Hi friends, welcome back to my first What’s Up post of the year! January is always my least favorite month because it’s so dreary, cold, and all the Christmas decorations come down around the city, but this one wasn’t too bad. We escaped the cold for a fun long weekend in Rincon, Puerto Rico and it was beautiful! I didn’t go out as much or have many events this month so it was nice having a slower start to the year. The second half of 2022 felt like a sprint so I’m enjoying this chill period.
On to my post 🙂 I’ve been linking up with the first blogger I ever read, Shay Shull, for my What’s Up posts. Each month I’m answering the following questions:
What I’m eating: I’ll be sharing my first Foodie Friday of the year this week, but this month we’ve stayed in more and enjoyed cooking new recipes. We made this beef & broccoli stir fry that was delicious! I like to eat the same thing every day during the week, and lately my dinner has been little taco bowls. When I’m not eating out I like to eat very plain.
What I’m reminiscing about: four years ago we went to San Juan, Puerto Rico for a long weekend and enjoyed exploring the island. Our favorite activity in San Juan was exploring Castillo San Cristobal.
What I’m loving: planning my trip to Italy! I LOVE researching and planning our vacations and all the anticipation leading up to the trip. We were supposed to go to Italy for our honeymoon in 2020, so this trip has been years in the making. The silver lining to having had to delay this trip is that I’m a much more experienced trip planner so I can make it everything I ever dreamed of.
Favorite post of the month: Central Park Through the Seasons, the pictures are my favorite!
What I’m Up to: working on my Newport, RI series! I went down a rabbit hole learning about the famous Gilded Age mansions and their owners, so I hope you enjoy the series as much as I do 🙂
What I’m working on: we’re getting closer to having the apartment finished. It feels so empty without all the holiday decor.
What I’m excited about: we don’t have any travel plans until May, so I’m excited to be home and take it easy for a few months.
What I’m watching/reading: Abbott Elementary, Emily in Paris, Kaleidoscope (they filmed a lot of this outside our apartment), and Dead to Me. We’ve been watching Stanley Tucci’s Searching For Italy on our flights, but when we watch it at home it always freezes halfway through. We’re planning to jump on the band wagon and watch White Lotus next.
Books I read this month:
- Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reed – I was very excited to read this and it was great!
- The Love Equation by Ali Hazelwood
What I’m doing this weekend: I’m going on a Vegan food walking tour that should be interesting. Not sure it will be as delicious as the donut tour, but I always enjoy checking out new spots.
What I’m looking forward to next month: to be determined, but we will plan something fun to do for Valentine’s Day. I’m also dragging Jon to cheer on my MSU Spartans when they play at MSG next weekend 🙂
What are you looking forward to next month?
You have had a lot on the go Lyssy. Italy, as we found out in 2019, can be fabulous, especially when you get out into the smaller cities and towns. So much to see and do and the coffee, food and wine are hard to beat. That apple fritter looks humongous. What I am looking forward to in February….Valentines Day and chocolate, longer, warmer days and hopefully more certainty in our lives. Have a great Wednesday. Allan
We are very excited to eat all the pizza, pasta, and gelato and all the wine too! We will probably do all the touristy things this time, but I imagine we will make it back to Italy to explore more down the road. Chocolate, longer and warmer days, and more certainty are great things to look forward to.
My friend’s daughter goes to MSU!
I loved my time there!!
Italy – how exciting! We consider ourselves very fortunate to only be 45 minutes from the Italian border. Enjoy your planning!
Thank you! I’ve got my excel schedule up and running and about 50 tabs open on my internet with all my research 🙂
It looks like you have some fun things to look forward to in the coming months. It is nice, however, to be able to chill at home for a while and regroup. I am so looking forward to reading your posts about Italy!
The cold and the darkness make me want to hibernate. I bet there will be a lot of Italy posts 🙂
Puerto Rico looks lovely! What a great way to get away from the cold.
It’s such a beautiful island and only about a four hour flight!
Puerto Rico looks like such a paradise! I also love your photos of Central Park, so pretty!
Thank you! Puerto Rico is a beautiful place to visit, especially in winter 🙂
Oh, I bet it is a downer to go from seeing all the beautiful lights to having them all removed. January is my least favorite month too. Puerto Rico is beautiful!
The lights and trees usually stay up about a week after New Years, but then I walk out one day and it’s all empty. Puerto Rico is a great place to escape a dreary January!
That’s so exciting that you’re planning a trip to Italy!! It’s one of my favourite countries. There’s so much history, charming towns, and delicious food. You’re going to have so much fun.
I’ve been dreaming of Italy for years so it’ll be so surreal finally being there! We are very excited 🙂
Enjoy the Vegan Walking Tour. I always find vegan dishes to be quite delicious, creative and nicely presented. We enjoy planning our trips and days out, too. It’s all part of the joy of travel. I am sure that you will have an epic Italian adventure.
The Vegan walking tour was so fun! It’s amazing how far vegan food has come. I love an epic Italian adventure! Although last night I had a nightmare I made it to Italy and the gelato shop wouldn’t serve me. Hopefully that doesn’t happen ha!
Oh, I’ve always wanted to do a food tour. That vegan one sound good to me! And how fun is a trip to Italy!
Food tours are a great way to try new places and learn more about an area! We are SO excited to go to Italy 🙂
I love Italia! There are so many breathtaking sights to visit.
We are very excited to visit!
To be clear, you eat the same dinner four or five nights a week? Is it for convenience or because you actually enjoy the same meal many times over? I’m really just trying to figure out if you’ve discovered some secret to eating the rest of us should know about. If nothing else it’s a fitting contrast to your weekend gourmet experiences. As for the TV shows, we thought the third season of Emily in Paris was much better than the second. However, proceed with caution with White Lotus. The premise and the plot lines are interesting but it was unnecessarily raunchy, and in some scenes, downright disgusting. Not planning to watch Season 2 unless you and Jon make it through and say they’ve cleaned it up.
Yes, during the week if I don’t go out we eat the same thing, usually during the day too. Mostly convenience and I eat super plain so I don’t get tired of it. We like eating healthy during the week, otherwise we’d feel very gross with the weekend eats. The scenes you’re referring to in White Lotus came out of nowhere! I have heard that season 2 is better. We have one episode left of season 1.
Okay, glad it wasn’t just me with those wish-I-hadn’t-seen-it scenes from White Lotus. It’s too bad because otherwise we thought it was good. If you make it through Season 2 and would recommend it, please let me know and I’ll give it another chance.
Jon was very traumatized but I have faster reflexes to look away from things 😂 we just finished season one and should get through season 2 fast so I’ll let you know.
It’s great that you got to rest a bit this month after a hectic second-half of 2022! It seems like you have so many amazing things planned for the next few months! I’m looking forward to your posts about the mansions and I’m super excited for you to go to Italy!! 😁 Btw, I love your dress in the picture with the hydrangeas!!