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In Connecticut

not allowed to go to the beach

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

December 28, 2020

Yesterday around 8:30am, we drove to Tod’s Point, a beach area we’ve been to many times. When we got there the parking guard asked us for ID with a Greenwich address on it. Since we don’t live in Greenwich we were not allowed to enter, we had to turn around. Now with covid being really bad again they have new rules. How shitty! We are all already limited in what we can enjoy these days, and one thing I really love is to go to the beaches, and now they take that away from us too. I understand that they want minimize the possible spread even outdoors, but hey, to close off an entire big park to only be used for people in certain area, that is pretty awful. Can they not just keep track on how many that enters the parking? This made me sad. 
Anyway. We saw a cute small park on our way there (we drove a different way than we usually do), so we decided to check it out just so that we and Thor could get a good walk of the day at least. 
It was -4°c outside and frosty, brrr! But the sun was warm and we had plenty of clothes on so it was actually pretty nice and refreshing. I got a new coat that I wore for the first time (all other jackets are getting too small, bumpie is getting big). Thor was cute in his outfit as well. He probably didn’t really need the sweater, he’s extremely fluffy these days, I only put it on since we were going to the beach and he doesn’t like to get too dirty.
We had a lovely morning even if it didn’t turn out the way we wanted. On our way home we ordered pick-up breakfast. J felt like eating something other than Christmas leftover hahah.
I made us a rice dish with leftover ham from Christmas for dinner. My mom used to make us this when I was a kid. Since “Mr American picky eater” doesn’t like onions I didn’t add that but I did put mushroom on half for myself to enjoy (he doesn’t eat that either). It turned out pretty amazing if I can say so myself:) At night we watched the movie ‘Hotel Mumbai’. Based on true events. I don’t recall hearing about this back in 2008.
Now it’s time for me to take Mr Fluff out for a walk. Have a nice Monday!

In Stamford

Snowstorm

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

December 17, 2020

The snowstorm didn’t turn out as bad as I thought it would. It started to snow around 4:30pm yesterday and they said it could be up to 16 inches. We got a white ground pretty quickly but it was also extremely windy so everything was mostly just blowing around. When we had gone to bed I woke up an hour later and the apartment was so noisy. It sounded like millions of icicles were hitting the windows. I got up to look at it both on first and second floor but you couldn’t actually see anything, barely even looked like it was snowing. 
This morning when I looked out it was still snowing but there wasn’t as much snow as I had expected. 
I took Thor for a walk around noon today. The snow reached up to my ankles and I wasn’t even sinking all the way down to the ground so there was definitely plenty of snow but maybe not 16 inches. Thor struggled to get through, haha, poor guy, but he had fun trying to jump forward. He also insisted on doing all his business on the snow and not on the shoveled ground even though it was difficult for him:) When we came home he had ice balls hanging on his legs and between his back legs where his other balls used to be. I had to use the hair dryer to get them to fall off him haha. 

In Stamford

back to summer for a weekend

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

November 9, 2020

Good Morning you beautiful people! How are you doing? I feel amazing! Congestion and a runny nose but other than that I feel great. This weekend we went back to summer and I love it. Temperatures of around 22°c and blue sky, how wonderful! Took Thor out in a t-shirt and the sun was so nice and warm, felt way higher than 22 degrees. Today they say will be the last warm day of the year (same temp as the weekend) so I’m gonna try to spend as much time as I can outside today. 

This weekend was more or less about shopping or spending time outside🙈 On Saturday morning we drove to Mianus park but the parking lot was full so we couldn’t go hiking. Instead we drove to a small but cute park nearby. We let Thor off leash and he had so much fun.
We dropped Mr Fluff off at home and went to costco and we might have broken our personal record on crap to buy hahaha. I had to reorganize all the cabinets when we came home in order to fit it all and some still need to go upstairs to our storage:)
In the evening we watched my favorite movie, Leon the Professional. I’ve seen it so many times I’ve lost count, haha. 

So nice to sit outside in November!

We wanted to spend Sunday on Manhattan, but after seeing a lot of footage of people celebrating out on the street practicing no social distancing, we decided not to. An Election doesn’t change a Pandemic. We are in this together, we have to stop this virus together, each and everyone of us has to do our part. Celebrate all you want but please remember that we are not done with this chapter yet. 

Instead of driving to NYC we spent some time at Target. Probably not much better, but at least we went early before everyone else decided to go there. We have a big list of things we need and since we had to return the dog costume that was too small for Thor anyway, we decided to go there. Crossed off some things, but probably have to order some stuff on amazon today as well. Just boring things like garbage bags, detergent etc. Everything weirdly always runs out at the same time. If we have to go into some sort of lockdown again (you never know) I think it’s good to start buying things that we would need for the next few months.
When J was watching a terrible Bears game, I went to our terrace to do my daily practice. The sun was gone already so I had to put more clothes on but still nice. I love doing my yoga outside. 

