your week! I'll be back on Sunday with a fun haul and review for you ;) 

Gold Coast Mansions: Sands Point

Hello everyone. I'm here today with my first installment of my Gold Coast Mansion series. This series will be a collection of posts showing off the rich history of the Gold Coast, also known as the North Shore of Long Island. Today I'll be discussing The Sands Point Preserve (home to Castlegould and The Hempstead House) as well as the town of Sands Point in general.

It was easy for me to choose this first mansion and town because it holds a lot of personal memories for me. It is a place that I've been exploring for years and one of my favorite places to just drive around and take in the beauty, architecture and spectacular views. It is also the inspiration for the town of "East Egg" in The Great Gatsby, the book that inspired me to start this series in the first place. It seems like a no brainer that this would be the first stop of my Gold Coast tour.

This post will be a little bit different since you'll see a few parts of the town as well as the preserve since I have such a love for the whole area. I've recruited my friend Alex to join me in this journey and I'm so glad that she wanted to come with me because we had a great time!

All of the historical information that I will share was obtained from the literature I received upon arrival to the preserve. Also, apparently the tours of the estate occur Thursday through Sunday and our availability limits us to Mondays so we were kind of left to fend for ourselves so I was unable to ask questions and apparently missed out on one of the mansions.

Enough of my babbling, let's get started!

The Sands Point Preserve is what remains of a former Gold Coast estate built by Howard Gould, the son of railroad tycoon Jay Gould. In 1904, Gould completed Castlegould. Its architecture was inspired by Kilkenny Castle in Ireland.

This is Castlegould. It is the first building that you see when you enter the main portion of the preserve. It is a massive and striking building, clearly resembling an old castle. It was intended to be the main estate but the Goulds did not like it and build a second estate on the property.

Here is a wider view of Castlegould. Believe it or not, this is the smaller building and would go on to house the stables and become the servants quarters.

This is the back of the Hempstead House, the main residence of Howard Gould. It was completed in 1912 and was considered one of the most lavish and extravagant estates on the Gold Coast. 

*Note - I apologize for not getting a full on front view of the Hempstead House but they seemed to be getting ready for an event that day and there were trucks blocking the front.

This sign appears behind the house and I just thought it was interesting. 

This is the back garden area of the house. It is surrounded by the gorgeous stone wall that you can see bordering the garden in the picture and has a beautiful view of the water. The detail is really stunning in person.

This is the water view from the Hempstead House. It overlooks the Long Island Sound and Hempstead Bay, hence the name. As you can see, we had an absolutely perfect day.

This is the side of the Hempstead House and unfortunately the closest I could get to the front. It is built in a Tudor Manor style has a granite and Indiana limestone exterior. It is 225 feet long, 135 feet wide, has three floors, 40 rooms and an 80 foot tower.

Another side view of the home. Following Howard Gould's divorce, the Estate was purchased by Daniel Guggenheim in 1917. He was the third Guggenheim to own property in Sands Point and he was the one to give the main residence the name The Hempstead House.

Guggenheim gifted 90 acres of the Estate to his son and new daughter in law in 1923, where they built a Normandy style house on the bluffs overlooking the Long Island Sound. They called it "Falaise," which is the French word for cliff. I did not get to see Falaise and I'm not sure if that is part of the tour but I will try my best to get back on a weekend to see if I can get a few pictures of it for you.

The Preserve also boasts many beautiful nature trails that take you through the woods and down to the water front. Due to my severe seasonal allergies I was unable to bear the thought of walking through the woods but I will make that part of my mission for when I return.

After passing hands several times, upon the death of Harry Guggenheim most of the 90 acre estate was deeded to Nassau County for use as a museum site and is now known as the Sands Point Preserve.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, I chose Sands Point because I do have a personal connection to it. I don't know if this is a "Long Island thing" but in high school and when I was on break from college my friends and I would get together for the evening to get dinner and coffee. The night would ALWAYS be capped off by a multiple hour drive around Long Island to our favorite locations and Sands Point was a weekly stop for us. We had discovered that following the curve at the end of the road would bring us one of the most beautiful views we could ever imagine. I always felt like I was in on a secret and we would drive there every single time we got together. You'll see why in just a minute.

One of my favorite things about the town of Sands Point is the eclectic architecture of all of the houses. You'll find every style of house you can imagine, one more grand and opulent than the next. The waterfront views are unbeatable and I could spend all of the time in the world driving around and looking at the area. The house pictured above is my absolute favorite in the town. I love its almost gothic and medieval vibe, the view is incredible and those spikes on the surrounding wall are so different and intimidating. It is definitely my dream home and I love passing by and taking a look at it. It also looks really spooky at night which is really fun.

