Etsy!

I could talk for days about Etsy, one of my favorite websites for shopping when you don't really know what you're looking for OR when you know exactly what you're looking for, it's out there.

I wanted to give my sisters a little something to remember the trip so I started looking around etsy.com.  It gave me so many ideas, but the winner was.... CROCHET KOOZIES!

so amazing

Who knew the even existed.  I talked to the designer at knotworkshop and she made 4 custom koozies for me.  They're fantastic.  I always carry a koozie with me, my crochet love is in my purse at this very moment.

DC Pictures

As promised, here are a few more pictures of the Sister's Trip last weekend.  ENJOY!

The best breakfast in DC at the Eastern Market, the line is forever long.

Goofing around while shopping

The Washington Monument

This is the view you get if you lay down at the bottom of the Washington Monument, put your feet on the wall and look up...

...Like this

WWII Memorial

The albino squirrel that was not afraid of Bonnie one bit

Lincoln Memorial, much larger than I thought it was going to be

sisters!

The man himself.  Huge!  his room was smaller than I thought it would be

yep (notice no water in the reflecting pond...sad)

Our 4th bottle of bubbly for our Bellinis

The End

Sister Weekend 2011

Sisters are fantastic.  Really, there is no one like them.  I’m so grateful that I had a weekend with my sister and stepsisters.  We had a blast.  DC was just right for our first trip together.  I was also my first trip to DC for fun.  I've probably been 5+ times in the past 3 years, but always for work.  It's far better visiting for pleasure!!

yep - they're crazy

I don’t have all of my pictures yet (I’ll have them for tomorrow’s post - check back!!), but there was a lot of drinking, eating and walking around.  Just what we wanted. 

Friday night Bonnie and I got in after Meaghan and Tina and met the two of them at Bar Dupont.  What a fun scene.  We drank and people watched before moving on to Kramerbooks & Afterwords.  I’ve never seen anything like it – a tiny little book store with live music a bar and people everywhere!  We continued to walk around looking for a bar before heading back to the hotel and hitting up the bar there, which was hopping. 

Saturday we started at the Eastern Market for breakfast and to do some shopping.  We had to wait more than 30 min in line for our food, but it was beyond worth it.  The Market was full of jewelry, crafts and art.  From there we headed to the Mall to do our own monument tour.  We started walking towards the Washington Monument, past the WWII Memorial and then to the Lincoln Memorial.   Absolutely amazing.  The Reflecting Pond was drained for maintenance, which was a complete bummer.

From there we walked to Georgetown to do some shopping!  Whoo hoo!  The area was PACKED.  It reminded me of SoHo, but the buildings are much cuter with their DC charm.  After a few hours of shopping we walked back to the hotel for our 5-6 happy hour of FREE WINE in the lobby.  Yes, please and thank you! 

We headed to Lauriol  Plaza which has to be the best Mexican food I’ve had in a long time.  There was a crazy wait so we drank a pitcher of frozen margaritas and chatted.  Tina talked about how great the food was, but I wasn’t really ready for how good it really was.  I’m going to try to make that a “must eat” restaurant every time I’m in town. 

Sunday was icky and rainy so we went to brunch and drank away our last morning.  Unlimited Bellini’s – YES!  The best part of Sunday was that we could have been anywhere in the world and had just as much fun as we had just sitting together and eating and drinking.  That’s how I know our trips will continue to be great for years and years to come. 

The ride to the airport was long and rainy and Bonnie and I didn’t want to have to say good-bye.  At least we know we’ll all see each other in 2 months for Meaghan’s wedding!!  Two days in town and I’ll need 3 dresses.  Shopping starts today.  So exciting!

Buckhead Restaurant Week

Once a year the different parts of town get together to host restaurant weeks where for a fixed price diners get to sample a full meal a participating restaurants.  Last night was the first time I participated in one of these weeks and we decided to try a new restaurant, Basil's.

The wine and appetizers we fantastic and the dessert was delicious.  It seemed like the restaurant was too busy for the kitchen or the servers to handle as our poor girl never had a calm minute.  My stuffed chicken wasn't really that stuffed and it was over cooked.

I'll definitely check it out again but I'll try another dish.  With an atmosphere and menu like Basil's, they deserve a second chance.

Baroni Casual Italian

Yep, my blog is turning into a daily review of restaurants around Atlanta.  I have so many dinners planned with friends this week they are taking up my evenings when I'd have time to do something new.  Don't take that the wrong way, dinners with friends are one of my favorite things.  Probably top five favorite thing.  Especially when it's at a new restaurant.

Last night I met 3 former co-workers at Baroni Casual Italian.  They are old co-workers but these three ladies are far more than people I used to sit next to in cubeland.  They are three of the best friends you could ever ask for.  They are sounding boards when I need advice, they are always there with new exciting things going on in their lives and they can always be counted on to share a glass of wine or two.  They have each seen me cry, laugh, get angry and make a fool out of myself after too much alcohol.  I love each of them and can't wait to see what the next years hold for us.

