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Entries in travel (12)

Tuesday

26Jan2010

birthday week in review

Tuesday, January 26, 2010 at 7:45AM

Yes it’s me. Me and my $14/mo neglected website. Whoops!

I think most of you know that since I got back from Denmark over the holidays everything has been absolutely manic. Not even joking. January turned into Tornaduary.

All things aside, life has been pretty great. It’s a good thing to be busy… I’m pretty sure, anyway. I was just in London last week for a few days, more on that some other time. This is my dedicated princess birthday blog post!

I turned 25 last Monday. Richard (my boss) and I found ourselves to be the only ones willing to get a drink after dinner on monday night in the spirit of our birthday. the birthday that we share… yes it’s weird… really weird.

But my princess expectations of my birthday week were not forgone. I celebrated on the Thursday night before I left for London with some friends at Cactus Club – my second home. Went out a bit in London while I was there and then ultimately my hubby finished up my birthday week with a bang!

I got to Denmark on Wednesday night, completely shattered from sitting in a meeting room for three days straight. In I walked to the bedroom to collapse and suddenly what did I see?!

My very own princess mirror! I don’t think I complained a lot but Christian never had a full length mirror at his house. This is obviously an issue. Which was gracefully resolved by this beauty! So shabby chic, I can’t believe he’s going to let me have my big girly mirror in his room! Woop!

Better yet… Check out this hot Gaga inspired card he wrote me:

How friggggggen adorable is he? He is my second half, my better half and more. I love you, Christian!

Moving onwards with my birthday week… we went out Friday night to a tapas dinner in København and then out to the bars in Nørrebro with friends afterwards. I finally found a bar in København that serves up proper margaritas. Fresh ingredients (I nearly collapsed) and she knew what I meant when I said …. On the rocks no salt. Rock on.

I literally ran home at 5am… it was cold, I thought I was going to die. Seriously… felt like I was in Antarctica wearing a cocktail dress and tights. Whoops! However, Christian told me that my “running” wasn’t much faster than he could walk behind me, pfft!

Saturday I didn’t emerge from my dyne until 1pm at which point operation cook dinner for 13 people commenced. Slicing and dicing and baking and pan frying… We used every bowl, pot, pan and piece of silverware in our tiny kitchen!

Dinner was held across the terrace at Farmor’s house. Lots of girly decorations (Thanks to Christian’s Uncle Bjarne for the gorgeous flowers). Jilly style for sure. Food was great, but we were so exhausted (and smelling pretty badly of onion and meatballs haha).

In the end my birthday week celebrations culminated with drum roll please…LAGE KAGE… whoa. This the end all, be all for cakes. I’ve been talking about my lage kage from Farmor for about a month now.

It was obviously just as good as I dream about it (sick, I know). The butterfly decoration was actually some teamwork between Christian and I and was made out of Marzipan.

I suppose you want to know what “Pillefinger” means… basically it’s like poke/tickle finger. It was a word I made up when I was trying to remember the different names of all the fingers in Danish. It was kind of suiting, though. I tend to poke and tickle Numsemund a lot. I’ll let Christian explain his Numsemund nickname…

Or not. I will. It literally translates into “Buttmouth” hahaha. I also made this up. I think it sounds cute in Danish – and the fact that it’s absurd makes it all the better! I am so clever!

And that was my princess birthday week in a big coconut shell. I hope you had fun reading… or looking at the pictures. I probably would have stopped reading by now. :)

Love you monsters! Xx

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jillianc |

2 Comments |

tagged

birthdays,

cake,

celebration,

denmark,

gifts,

travel in

family,

milestone,

travel

Wednesday

25Nov2009

a time to give thanks

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 6:34PM

Happy Thanksgiving my little o-m-g-er's! I am sitting here in Providence Airport severely delayed (figures) and thought it might be a good time to blog. I'm pretty sure weather.com sucks at predicting weather, which is ridiculous considering the fact that their domain is weather.com. They had sun predicted all week (even this morning!) for today. No such thing. Fog = USAirway travelers' worst nightmare.

Hope you all have nice little Thanksgiving plans. I'm going to one of my dad's sister's house. There should be a good crowd. The Curley's know how to have a good laugh!

