Since the Renwick Gallery reopened in 2015, it has made itself the museum to see for instagrammable pictures and by doing so with such amazing exhibits their visitor numbers have skyrocketed! Don’t expect any paintings on the wall, this place has very interesting art exhibits that attract people who otherwise aren’t interested in art. The museum is always crowded! I love visiting to see their impressive art exhibits.

With all the rainy weekends we had last month I found a lot of indoor activities to keep me busy. You might have seen on the news that the Obama's official portraits were unveiled and now on display at the Portrait Gallery.  On the second floor of the museum is the "America's Presidents" exhibition which just reopened last fall with portrait paintings of all the Presidents. The line was so long to see Obama's portrait they had to move his portrait to the third floor. The line is to have your picture taken with his portrait, but if you don't want that, you can do a quick walk by picture like I did. The guards don't allow you to stop! lol There's a separate line for Michelle's portrait on the first level.

December has been such a busy month for me I thought I'd highlight what I've been up to as an expression of gratitude to celebrate the positive things in my life. December can be a month of reflection so I'm also busy working on my goals for next year, stay tuned for that post. Here's how I experienced the sparkle of the season in our Nations Capital.

1. Wharf Christmas Boats and Fireworks
The new Southwest Waterfront has opened up and they had their annual parade of private boats decorated with lights for Christmas.  I have two friends that live in SW so we went to one's apartment who had a view of the parade and we sipped wine on her balcony. Then we walked down to the wharf to watch the fireworks up close. Afterwards we went to the other's apartment for a homemade Thai dinner and boozy milkshakes.

2. Last Spanish class
I took spanish all throughout school and even spent a couple summers in immersion classes in Mexico and Venezuela. But it's been many years since I've used my Spanish and after my trip to Cuba  I wanted a refresher. I signed up for a weekly class after work with other students my age. We had a fun teacher from Peru who did stand up comedy in his spare time. I definitely felt a lot of my spanish skills coming back and want to take another class next year.

3. Zoolights
My friend told me she wanted to go see the lights she saw on my blog in my Favorite Christmas Activities post. Seeing zoolights has been an annual tradition of mine. The zoo is lit up at night with beautiful LED lights that transform it into a winter wonderland and it's free! I met up with some friends for drinks before heading into the zoo. As per usual, someone always gets lost. You take one picture, turn around and everyone is gone because it's so dark out! lol


4. Office Christmas Party
On the first snow day of the season, our party was held in a hotel on the SW Wharf. I wore an emerald floral lace, floor length gown not realizing when I ordered it online that the back was open and the front was sheer. But I still thought it was feminine and I got a lot of compliments on it. We drank pomegranate Moscow mules and listened to the band while watching people dance.

5. Bookclub
I've been apart of this bookclub for a few years now, but this year I've really gone consistently every month. We only read personal development books and this month's selection was The Big Leap. This group of supportive women creates a no judgement zone as we work on building ourselves up.

6. Christmas Pop-up Bar
Back for it's third year, the Christmas themed bar is back with hours long lines around the block. I was lucky to go early and walk right in! It has five themed rooms, including a gingerbread house, an antique sleigh from the 1800s and a Beyonce mural. The drink menu has names from holiday movies with garnishes like cookie dough or popcorn. The bartenders are all wearing Christmas sweaters. While we were there two police officers walked in so naturally everyone turned around to see what's going on, but they pulled out their phones and started taking pictures! lol So we all started laughing at them and then they realized they looked out of place doing that. lol


7. Flywheel party
I've been going pretty consistently every month to Flywheel, it's an indoor cycling workout made by a former owner of SoulCycle. I'll write a post soon explaining why I like one over the other. The invite read:

Come for class, stay for the party! We’re celebrating the holiday season with food, drinks, and festivities. Enjoy complimentary braids and makeup services, a sommelier-hosted wine tasting, food from Beefsteak, Nosh Bar and Vegetable+Butcher, and chances to win fun prizes!

