A Few of My Favorite Things in Brooklyn (Part I)

A lot of people have been curious about our apartment and neighborhood in Brooklyn, so here are a few of my favorite things inside and outside of our apartment in Williamsburg.  (Note, I promise to post pictures of our transformed apartment, but I am too much of a perfectionist to do that before I have everything the way I want it....so it will probably be a few more weeks)

A few of my favorite things:

Because we could not get to our everyday dishes for quite sometime, we used our fine china cups and saucers for several weeks.  It was fun to be in the middle of boxes and complete disarray and drinking my much needed morning coffee out of our fine china that I love so much. 

Have you ever used this soap before?  It smells so wonderful!  I knew my friends Emmaline and Katherine used it, so when I saw it in every store we went into up here, I decided that I would try it out.  Now, I will never go back.  It is worth the extra couple of dollars to have the fragrance of geranium and lemon verbena everytime I wash my hands or wash the dishes.  And since there is no such thing as a dishwasher up here, I need something to encourage me to wash dishes!  If you have never had the pleasure of smelling the sweet aroma of Mrs. Meyers Clean Day Geranium soap (my favorite), I would encourage you to go to your local Target and get it quickly.  No thank you's are needed; just consider it a gift from me to you. :)

I literally stood on our bed so that you could get a good picture of just how big and useful this $2.99 Ikea bag is.  I have used this bag for EVERYTHING!  I have quickly learned that when grocery shopping, it is better to have everything in one big bag that I can carry on my shoulder versus four little bags that I carry with my hands.  And it is better to carry your clothes to the laundry mat four blocks away in the Ikea bag versus carrying them in the laundry basket that will make your out of shape arm muscles hurt the next day.  I mean seriously, it carries so much and then when I get home and don't want it cluttering up our room, I just fold it down and put it away in a drawer or box or cooler or whatever is sitting around at the time.  By far the best deal I have seen since we came to the city!

Le Barricou is probably my favorite restaurant in Williamsburg.  As we discover new places, it may slide out of first place, but I doubt it will ever fall too far.  It is a wonderful French restaurant about a ten minute walk from our house.  Mitch has been going there for a while throughout his various stints in Williamsburg, but my first taste was  last summer when I came up to visit him during his internship.  It is everything you want in a restaurant: quaint, nicely decorated, helpful wait staff, reasonable prices (for New York) and delicious food!  We love their brunch on the weekends; they give you these delicious croissants that make me feel like I am back in Paris.  And we love their dinner; pretty much we love it anytime of day.  If you are in the area, I highly recommend you make it here; you won't regret it!

Last and certainly not least, MY MOM!  Sorry Mom for the blurry picture, I had to take it off of Facebook.  She came up a week after we moved in to help us get settled, and she was a lifesaver.  She came ready to help, and help is what we needed.  Boxes were everywhere and she had a mission to unpack as many as we possibly could.  She was great because all I needed to do was give her a project and she would take the reigns and go!  She lined kitchen cabinets, she organized kitchen cabinets, she helped us decorate the living room, she helped us pick out our rugs and she spent about two hours at Target helping me buy everything under the sun.  She was a trooper and sweetly dealt with my indecisiveness.  Do you ever wonder how mom's seem to know everything?  She threw out so many nuggets of knowledge that never would have even crossed my mind.  Thanks Mom for being so wonderful and for helping us out when we needed someone to come in and just do!

Mitch has some favorite things that he wants to talk about, so be looking for that this weekend.  And his tend to be more outside of the house, so you will get to see a little bit of our neighborhood!