My Favorite Trader Joe's Products

If you know me at all, you know Trader Joe's is my JAM! I could literally spend hours in there, browsing through all 3 (I know, it's a HUGE store!) aisles the store has. They're always getting new, seasonal items. There is only one staple I prefer to get at the regular grocery store, lunch meat. Other than that, their selection is healthier, fresher, and cheaper, believe it or not. 

So without further ado, I present to you my favorite Trader Joe's products at the moment! 

I'll start with Ryan's favorite Trader Joe's product- their Hickory BBQ Potato Chips. As far as potato chips go, these are pretty dang good and are a bit healthier than average BBQ chips.

Ever since our trip to Maine, I have had major blueberry cravings! I make a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and this organic blueberry jam has a ton of flavor but with less sugar than most jams! YUM!

These Sweet Potato Tots can be found in the frozen section and are seriously delicious! They're probably not healthiest, but we can't be healthy all the time, right? Or is that just me?

This 'spearean risotto is also found in the frozen section and makes a great side dish! The risotto has real asparagus chopped up throughout and is cheesy and delicious!!

They're individually frozen chicken is AWESOME for a family of two! You can defrost however many you want for many different recipes. The chicken is all-natural, with no MSG or preservatives!

Don't even get me started on their pizza dough! They have all sorts of flavors of dough, from whole wheat to garlic/oregano and they bake so well! I used this dough to make a buffalo chicken calzone dish that was AWESOME!

Their sausage is in my cart every week. They grill so well and are very reasonably priced! They have lots of different flavors but our favorite is the sweet italian sausage!

I bought their Breaded Cod Fillets after sampling them while shopping around the store. Our TJ's always has something out to sample. I took one bite and immediately threw the box in my cart, along with their tartar sauce. This makes an awesome main dish for a quick weeknight dinner! 

AND LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST- TJ's Speculoos Cookie Butter. If you've never had this, you're seriously missing out! It is delicious as a spread or just by the spoonful. In fact, I think I need some right now!


There you have it! Let me know if you try any of these for the first time!!

What's your favorite TJ's product?!

-Sarah 

Farmers Market Success and Weekend Ramblings

Happy HOT HOT HOT Monday! If I didn't know any better, I'd think we were right back in good ole Georgia! It's 94 degrees out right now! 

Last Saturday and Sunday were jam-packed with fun, low-key events and I loved every minute of it! It's officially Farmers Market season in New England and every town up here seems to have their own Farmers Market filled with locally grown fruits and veggies and even meat! We started our day Saturday with a trip to the Hingham Market, located right on the harbor! 

The market had about 25 booths selling a wide assortment of things! The coolest thing about this market, to me, was the fact that vendors were selling fresh, wild-caught seafood from the cape, as well as local, all natural, pasture raised beef!

River Rock Farm tent selling Dry-Aged Beef! 

 We took a loop around the market before making any purchases to scope out the best deals! Since it's early in the season up here, there weren't many fruits and veggies available yet, so we only snagged some zucchini and cucumbers! We also couldn't pass up the opportunity to grill up some pasture raised, dry-aged beef, so we bought a little over a pound of London Broil, which we're cooking up tonight!

After we left the market, we made a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up some things for our lunch with Jon, Candice, and their two adorable children! Jon and Candice came over to our place for lunch and then, since the day was beautiful, we all headed down to the pool to relax and teach their daughter Brooke a thing or two about swimming!

Saturday night, Ryan and I headed out to get dinner and watch the Bruins at The Fours, a sports bar in Norwell.

The restaurant was awesome and both of our meals were delicious! Two guys from our new life group met us there to watch the game which, unfortunately, didn't end well. Womp Womp.

Sunday, after church, Ryan and I were invited over to our friends James and Rachel's house, where we were joined by Tim and Amy, and had an absolute blast grilling and hanging out! We've made such good friends through Life Community and are so fortunate to have these people in our lives!