What are your plans? Which football game are you most excited about? Us Philly fans absolutely hate the Cowboys so ideally I'd like to watch them LOSE. ;) Other than that, not particularly excited about any of them. If it's not raining it might be fun to have a family game of touch football but it's unrealistic to think my family is that organized. :P

So let's talk Black Friday. I am definitely contemplating getting up at an absurd hour to go buy the rest of my family Christmas presents. It might be a recipe for disaster, though. I feel like I will get anxiety and probably start pushing people. But Target is offering a 32" LCD flat screen for $246! Holy crap! If I had any need for such a monster I would buy one.

I.hate.Providence.Airport. Their only bar is closing at 7 when flights are delayed out the wazoo. Lame with a capital L.

Enough bitterness. I will leave you all on a happy note... all the things I am thankful for!

My family (yep hubby this includes you!)
My friends
Lady Gaga
The internet

Go ahead and laugh, I am ridiculous. What are you thankful for?

xoxo

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jillianc |

4th of July is better with family!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009 at 10:25AM

With no real intentions of going home for the weekend, I bought a train ticket to Philadelphia last Thursday for the holiday weekend. Best decision, ever. It's so nice to spend the 4th with family and I haven't done that in almost a decade I bet.

I watched fireworks with the fam on Friday night, made s'mores and promptly passed out with the children at 11pm. Saturday I got up and ran a 5k with Jack and my aunt. Yes they both beat me. Yes I got beat by a 7 (almost 8)-year-old. But we all know I'm a slow runner.

The rest of the 4th was spent poolside and I got to throw Maya around in the water because she ways a feather in water. My back would beg to differ but it was worth it. I got to swim around like a kid again. So impressed with Jack and Maya and their pure athleticism at such a young age. I'm thinking Olympics 2020 for them both? ;)

I also got to spend some QT with my padre, time I don't get very often. It's nice when we can get along amicably in each other's presence! No... just worry about him sometimes. Great to spend some time with him, though.

I also got to see my fabulous Crisi ladies on Sunday evening before leaving town. They're finally moving to Malvern after all these years, can you believe it?! So strange but very happy for them.

My weekend came to an end as I took an overnight train from Philadelphia to Boston with a layover in NYC. 8 hour trip and I slept most of it... though not very soundly. Totally worth it, though!

It's raining here again in Boston. It's dark outside. I want to go back to sunny Philadelphia and play in the pool again! Back to work it is, though...

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jillianc |

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tagged

Philadelphia,

jack and maya,

running,

travel

Thursday

25Jun2009

rockin the sunshine in denmark

Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 6:42AM

I can gladly say that I've been off the map in the wonderfully sunny and warm Denmark with my handsome fiance and it's been absolutely GLORIOUS.

For those of you who don't know, I barely made it here. I was on three different Chicago flights that were subsequently canceled except for one that was supposed to take off at 9am that I got on at 2pm. Of 8 total United flights from Boston to Chicago only two actually went. Sometimes it pays to be as anal about flying as I am.

There were four confirmed tornadoes in Chicago that day and only one small window of open air before another storm front came barreling through. I saw the next storm which only lasted an hour but scary none-the-less. The flight from Chicago to Copenhagen was only 3/4 full and I had both seats on the window side of the aircraft to myself. I got to sleep in all kinds of funny positions ;)

Christian and I have spent our days outside for the most part. We've done yard work, went to the beach, gone to barbeques, gone for runs and just basked in the sun whenever possible. The sun has been out until 11pm and has made my sleeping patterns very strange!

Tuesday was the celebration of the longest day of the year. Here it's called Midsommer which directly translates to mid-summer. However Danes celebrate this longest day of the year by having huge fires in which they burn (now fake) witches. Christian's dad asked if I brought my broom or if I needed some help being hoisted on top the fire. ;) Te-he-he-he.

We've spent a lot of time with family and friends, free meals are great! We talked about going on a mini-cruise to Oslo, Norway and back but decided that with such fabulous weather here it would be silly to leave! This weather knocks Boston weather straight out of the park. I got my first sunburn of the year here, who would have thought!