This structure is located directly across the street from the house pictured above. This is located in someone's side yard I believe. It's hard to tell what belongs to whom but I'm pretty sure this the side yard. It is such an interesting structure because if it belongs to the house I'm thinking of it is a completely different style than the architecture of the main house. It looks really cool nonetheless.

I love the feel and vibe of this little area and I'm not going to lie, I've wanted to do a photo shoot over here for ages. It would be a great place for an engagement shoot with the right couple ;)

This is not a great picture but I love the detail of the fence surrounding this little side yard. It reminds me of giant chain mail and I thought it was so unique.

This is another gorgeous house located in Sands Point and sits directly across from the view I was mentioning above. The home is huge and my favorite feature is the double wraparound balcony/patio on the top and bottom levels of the house. If you are in the market for a new home and love the look of this house, you are in luck! It is currently on the market and you only have to fork over $13 MILLION. ;) It is so beautiful, and what makes it even more special and stunning is the view.

(Special note about this photo - Alex took this photo. Poor thing was practically hanging out of the window as I was rolling the car, ha! She got a great shot, thanks for being a trooper in my crazy adventure! In all fairness though I was practically hanging out of the window getting the picture of the house across the street)

This is what you see when you look directly across from that gorgeous mansion. It is hard to tell because it was a little hazy on the horizon that day, but this beautiful house overlooks the water (I believe the Long Island Sound but I'm not 100% sure) and has an amazing view of the city. Imagine coming around a curve in the road at night and being treated to this view of a beautifully lit New York City over the water. I feel so lucky to know about this spot and to be able to go there whenever I want. When it is warm out and I don't want to be at home I'll sometimes just drive down to this spot to get out of the house and enjoy a beautiful day. It is so special to me and I love it so much.

So this is it for my first post in my Gold Coast Series! I apologize for not getting the pictures of the nature trails and of Falaise, but I promise I will try to get back on a day where they are doing tours and when my allergies have calmed down a bit. So I guess there will eventually be a part two of my Sands Point post.

I hope you enjoyed my photo tour of the Sands Point Preserve and the town of Sands Point. I am so excited to have more adventures and show you more of the Gold Coast. Funny enough, I worked my first wedding in a long time yesterday and we happened to go to the Estate that I was planning on going to next! I got to scope it all out and get re-acquainted with it and it is a beautiful and completely different property from the preserve and I look forward to going back soon! I've also been debating filming a driving tour of the town so you can get a really good idea of what I see when I drive this road but I would have to work out the logistics of that. Is it something that you would want to see?

Have a great weekend!

What I Ate Wednesday!

Hey everyone! I'm back for another What I Ate Wednesday! I've been eating a lot of raw food lately. Allergy season is upon us and I'm already feeling it so I'm trying to be as clean as possible because it's hitting me really hard. I haven't photographed a ton but here's a little bit of what I've been eating lately.

Here's some of my meals!

I made a gorgeous juice! I couldn't get over how pretty the pulp looked so I took a million pictures of it ;) I definitely felt like I was eating (well... drinking) the rainbow. How gorgeous is it?! It's like produce confetti.

And here is the actual juice. It was a really good one. It has pineapple, orange, green apple, carrots, beet and lemon. I have never juiced beets before so I was a little nervous about it but it was good! It had a bit of an earthy flavor even though I peeled it. I may just use a half next time but it was definitely delicious and this was a large glass. I think it was about 24 oz?

For this dinner I didn't have a raw meal but I did eat my veggies :) This is Eggplant Salad (puree of roasted eggplant with olive oil, vinegar and garlic) and it is served with veggie garnishes and delicious, fresh pita. It came from a place called Greek Corner. Truthfully I'm not a huge fan of most of their food (their hummus and falafel are not my favorite at all) but my mom ordered this one night and let me try it and it was delicious! I usually don't order from there but I will definitely order this again. It's super garlicky too.

I'm sorry about the horrible picture and tablecloth. After I finished my dinner I chopped up some tomato and cucumber and made an Israeli style salad (basically you just chop your veggies nice and small) and topped it with the leftover eggplant dip. I brought this to work with me the next day for lunch. I basically mixed it up into a delicious mess and put it in a pita. Good thing I was alone that day because the garlic is intense ;)

I had this beautiful salad! It had mixed greens, grape tomatoes, almonds, cranberries and candied walnuts (which I didn't eat because I didn't realize they were candied until after I got it and I didn't know what the ingredients were). I used some balsamic vinaigrette and it was delicious!

Sorry this isn't a ton of meals but I'm trying, I promise! Hopefully next week I'll have more meals to show you. I'm just so excited about visiting the mansions and photographing other things that I've been neglecting my meals. Like I say every Wednesday, I'll try for more next week ;)

Hope the rest of your week goes well!