8. Microwave
Keeping things real I wanted to share one frustrating thing I dealt with. In November my over the range microwave of 10 years died. I'm a meal planner, cooking all my meals on Sunday for the whole week. So I use my microwave a lot to heat up food. So being without a microwave for a month was a huge inconvenience.

The hardest thing was finding a replacement microwave with a curved door handle that would match my other kitchen appliances and cabinets. You can see my kitchen in this video. I thought I'd wait a couple weeks for a black Friday sale, nope not on microwaves. So that was wasted time without a microwave. Then I ordered one only to have shipment delayed, then when it came I didn't open the box because the microwave weighed 50 lbs. I thought I'd wait until the guys come to install it later in the week. Why the microwave comes separately from installation was another question I had.  When the box was finally opened the microwave was white, not stainless steel. Calling Best Buy to fix this was a one hour phone call of being transferred around and put on hold repeatedly. A week later my next microwave arrived, but no one picked up the old one. Had to call again. It was a huge hassle that is finally over!

9. Yards Park - Light Yards
There's a new amazing fast casual Indian restaurant I wanted to check out in Yards Park, and while there also got some boozy eggnog ice cream, then we went to check out  Light Yards. The interactive light installation on the waterfront has four spherical globes, ranging in size from 8 to 22 feet in diameter that light up in the dark, play music, change colors and show moving scenes.


















10. Artechouse
It's an interactive digital art gallery with rotating exhibitions every 5 weeks of large scale installations. It was definitely an experience I've never had before as it's a completely new concept to the art scene here. This magical space brings sensory activation with its vividly colored installations. I saw Kingdom of Colors which is a collaboration between multiple artists who used a macro lens to blow up the liquids in motion interacting with one another to a musical soundtrack playing in the background. There were also two additional augmented reality rooms where you could interact with projection art.  It was a beautiful experience. Right now they have a Nutcracker exhibition on display.



11. Georgetown Glow
This is the fourth year Georgetown has displayed outdoor public art installations. I saw it last year for the first time and this year it's completely different! Below is just one of the installations, it's  chromatic rings light up only if you step on them, like in Michael Jackson's Billie Jean video. Before the kids started running around behind me the whole thing was blue.



12. City Center Igloo
Up for one weekend only, the real life ice igloo was so popular it had hour long lines for it. Unfortunately that weekend wasn't quite cold enough and it melted too quickly. But still a pretty cool experience!

13. Capitol & White House Christmas Trees


14. Neighborhood Christmas Light Display



DC has very few houses that decorate like on the tv show  The Great Christmas Light Fight, maybe that's more in suburbia? So it's a treat to see this one house that goes all out every year.

15. Movies
I saw the dark comedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri starring Woody Harrelson. The story line is that after months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at the town's chief of police. I love watching Dateline's murder mysteries so this was right up my alley. My friends and I saw it at a theater with reclining seats so that was so nice!

16. Botanical Gardens
In December the U.S. Botanic Garden has on display model trains, various kinds of poinsettia in lots of colors and incredible replicas of Washington, DC's most famous buildings and monuments. It stays open until 8:00 pm for concerts on Tuesdays and Thursdays in December. It's free and open on Christmas Eve and Day.


17. Sephora Makeover 
If you're a VIB member you get one free makeover a year. I asked for one with all Hourglass products as I'm new to the line. I love the Ambient Lighting Powder! It gives your skin a beautiful glow while looking matte. It makes your skin look flawless. If you do the math, the mini size is not worth the price. Here's my recommendations on what to do buy at Sephora.



18. Red Nails for the holidays
My mom and I had a mani date. I got dip nails and she got her second gel manicure which she is loving how long they last.


19. Christmas Eve/Day
We had a low key holiday just hanging out at home watching Christmas concerts on TV. My contributions to the meals were a Cranberry Orange Bread  and Cranberry Walnut Baked Brie.



20. NYE Party - Got a pretty red lace dress to wear to my friend's party along with a disco ball sipper cup.
It truly is the most magical time of the year! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas surrounded by family! Happy New Year!