Denmark in the summer is undeniably charming. It's making me want to go back to Boston (and work)... not at all. We played the Lotto yesterday and I promised if we won big I wouldn't go back to the States. Too bad we didn't win. I will keep playing because I've officially had a serious reminder as to why I want to settle here eventually. This country is so darn cute. You should come visit instead of taking my word for it!

We did stop by the castle (yes, the castle) and I had tears in my eyes. It's not easy for me to give up the dream wedding. We've chatted here and there about what our new wedding will look like and all I keep saying is how I don't like leaves (Fall) but rather flowers (Spring/Summer). Fall is not me but perhaps it will have to be. Anyway, no definitive answers on that yet.

Will be coming home on Sunday if we don't win the lottery or if I don't have some fleeing live by the seat of my pants moment in which I decide to throw my arms up in the air and just forget about Boston... ohhh I could be convinced.

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jillianc |

LA part duex part 2

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 7:44AM

Well the 2nd half of my trip to LA was a whirlwind in some ways. In other ways there was a lot of sleeping involved? Haha.

The hike in Runyon Canyon was in the heart of the Hollywood Hills but unfortunately we didn't see any celebs hiking/walking/running any of the trails. We discovered a lot about nature, mostly that Gail hates it (even more than I do if that's possible). She was even upset about the BUTTERFLIES. Oh man haha what a riot.

Some drunk Slovakian man told us to find some aloe plants on the trail for Gail's very obvious red legs. This turned into Gail asking me if each plant we passed was aloe. No... no... kind of looks like it but no.... Until we arrived at the GIANT aloe plants that were the size of the 3 of us put together. Here is when Gail demands Libby and I to try and wrestle a stem off to get to the aloey bottom part. Not sure if I'm up for the humility of these pictures.

Next on our adventure was to navigate to Lauren Conrad's house. LC lives in the Holltywood Flats which is funny considering the name of her show is The Hills.

We then headed to Robertson Blvd and grabbed a drink at what is apparently LA's premier gay and lesbian club/bar, The Abbey. Not sure why the shot boys in speedos didn't give us the hint right away but that's what internet phones are for, right? ;) Anyway there was a promotion going on and here at 2pm was a live dj pumping the beats. Right up my alley... gay or not.

This is where we must have consumed sleeping rufies because we got back to Libby's in the late afternoon to relax and we all fell asleep watching Empire Records. We woke up and ate homemade guac and then fell back asleep. I appreciated it though because my lack of teeth/whole mouth was in serious pain for all of Saturday. Argh.

All this sleep had the three of us up and at them at 7am Sunday morning. Gail knew about a weekly flea market on Melrose that has vintage designer labels as well as handmade stuff. We got brunch (we are freaks about breakfast in case you didn't already gather) on Melrose and then hit up the market.

I got a set of homemade coasters for my new apartment. It's a shame I have no table to put them on. My coasters and I will be very happy on the floor, don't worry. ;) Gail got some rockstar jewelry and we headed back to Libby's for beach preparation.

Libs had to work at the gym (the one I told you she owns) and because Gail and I are are not able to drive stick (I mean I can get to 3rd gear but like whatever) we borrowed bikes!

Biking was a joyful yet painful experience. On our way to Venice Beach I crashed into a pole on the sidewalk and still can't get rid of the bruise. Oh well. Hit the beach for a few hours while Gail covered her body in towels to protect her sun burn.

We biked from Venice Beach up to Santa Monica Pier and back which was super fun when I wasn't dodging small children and power bikers. And I suppose there was the point when the chain completely fell off. Funny that a damsel in distress approach resolved this quickly. Thank you Mr. Man. ;)

We got back and waited for Libby before a big night out in Venice & Santa Monica. Well this night out is best described as a "hot mess." I can let some pictures speak for themselves as unfortunately the events of this night violate the parental advisory of my blog. I will let you know I seriously contemplated sleeping on the bathroom floor...

LA night out

Anyway our last day in LA was spent mostly paying for the night before but it was worth it. How often does one really get to party like a rockstar with Libby?! ;)

So concludes the LA trip recap. I feel so lame for all this time going by but I really wanted to wait for Gail's pictures. It's been hectic ever since.

To a more active June! :)

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jillianc |