See, I told you we had a jam-packed weekend!

Tonight, we have plans to hang out by the pool for a bit, grill up some steaks, and hopefully watch the Bruins tie the series up again! Go B's!!


-Sarah 

Flashback Friday: A February Trip to Greenville, Maine

Ya'll... IT'S FRIDAY!!! AND it's the first day of Summer!! I hope everyone has some awesome plans for the weekend! Since we traveled to Maine last weekend, we're going to keep it low-key this weekend. We have plans to check out the Weymouth Farmers Market (!!!), hang out with some awesome friends, and watch the Bruins hopefully kick butt Saturday night! 

Since it's Friday, and Maine has been on my mind lately, I decided to do my first Flashback Friday post and document our awesome first trip to Greenville, Maine last February!! As evident in the pictures, the weather was drastically different for our first visit than it was last weekend!! 

So, Ryan and I drove to Maine on February 16th (Ryan's birthday!!) bright and early in the morning! After spending some time catching up with the Potvin's, we drove out to Big Moose Mountain (the same mountain we hiked up last weekend) to ski! This was my first experience skiing, and quite possibly my last! To say the least, skiing is not something that comes easy for me. I struggled a lot, fell a lot, and flew out of my skis once! Ryan, on the other hand, was a pro and had a blast skiing on his birthday (which is all that matters)! 

The only picture I got on our skiing adventure. Judging by the smile, this was taken before we actually tried skiing! 

We were all sore and tired by the end of the day Saturday, so I believe we came home, had dinner, and drove down to the Stressfree Moose for a drink or two! 

Sunday, The Potvin's, Ryan, and I snowshoed up a different, smaller, mountain. Snowshoeing came MUCH easier to me and we had a blast trekking through quite a bit of snow on the ground and falling from the sky! 

May have bundled up a BIT too much- I was HOT! 

We hiked pretty high up, but because we went during a snow storm, visibility was pretty low. In the above picture, you can barely make out some hills behind us!

Sunday evening, we got to go snowmobiling!! This activity was by far my favorite of the trip! Snowmobiling was AWESOME. We went up and down a mountain and even went out on a very frozen Moosehead Lake for a bit!

I believe Maine received some sort of blizzard Sunday night so we stayed in. We left Monday morning with a ton of new experiences under our belt and many, many memories we will never forget! 

I hope ya'll have a great weekend!!

-Sarah 

Wedding Wednesday: Wedding Portraits

Happy Wedding Wednesday!! 

So, last week I wrote about our Ceremony. This week, there isn't going to be too much writing since Wedding Wednesday is all about our wedding portraits! 

Shortly after we chose our winter wedding date, we realized that taking daylight pictures after the ceremony might be an issue. In December, in Georgia, the sun sets around 5:45 and our ceremony wasn't starting until 5. Therefore, we had two options. We could either choose to see each other before the ceremony and get all of our portraits out of the way then or we could wait until after the ceremony and try to get as many pictures as possible outside before it got too dark. 

We debated the pros and cons to each option, but ultimately couldn't bear the thought of not having that moment where you're seeing each other for the first time that day as I walk down the aisle to Ryan. 

Although we were rushing against the sunset, Jennifer, our photographer, managed to get every picture we could have possibly wanted in the time crunch! Jennifer was a great photographer and her website can be found here. Every picture featured on this blog post and the past wedding posts was taken by her! 

Now, excuse me, while I shamelessly add way too many wedding portraits! 

Pictures taken in the yard behind the Bridal Suite: 

Isn't our bridal party just LOVELY!! 

Pictures taken in the Bridal Garden: 

The above picture was turned into our Thank You cards! The banner was purchased from an Etsy shop and the cards were printed from Walgreens and turned out awesome! 

Pictures taken at the ceremony site: 

Favorite picture taken in the barn: 

And our final picture after we lost most of our daylight and right before we were introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Smith to our guests....