After 3 years of renovation The National Gallery if Art reopened last fall with 12,250 more square feet for art. The National Gallery is a treasure trove of great art and just celebrated its 75th anniversary. Note it's not a part of the Smithsonian. My mom used to take me here a lot as a child, but this was my first visit in many years. She enjoyed watching all the films they show - classic and contemporary cinema from around the world. Be sure to reserve a lot of time for your visit to enjoy everything as there's so much to see. The new space includes the roof terrace, an outdoor sculpture terrace overlooking Pennsylvania Ave. On the roof is an eye-catcher giant 14.5 foot tall sculpture, an electric cobalt blue "Hahn/Cock" on loan on from the Glenstone Museum.

Step 1: I went outside and used Krylon's copper foil metallic to do a base layer on my bottles. I did this so that in case the glitter doesn't coat evenly or if it sheds at some point, that background color will show through instead of the bottle itself.


I week later I had a snow day on Saturday and got very productive at home since I had a touch of cabin fever and continued on my fun DIY project. You can cover your bottle with just one color of glitter or do a multi color ombre.

Step 3: Shake up your spray adhesive and spray your bottle in sections according to how many colors you're using. I started spraying the top third of the bottle, keeping clear of the cork because you need it as a handle.

Step 4: While rotating the bottle, sprinkle glitter over it. Give the bottle a little shake to shed any excess. Then repeat, spraying sections with a tiny overlap as you continue to shake your progressive shades all over that bottle.

Step 5: The final step is to seal the glitter on the bottle so it doesn't shed later. I did two layers with 10 minutes drying time in between. The Modge Podge acrylic spray is non-yellowing and doesn't dull the sparkle and shine.

Voila you're done!

Shoes to Shiraz | Two Teens and their Mama | A Lovely Little Wardrobe | R Squared  Confessions of a Frumpy Mommy | Family Love Inspiration Education   The Mishaps and Mayhem of Solitary Life | The Blondissima | Positively Learning | Quilty Joy Joy  Daily Style Finds | Making The Most of Everyday | Puppies and Pretties | She Thought She Could   Foxy's Domestic Side | Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After | Sprinkled Just Right

I'm celebrating one year of having this blog!!! Unlike my other 4 blogs I actually stuck with this one, posting almost daily for a year (259 posts to date). I've joined a fantastic community of local blogging ladies. It's been a year that I've enjoyed sharing with you the things I love and that inspire me, nutrition info, recipes, fashionable clothes, and my DIY. So a huge thank you to all of you to all those who just take the time to read the things I share on the internet. For a blogger the best gift is the sweet comments that you post to my blog. Your comments make me smile every day and I really appreciate it!

If you want to see my top posts check out my recap posts. But I'd say the best part of last year was all the Personal Development I did. I also want to recommend the site Happy Rambles as a great way to maintain a daily gratitude journal for yourself, it's a fantastic way to attract more positive things into your life.

Do you have a zillion bookmarked blogs but it's so long you don't bother to go through the hassle of scrolling through them because you can't remember what most of them are for anyways? The easiest way to keep up with your favorite blogs is to use Bloglovin.  It's like pinterest but for blogs! You'll get a daily email with a summary of all the new posts from the blogs that you follow so you never miss anything! Bloglovin makes reading blogs fun and easy! It's takes 30 seconds to sign up, it's easy, no ads, there's no catch. There's even a free App for iphones. So be sure to subscribe to my blog so you never miss a post!




I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend! I had a little blog anniversary celebration dinner with my friends, went out dancing, took another painting class, and am now heading out to brunch.

Purple Lake

I got a new job and with it comes an iphone, hadn't planning on making the switch. But I've been looking at cases and can't decide? I just don't know how I'm supposed to commit to one case for a year or more? I know I'll get tired of looking at it! lol I want variety like my wardrobe. Maybe I should subscribe to a case of the month subscription box? Which is your favorite?



I think I would smile everytime I look at this. Do you remember what this is from?


This could be my going out at night case, when I want an elegant look.