Happy New Year!  I hope you celebrated the end of one year and the beginning of the next with loved ones, good food, and lots of laughter.  We sure did!  More on that in a minute.

I was hoping to start the week with a new post, but luck would have it that the blog went down right after Christmas and didn’t go back up until yesterday.  I decided to switch hosts at the end of the year but didn’t take all the right steps to ensure a smooth transition (oops!).  All in all, it was a kind of expensive error that resulted in some downtime.  Lesson learned!

Anyways, before I delve head first into 2017, I want to reflect on the very end of 2016, specifically our trip to Hawaii and our time in Atlanta.  I’m going to start with Atlanta first because the Hawaii posts are going to take some time to write.  So much to share!

As I mentioned in my last post, I flew to Atlanta last Tuesday (Vishnu joined me on Thursday night) to spend some time with my parents.  Overall, we had so much fun cooking and eating delicious food (let’s be real – my mom did most of the cooking and I did most of the eating!), shopping, etc. Vishnu and I also got to spend some time with his brother and his parents which is always nice.  We spent NYE with Roshni/Samir, Naveen/Shaylee, and a few other new friends.  Honestly, it was the perfect way to ring in the new year – new to us restaurant with delicious food, great friends, LOTS of laughter…what more could one ask for!

I didn’t take too many pics for the blog, but here are a few to showcase all the fun…

Gel manicure - Atlanta

I started my trip with a stop at the nail salon where I got a MUCH needed pedicure and manicure.  No clue what the color on my hands is (I only know it by #44A), but the color on my toes is OPI ‘Liv” in the Gray.

Indian sweets for pooja

I helped my mom make a number of different Indian sweets for a pooja (religious ceremony) her and my dad hosted at the house on Friday.  The pooja was fantastic and very inspiring.  A great way to end the year!

New Years Eve at Cooks & Soliders

The 2016 NYE gang!

Yorkie

We also got to spend time with this cutie, my brother-in-law’s girlfriend’s dog!  I LOVE HER!

Green Enchiladas

My mom made a couple of trays of her famous green enchiladas while I was at home.  She also sent me home with tortillas, the sauces, and a recipe for the filling, all so I could recreate her masterpiece for my sister, BIL, and Vishnu.  And recreate I did!  SO DELICIOUS!

Vishnu and I arrived back in Chicago on the 1st.  And thankfully, we had a ‘free’ day since we didn’t start work until the 3rd.  We organized the apartment a bit, did laundry, went grocery shopping, etc. before the work week officially started.  I’m now convinced that we need to schedule in a buffer day after every vacation.  It helps SO much!

I’ve been reading so many posts and messages about people’s ambitious plans/goals for 2017.  It’s super inspiring on the one hand, however, for the first time in a long time, I’m taking the opposite approach.  I definitely have things I want to focus on this year, but instead of jumping into the deep end, I’m taking it ‘one day at a time.’  Anything, not everything is my 2017 mantra! We do have an entire year after all!  More on this in upcoming posts.

Well, with that, I hope your year is off to an awesome start!

By Parita

3 thoughts on “End of 2016 + Hello 2017”
  1. Happy New Year Par! I still can’t wait to see your posts about Hawaii. you’re more dedicated than I am on that on front LOL. I started to write a post about what we did, but it just got exhausting for me. I’m, instead, working on editing the GoPro videos and adding music so I can post those instead. Whoops! I saw your pics throughout the holiday and it looked like you were having a great time! Hope 2017 shines for you! <3 🙂

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