bela's birthday bash

before bela dashes off to paris (uh, lucky girl!!) for her christmas holiday we took a quick trip to pittsburgh, pa to go to green forest cafe. green forest is a brazilian churrascaria restaurant.

there was beautiful brazilian jewelry for sale at green forest.
the servers bring around tons of meat: beef ribs, short ribs, chicken, flank steak, lamb, picanha (the best one!), picanha with garlic, pork loin, pork ribs, prime rib, rib eye steak, sausage, skirt steak, top sirloin, turkey, filet with bacon and finally lamb chops. whew, that's a lot of meat!!
as long as the spool is turned on green servers will keep coming around with meat after meat after meat selection. turn it to red and you can catch up eating all of the other buffet items that are plentiful.
below is bela, ryan and matt grinning from ear to ear with very full bellies.
ryan, matt and myself (notice the bottle of leblon cachaca keeps traveling around the table!)
we had such an amazing time eating tons of delicious food and enjoying each others company. be sure to check out bela's blog for more pics.

i heart moop

my nerdy boyfriend and his friend were planning on going to the comicon in pittsburgh and they invited me along. while i love my nerdy boyfriend, comics aren't exactly my thing. so i debated for a while about going and finally i said yes. yes to pittsburgh, no to the comicon. i had other plans for my day in pittsburgh. i was going to moop!!
moop is a husband and wife owned company that hand makes bags for women, men and children. they truly have a bag for every need and every budget. when visiting moop i talked to wendy downs, the wife of the operation, about the bags and a little bit about the process of their business. wendy was incredibly sweet and kind. she showed me around and let me take pictures. i had a fantastic time!
moop has been getting a lot of blog coverage lately and i'm glad to join in that crowd. joanne goddard of a cup of joe did a moop giveaway recently. of course i entered but so didn't over 1500 other people! naturally nina also did a post recently about her obsession for bags and put up the moop market bag. there are even more examples here, here, and here.
you can learn more about the moop handmade process by visiting their website or the moop blog. and finally, here are the beauties i took home with me... the organic market bag and the clutch. i heart moop!

my first ever bikram yoga experience

today my dear, sweet friend lela and i got up at 6 am to go to pittsburgh, pa to go to a bikram yoga class. lela had done bikram and knew what to expect. i did not...

well, i KNEW what to expect. i read up on bikram yoga and knew that it was going to be HOT but i didn't realize it would be THAT HOT!! unfortunately i don't deal well with heat. and temperatures that go from 105-110 degrees is a little too hot for me :(

i regret to say that i didn't make it through the full hour and a half but i did make it through an hour and 10 minutes. at that point i had pushed my boundaries but i had to respect my limit and i knew that i was at my limit. just laying there in the heat didn't seem to help too much at which point i apologized and left the room (before i passed out). i wish i could have made it through the whole class and maybe one day i will.

as much as the heat was torture for me, i am stubborn and will therefore probably try bikram again at another time.

photo by moi

happy birthday rebecca!!!

yesterday was my dear friend rebecca's birthday. saturday we met in pittsburgh, pa to hang out and celebrate. we met at p.f. changs at the waterfront in homestead, pa. after a lovely dinner, i convinced rebecca to let me take a picture of her kissing the horse's ass outside of the restaurant. thank you for letting me take my ridiculous picture and for letting me post it. :)

after dinner we walked around the waterfront shops and stopped in the venetian salon & spa for a mani/pedi for the birthday girl. this was my present to her. i didn't have enough money to get one myself but my dear boyfriend ryan got me one as well. so, we got to sit beside each other while getting our pedicures. it was heavenly!!

after our mani/pedi treatments, we decided to watch a movie, birthday girl's choice. she decided on monsters vs aliens in 3-d imax. i have seen 3-d movies before and i have seen movies on the imax screen, but the combination was killer! AND the movie was absolutely adorable.

all in all, we had a fantastic evening. too bad it went by so quickly.

happy birthday rebecca, i hope that you get everything you want, not only for your birthday, but in life!! you are my girl and i love ya!!