In Connecticut

SoNo Mall

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

October 29, 2020

This weekend J and I decided to drive to Norwalk and check out the new SoNo Mall. Malls are dying, just like shopping stores in general cause everyone is shopping online these days, so I’m not sure why they felt like building a new one, but it looked nice, seemed pretty big and promising. But there was like nothing there. Half of the building was parking space and inside the mall was mostly just empty space in between stores, the hallways of the mall I mean. But they had some stores that has been closing down in the Stamford mall (everything is dying in our city, both before and during corona). I ended up buying a cozy winter sweater and some basics at HM and two pairs of pants at Zara. The rest of the stores barely had anything in them, like Nordstrom, there was like five pieces of clothing in each corner of this enormous space. The Apple store on the other hand had multiple security guards outside the entrance checking peoples temperature and the line to go in was getting bigger and bigger by the second. The whole mall was kinda empty of people except the apple store. I guess there’s some new phone out now or something.
After a couple of hours we decided to drive down the street and go eat at Colony Pizza. There is one in Stamford and we really like it. Luckily not many people inside and we could sit alone in one corner. Restaurants have got strict rules, costumers have to keep their mask on until the food comes, for example. The pizza was sooo good. After eating we drove another few blocks down and found a super cute area with lots of restaurants with outdoor seating, small shops and art galleries. Last time we explored Norwalk we weren’t that impressed, we didn’t really understand why people talked about it so much, but now when we found this street we understood more. It started to rain so we didn’t stay long but now we know for the future:)

Sidewalk was used for restaurants and their outdoor seating
so they had blocked off for pedestrians to safely walk on the street
When we came home we went for a long walk with Mr Fluff

In Connecticut, New York, Swedish in America

Doesn’t get more FALL than this

Author Fanny SuraPosted on Leave a comment

October 12, 2020

This weekend has been absolute perfect and very fall-ish:) And today it really feels like fall since it’s raining outside and the temperatures dropped a bit. Because it is Columbus Day today (or Indigenous People’s Day), J is only working a half day. We wanted to do something fun with Thor today as well but ya, the weather isn’t exactly puppy-adventure-friendly (Thor doesn’t like the rain). We’ll see what we do, maybe watch Halloween movies and sip apple cider. 

So, this weekend:
On Saturday we drove to North Salem, NY, for a hike at Mountain Lakes Park. We’ve been there a few times before, I really like this park. We started by going up the mountain first, look at the pretty view and then hike in the forest. We barely met anyone during our 1.5 hour hike; a few bikers passed us and we saw a camouflaged  hunter with a crossbow, and that’s about it. Lots of trees were down and the trails where covered in leaves, if they hadn’t put up the markers on the trees we could have easily lost the trails. At one point we branched off to go find a different trail that led to one of the ponds. J had to carry T since we didn’t know what we were stepping on. The pond was so calm and some trees had changed colors, it looked like a painting. 
Our hike was so lovely, very quiet and peaceful. We could not have picked a better day or time of day to go hiking. 

On our way home we bough coffees and donuts and then just enjoyed the day together. At night we played Yahtzee and for once Jim won the first two rounds, but then I won with epic numbers on the third 🙂 Then it was time to watch Svengoolie and some tarantula movie. I always have a hard time watching these old movies from the 40s-60s, they usually involve animals and they aren’t treated that well in the movies and we all know that they weren’t exactly treating them very nicely behind the scenes back then either. It breaks my heart. 

On Sunday we got up early again. We drove to Easton, CT, and to Silverman’s Farm. I have been searching for pumpkin/apple farms that allows dogs. I found one but then I saw that because of covid we needed to purchase tickets and every weekend was sold out (we also didn’t want to pay). Then J told me that one of the dogs here in Stamford that we know through instagram had posted that they went to this Silverman’s, so we decided to check it out. 
We came an hour after they had opened and there were already plenty of people but still ok for us to visit. We had a great time. There were so many different kinds of pumpkins, some bigger than Thor haha. We didn’t actually buy any pumpkins though, we are not planning on carving this year. Would have been nice maybe to get some for cooking but eh. We got ourselves some yummy treats though. 
It was fun and I think Thor enjoyed it (oh the things we do for our fur babies hahah). We left the farm after 25 minutes and the parking was now full. My friend that I invited to join us couldn’t go in the morning like we wanted to, so they had gone they day before after noon and it was like an ant city she said, they had turned around and gone somewhere else. Now when they say that the virus is air born and can spread pretty far, we don’t want to put ourselves in crowded situations, so we knew we had to go early. Our experience at the farm was great. The picking (blueberries, apples, peaches etc) was over for the season but with a dog it would have pretty hard to enjoy that anyway, so this was perfect.

If we hadn’t gone to the store just a few days before we would have got more veggies and fruit at the farm
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I had to google why it’s called cider.. In Europe we think of fizzy drinks or drinks with alcohol when we hear the word cider, but here in America that’s called “hard cider” and this type of cider is basically just juice. 
The pie is amazing!

We were so tired for some reason during the rest of the day that we ended up doing absolute nothing. In the evening we watched some newer horror movie that at first seemed promising but then was just annoying, just like all the other so called horror movies. Why can’t anyone make a good scary movie these days? If you know any good movies, please comment on this post, I have yet to find something good. 

Our weekend was amazing, we could not have picked a better weekend to go on adventures with Thor. And if this is our actual last fall up north then I think we have nailed the fall activities by now hahah. 

I hope y’all had an amazing weekend as well and that you got to enjoy the outdoors.
Have an awesome week!