Back to the restaurant - Baroni was fantastic.  Great Italian at decent prices.  I'll definitely be adding it to my list when I need some pasta and red wine - which is often.  The manager sent two desserts to our table, totally unnecessary and totally welcomed.  And something that a lot of people take for granted - Baroni has TONS of parking.  BONUS!

Tonight I'm going to yet another new restaurant because it's Buckhead Restaurant Week!  Then this weekend is full of 100% new things - it's my sister's trip to Washington DC.  Get ready men and women of our capital city, the Deegans and Dormans are coming.

Sweet Georgia's Juke Joint: Restaurant Review

Working downtown Atlanta has its benefits.  The office close to all of the sporting events in the city and we have tons of places to walk for lunch.  Most of the lunch places are fast food type restaurants, but as busy as our days are, that's what we need most of the time.  The downside is that downtown Atlanta has some pretty rough areas and a lot of nice restaurants have closed.  They city is going through a revitalization, but change doesn't happen over night.

Two blocks away a new restaurant opened two weeks ago, Sweet Georgia's Juke Joint.  I was a little skeptical because it is across the street from Hooters and Hard Rock Cafe and I didn't want another large chain.  Boy, was I pleased!

My boss and I went to lunch with two magazine reps, two of the best ladies to lunch with, by far, and met at SWJJ.  The food is labeled as "deep south" cuisine,  indeed it is.  On the menu you'll find a lot of pimento cheese, fried foods, catfish and crawfish.  We started with the house-made pimento cheese spread and black-eyed pea hummus along with the southern starter (fried green tomatoes with goat cheese) for appetizers.  Both were delicious.  Plenty to share between four people.  The starter went much faster than the spreads, but I think that was because we didn't get enough flatbread to go along with the spreads, but the

My Big Ol' BLT was just that, huge and full of bacon, lettuce and tomatoes.  And this isn't your Denny's bacon, it was thick-cut, perfectly crisp bacon in every bite.  My side item was their aged white cheddar macaroni.  I think you can tell a lot about a restaurant by their southern mac n cheese.  It was very tasty, but probably wouldn't rank in my top 5.  Looking at the other sides around the table, the servings are small, but probably the correct portion size for southern food.  The other entrees were all given great reviews as well.

The most interesting thing about the restaurant has to be the atmosphere.  The far back wall is set up for a live band with the full drum set and key board still set up.  While we dined, at lunch remember, there was a sax player playing live music for us.  A very nice touch for a lunch.  You can tell the space transforms at night for a dance crowd.  There is a 2nd floor DJ booth and there is a shelf around the entire dining area that must be used to hold drinks once the tables are gone.  It will be interesting to see the crowd Sweet Georgia draws at night.

I will be adding the Juke Joint to our list of options for lunch.  I'm thankful for a sit-down restaurant within walking distance to the office!

Rocky start...but victory in the end!

My Kindle arrived yesterday to much excitement.  It is so much cooler than I expected.  It's SUPER thin, thinner than my iphone when it's in it's case, and the e-ink technology is shocking it's so realistic.  Now the big thing with the Kindle is that it is supposed to work as soon as you take it out of the box, Amazon Fail.

The Kindle worked, it turned on, it was registered to me because I bought it with my Amazon.com account and it was ready to go BUT to recognize who it belongs to it needs to connect to wifi.  Sounds easy, my office has wifi, I put in my password.  Nothing.  For a few hours we tried to figure it out.  We (by this time my entire half of the office knew what was going on) took a trip downstairs to the food court area where we know there is free wifi, we even went to the hotel next door.  NOTHING.  Katie = pissed.

I called Amazon tech support and the guy didn't sound shocked that I was having a connectivity problem.  It was even option #3 on the menu when I first called.  Let me back up for one second, before I called tech support I also checked online to see if there was anything I was missing - nope.  Now the guy asks me to go to the home page, put in "date" and tell him what shows up.  My Kindle thinks it's Jan 2010.  There is the problem.  Most wireless networks won't accept a device if it has the wrong date.  So he told me to go to Starbucks and get on their wifi network because it doesn't use a date for verification.  Really?  Big, monster company Amazon's advice was to go to Starbucks to fix their problem.  Well, I did and it worked.

I'm going to write a review of the Kindle and include this problem.  Not the best way to start using a product that should work right out of the box.  However, now that it's working - I'm in love.  I started my first book last night, the first book of The Hunger Games.  I've seen a lot of people comment on it on facebook and the reviews are great.  Yes, it's a young adult book, but I'll read anything if it's good.  And that's how I plan to use my Kindle most of the time- for books that I don't want to own down the line.

Reading a book has never been easier.  No more turning pages, just one push of a button and it does it for you.  I got in one position and didn't have to move to shift the book from side to side or worry about my arm getting tired of holding a heavy book.  I can't wait to get home and read more.  The story is good too.  I'll review that when I'm done.

This was a long post, I'm sorry, but I feel passionately about my Kindle and wanted people to know the crazy issue that nobody mentions, but they know about...