I believe there were almost 200 pictures taken during this small window! I told you Jen was awesome! Although we were a bit rushed, we still had an awesome time and would definitely choose to take our pictures after the ceremony again!


Next up: The Reception a.k.a. the PARTY!!!

-Sarah 

A Spring Trip To Greenville, Maine

 Hey Ya'll! Happy Tuesday! 

Last weekend, Ryan and I drove up to Moosehead Lake in Greenville, Maine to visit with the Potvins! It's always an adventure when we head up to Maine! Our weekend was full of hikes, boat rides, great food, and some moose hunting (not actually hunting, just trying to spot them!!) 

Friday 

After work Friday, Ryan and I headed out on our supposed 5 hour drive, though driving through Boston during rush hour on a Friday added at least an hour to our overall drive. Womp Womp.

We tried not to make too many stops, but couldn't help ourselves to a few stops along the way. When we began seeing signs for a discount liquor store right off the highway, we just HAD to stop!

We got up to Greenville pretty late in the evening. We stayed up and chatted with Paul for a bit, but headed to bed fairly quickly, knowing we had a full Saturday ahead of us!

Saturday

Saturday was our only full day in Maine, so we planned to make the most of it! Breakfast was a team effort and I learned how to make ployes!!! Ployes are a mixture of Buckwheat flour, Whole Wheat flour, Baking Soda, and Salt and bake similar to pancakes! Along with the ployes, we had eggs, grapefruit,and sliced oranges.

After breakfast, we loaded up the car (dogs included) and headed to Big Moose Mountain for a 6-mile hike.

At the very beginning of our hike!! 

 The hike was pretty intense and, at times, extremely steep! Once we reached the top of the mountain, we realized the view made the hike and 2000 foot elevation gain TOTALLY worth it!!

Moosehead Lake off in the distance! 

We rested up at the top before hiking back down! Once we got to the bottom, we took a quick detour before heading out in hopes of spotting a moose! Although we didn't spot one at this time, we did see Moose tracks (no, not the ice cream!)

Ground view of the mountain we just hiked up and down! 

 All weekend, Greenville was hosting a Moose Hunting Lottery, where they were raffling off 4,000 moose hunting licenses. To accommodate the mass amounts of people coming to Greenville, there were a lot of activities and festivals being held downtown. While Connie and I walked around some of the booths and shops opened up downtown, Ryan and Paul decided to play a little tennis! It was so fun watching Ryan play again! He's still got it!

 We love to collect ornaments from every place we visit, so I picked up with awesome ornament to put on our christmas tree this year!

Saturday night, after dinner, we headed out to look for moose! While we were successful in seeing about 7 or 8 moose on the side of the road, they were much too quick for me and I was unable to get a picture! Next time!!

Around 9, we headed to the StressFree Moose to watch the Bruins play in the Stanley Cup Finals!

They ended up winning in OT!! By the time the game was over, we were all exhausted so we headed home and went to bed shortly after! 

Sunday 

Before we left on Sunday, we ventured out on the Potvin's boat and explore Moosehead Lake! 

SeaPlanes are AWESOME! 

We ended up going on another moose-spotting adventure which brought us to a cove just past the bridge in the above picture! Yes, we had to all duck to get under the bridge! Unfortunately, we didn't have any luck on this outing spotting moose!

On Moosehead Lake looking at Big Moose Mountain. Greenville is as obsessed with Moose as I am!! 

 We fished for a very short amount of time with no luck, but as we were reeling in the lines, Paul caught a small lake trout, which we took a picture of before throwing it back into the water!

Overall, we had an amazing time! Every time I visit Maine, I fall in love with it a little bit more! Thank you to the Potvin's for hosting us AGAIN! 

Friday, I will write up a post about our last visit to Maine, which was totally different than this one! Maine is DEFINITELY a state with all four seasons!! 

Hope everyone has a great night!! 

-Sarah