Cold Weather Necessities

As a disclaimer, this post is not about how to be fashionable-only how to stay warm. Moving back East from California three years ago was a hard transition. The three years I lived in San Diego were sun-filled and made me forget about Northeast winters. I wasn't so much shocked by the cold weather, because Philadelphia is much warmer than my Massachusetts childhood, but the city life threw me for a loop. In Western Mass, I always had a car to jump in, and never needed to walk outside for long periods of time. In the city you are stuck outside no matter the weather, and I realized quickly I would need lots of gear to make my commute less miserable. Five items above will save your life if you have a cold winter in the city ahead.

1. I look terrible in hats and have yet to find one that looks good on me. The above headband was purchased when I first made the move to Philly, and it has carried me through each winter. I find that as long as my ears are warm, I'm happy. 

2. This jacket is anything but fashionable, but I'm so warm when I wear it I couldn't care less. My sister recommended I get this jacket after wearing it for 10 winters in NYC, and I'm glad I took her advice. It looks like a sleeping bag, but once you zip in it's impenetrable. 

3. I'm not great at tying scarfs, and before I found circle scarfs I would always halfhazhardly toss the ends around my neck and hope they didn't drag in a puddle somewhere. Circle scarfs are easy to wear and extremely cozy.

4. Convertible gloves are my #1 necessity for the commute. When I wear mittens it makes it impossible to grab my Metro pass or check my phone or really do anything with my fingers. Ultimately I was taking my mittens on and off so much, that I ended up losing too many single mittens to count. 

5. Knee socks under my jeans keep me so much warmer, and I love how soft JCrew's are. Of course if money were no object, I would probably just stick to cashmere socks. Could you imagine an entire outfit of cashmere? I would take that over George Costanza's fantasy of head to toe velvet any day.

The Calm Before the Storm

I had zero plans this weekend and instead spent time relaxing, baking and enjoying the glorious weather. We also did a little shopping to take advantage of the Veteran's Day sales and found Chase 2 suits for his upcoming Residency interviews. (I sneakily took this picture so I could text for a second opinion! Am I the only girl who knows absolutely nothing about how suits are supposed to look? They all looked exactly the same to me...)

October was spent planning travel for the interview season, and now that November is here we both finally acknowledged just how much travel he will have in the next 3 months. He has already gone on 2 interviews, and has another on Thursday, but the following week things are going to really pick up. I doubt there will be any weekends involving pie, wine and documentaries until January ends. Out of 22 offers, he settled on 17 different programs to interview at, and I can barely wait to find out where we end up!

Philly Food Tour!

Our amazing friends, Lisa and Chris, sent us tickets as an Anniversary present for a food tour here in Philadelphia. It must be extremely popular because we only managed to reserve our spots three months later! I was really surprised to see that most of the people on the tour actually lived in Philadelphia. Each restaurant on the tour is locally owned and tends to serve typical Philadelphia fare. 

The tour began at a famous Italian pizza place where we had tomato pie (thick crust, room temperature tomatoes and garlic). The old woman behind the counter made sure we saw all the celebrity signs hanging on her wall, but as a disclaimer she wanted us to realize that while all the celebrities shown had "tried her product" they had not all actually stepped foot in the restaurant. 

The guide also took us through some Philadelphia streets we might not have ventured on and a couple of historical parks. It was a tad cold out, but it broke up all the eating.

We of course ate cheesesteaks at a local Philadelphia Deli :)

The guide brought us pretzels (the soft kind!) to eat in "Pretzel Park" and we also stopped for authentic roast beef sandwiches in another Italian shop. I gave my sandwich to Chase, but he let me eat his canoli. Yum.

My favorite stop was a local cafe selling La Colombe coffee, which I've developed a weak spot for since moving to Philly. Out of all the places on the tour, I'm most likely to return to that cute little spot.

The last place on the list was an all-natural bakery. We ate the MOST DELICIOUS red velvet cupcakes. I gently nudged Chase into understanding how wonderful it would be to have a cake from there on my birthday. Hopefully he takes the bait.