Austin - Café Con Monica

2018 in Review

December 31, 2018

I’ve had years where doing a review is a hard painful process and leaving it behind is something I can’t wait to do. I’ve had years where I don’t want the year to end. 2018 was a good year for me. Not amazing, not bad but a good year.

I traveled….I started the year in Orlando, visited Austin for the first time in April, went on a Cruise in June (Honduras, Belize, & Mexico), went to San Antonio & Dallas since moving
Quit the job I had been at for 5 years in July
Moved to Austin in August and started a new job 3 days later
Hosted my first Meetup in Austin in September!
Flew back to Chicago for a Wedding in October & K visited me!
Flew back to Chicago for Thanksgiving in November
Had my first Austin Christmas with AJS this month & flew home again
Started the Girly Book Club chapter in Austin this month

My goal for the past 4 years has been to do what makes me happy and I feel like I have done that so it was a successful year in my book.

It is easy to highlight the great right? No one has a perfect year, I had struggles with medical issues that plagued me for half the year culminating in a surgery in July that I did not properly allow myself to recover from because I had family visiting and needed to fly to Austin for a job interview. Or how hard it is to get settled into a new place and move in with a boyfriend you haven’t lived with yet at the same time. Or how much I miss my family.

I don’t like the word “Resolution” for some reason when I use it I fail hard and I feel crap about it. So I have a goal and I make smaller more attainable goals throughout the year and this helps me to feel accomplished by the end of the year. I plan to post more about my goals over the next couple days too!

All that being said I looked back at some photos from the year because I take A TON of photos and I wanted to share a few of my favorites!

These are my happy moments of 2018. Of course…this doesn’t include these 1000+ photos of food I took this year…food makes me happy too.

How was your 2018??

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Christmas Recap

December 26, 2018

Welcome back to real life…well unless you work in education too and you are still on winter break. Yay Winter Break!! Anyway I thought I’d do a little recap of our first Austin Christmas!

Since AJS works Christmas Eve and we know basically one other person here I didn’t want to leave him alone for the holiday. I opted to fly back home on the 26th and do a makeup Christmas with the family.

Traditionally Christmas Eve or Nochebuena is a big deal in my family, much more so than Christmas Day. We have a big get together, dinner, and exchange gifts on that night. We have been known to attend church services but not as much anymore. AJS works on Christmas eve then visits his mom, and usually visits his dad on Christmas day.

I wanted to make us a nice dinner on Christmas Eve even though we agreed to open gifts on Christmas day. I did request that we go see a movie in our PJs since that is usually what I do with my family.

I decided to make a ham, some congri and platanos for dinner on Xmas Eve and even put on some makeup and a dress even though it was just the two of us.

We watched Die Hard and then went to bed in hopes that Santa would come overnight.

Christmas Day

We woke up pretty early (anything before 10 am is early while I’m on break), made some coffee and opened our Santa gifts! Clearly Santa gets me since I got some new luggage I had been eyeing from DesignLoveFest for Target.

AJS was pretty excited to get a batman blanket he can use on the couch (since we like to keep it a cool 65-67 in the apartment at all times)

Then we watched A Christmas Story and he made some yummy brunch of lactose free biscuits and gravy and cranberry jalapeno candied bacon!

I took a much needed nap…

And then we went off to Alamo Drafthouse to the Elf Movie Encore. It was our first movie party so we were excited to find props, singing along and general silliness like a balloon snowball fight.

Overall it was a great two days! I am so happy that we got to share our first Austin Christmas together and I am very excited to see my family today!

How was your Christmas? Do you celebrate on on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?

Top 5 Holiday Things – Austin

December 13, 2018

There are always a 101 things going on during the holidays that we hope we can get to but I like to try and pick a top 5 and make plans to do those.
I was always great at this in Chicago…speaking of I should probably make one for Chicago too.

Since I love all Holiday things, this is our first Austin Christmas and AJS will do whatever I plan for us I thought I’d share 5 great Austin holiday things to do!

A Christmas Carol @ Zach Theatre

I promise you that this is unlike any other A Christmas Carol that you have ever seen! Most obvious is that it is a musical and they use contemporary music (think Bruno Mars).
It is really an exciting update while still following the original story!

Mozart’s Coffee- Christmas Lights Show

This coffee “shop” is huge, right on the lake and both indoor/outdoor. They decorate with tons of lights and you can grab a hot chocolate, one of their delicious brownies and watch the light show to some music. They even have a piano player some nights.

Trail of Lights

We are going this weekend so I couldn’t use a photo of my own yet but we are so excited to check it out! They have a movie night, a fun run, food trucks (because Austin) and 2 million lights with free admission Mon-Weds the two weeks leading up to Xmas too!

Visit a Holiday Bar – Miracle on 5th St

Sometimes you want to do Holiday things that aren’t as family friendly so that you can be be merry and avoid strollers. In that case I always go for the pop up holiday bars! They had a great Holiday themed menu and a Santa throne for photos.

Ice Skating (Whole Foods or Winter Wonderland)

Luckily it really hasn’t gotten cold enough to be miserable outside yet. Of course, I say this coming from Chicago so while everyone here is freezing I am still doing just fine. Since there is no snow or super cold temps here yet I think that Ice Skating is a great holiday season activity! The whole foods on Lamar has a super cute outdoor rink upstairs and the Winter Wonderland has lights, rides, and ice skating!

There are plenty of other ideas and things to do depending what you are looking for and your tolerance for chilly weather but these are some I think are a great start for a first Christmas in Austin!