First things first people, I’ll have you know that none of these lists are in any particular order. As in real life, I just name the things as they come to me.

Secondly, 2013 was pretty rad. There was a new apartment to be decorated (an ongoing process) and yoga to be practiced. There was wine to be drank and a surplus of treats of every kind (I’m talking to you, red velvet petit-fours still beckoning me from the fridge). And while I love looking back, we’re already three days into the new year so we’ll keep the remembering brief – I’m ready to look ahead.

3 Favorite Meals:
1. A very impromptu date at Aria, a wine bar in the West Village. Such a cozy atmosphere, such delicious food and wine, and my favorite part? Deep conversation with my guy.
2. Dan’s surprise at-home date night! Delicious cheese, salami, olives – all of my favorite things. Surprises are the best.
3. Thanksgiving. I cooked a 12 lb. turkey that was 100% edible – even, dare I say, good? Dan and I made such a great team that day and I am so proud of us.

6 Favorite Moments of 2013:
1. Getting Gus! Our new cat is the sweetest boy any fur-parent could ever ask for. I mean, have you seen his nub-tail? Cutest. Shelter animals rule.
2. Hosting our very first Thanksgiving – we were so proud of ourselves! Not only was the meal delicious, but we made an awesome team of cooking and cleaning and actually enjoying the holiday.
3. Releasing my fear of inversions (a.k.a. how I learned to stop worrying and love having my feet in the air and my head on the ground).
4. Celebrating our one-year wedding anniversary with a romantic dinner and stroll through the West Village (plus lots of gorgeous flowers from Dan!).
5. Turning a crappy dresser found on the street into pretty, campaign-style shelving. I taught myself  how to properly sand and spray paint furniture and now it houses our DVDs as well as a few travel souvenirs.
6. Christmas Eve/Day. The holidays can be super stressful but everyone was in such a great, easygoing mood this year and we enjoyed it so much. Thank you, family!

5 Things I Learned (About Myself & Other Things):1. I really love making and growing things: fixing up furniture, creating new dishes, growing an herb garden. 2. Making compromises isn’t the same as making sacrifices. 3. One lavish treat is better than three middling ones.4. Pasta salad is better the day after you make it.5. A pet really makes a house feel like a home. 

4 Goals for 2014:
1. Seek out what’s special about living in Manhattan and celebrate it. I get easily caught up in the daily frustrations of this city (crowded trains! Constant noise! In summertime, the sidewalks smell like pee!), but there are lots of unique advantages to living here that we could never enjoy anywhere else: authentic international food, world-class museums, Broadway. I’m going to make the effort to do one special “only in New York” thing each month.
2. Try at least six new recipes that require making something completely from scratch. I’ll be using two specific cookbooks along the way: Lost Desserts by Gail Monaghan (to recreate classic desserts that are rarely found nowadays) and The Art of Italian Cooking by Maria LoPinto (because everyone is always hungry for good Italian food).
3. Be a little more glamorous. Prior to my yoga teacher training, I was the girl working out with a full face of makeup and red lips. After? You couldn’t find a stitch of makeup on my face for, oh, a year or so. I’ve found that there’s freedom in both ways: with makeup, you can be anyone you want for an entire day. Without? There’s a special kind of honesty in presenting your actual face to the world – especially as a woman. I think the true me likes to put her best foot (face?) forward, even if it’s just a little tinted moisturizer and a bit of mascara. Besides, lipstick rules.
4. Read more actual books. I have subscriptions to great literary journals (The Paris Review, Glimmer Train) and serious magazines like Harper’s (not to be confused with Harper’s Bazaar – which I also love and subscribe to but fluff doesn’t count as real reading in my book), but I miss holding a book in my hand. Send me recommendations!

3 Reasons Why I’m Looking Forward to 2014:
1. Seeing friends more. It’s really easy to allow work/school/pie-eating to get in the way of seeing buddies. But buddies are so important! Plus, you can just eat pie WITH them. See how easy that was?
2. Creating family traditions with Dan. This past year as newlyweds was a great time of figuring out what’s important to us as a family unit (even if it’s just the two of us and Gus the cat), and I can’t wait to create new holiday rituals together.
3. Taking more pictures. Both 2011 and 2012 were super photo-heavy years, so I grew a little tired of it and fell off the wagon in 2013. This might be silly, but I’m psyched to take lots of pics this year – we’re only young and fabulous once for chrissakes.

Psst! If you’re interested, here are the 2012 and 2011 Year-End Reviews. Have a great weekend!

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And although it’s been passing by with such speed that I can hardly keep up, life has been lovely lately. Here, a few snapshots of what we’ve been up to:

^^ Laundry is my favorite household chore. (My second favorite chore is grocery shopping. #gremlinfacts) The fact that our building has a washer and dryer in the basement is nothing short of a miracle. About 2/3 of these socks were still soggy when they came out, hence their time on the radiator (not gonna lie, the other third was for pure decorative purposes to fill out the photo). And if it wasn’t already obvious, the point of this picture is that we Coyles are a colorfully socked people. ^^

^^ I purchased our Christmas cards before Halloween. I am now in the process of customizing the envelopes with adorable stamps because I’m crafty like that. ^^

^^ This is me and my woof friend Rocco. I love him. He loves me a whole lot too, though you can’t tell by his face in this photo. I’ll have you know that he plopped down in my lap like that without me having to coerce him with treats. (Thanks to Brianna and Mark for saving him and being great woof parents. Shelter pups rule.) ^^

^^ Surprise cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery! These were sent by Rachel, a fan/Twitter friend of Dan’s, who lives in the U.K. and is basically a magical person. I mean, really! On top of that, she even knew of my love for all things pistachio so there’s a pistachio cupcake RIGHT THERE IN THE BOX. It’s also perfect because it continues the Thanksgiving cupcake tradition we started last year. Thank you so much, Rachel! ^^

^^ I get to do this every day. Like, for money even. (No, I don’t mean take pictures of people’s butts. I mean teach yoga. This is Child’s Pose, okay? It’s how we start class. Chill your bones.) Sometimes I can’t even believe my own luck. ^^

^^ A lovely sunset, as seen from my bedroom window. Even though I’m not a particularly religious person, I really like that there’s a little church on my street (the pointed tower you see in silhouette). It’s just so quaint and pretty, and it makes our noisy Manhattan street feel a bit more like a sleepy neighborhood in a small New England town. Just, you know, with 24/7 samba music. For funsies. ^^

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Yesterday was my first time ever as hostess, and I didn’t burn the turkey. It was not only edible, but juicy even! Plus, my apple pie is so bomb. In honor of my second-favorite holiday, here are five things I’m thankful for:

1. My amazing husband (who did all of the dishes ALL DAY LONG, like the wonderful human being that he is)
2. My wonderful family
3. My fantastic friends
4. My incredibly rewarding, fulfilling job and the awesome community that is YTTP
5. Pictures of baby animals on the internet

Okay, love you, bye!

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One of the strangest things about having a normal schedule again (“normal” meaning that I work approximately 20 hours a week at times varying from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM and anywhere in between) – really I should just say “job” – one of the strangest things about having a job again is how quickly time passes. I mean, you guys, a month has passed since my last post. YOU GUYS.

Anyway, in that time we moved to a new apartment in Manhattan that I pretend is the Upper West Side (yuppies!) but is really Washington Heights (papis!). No one who lives outside of New York will get or care about that joke and yet, I am not changing it. 

Our new place is pretty fab: it’s got the original crown molding, hardwood parquet floors, and three – count ’em – THREE huge closets, as well as a bathtub that I can legitimately lay down in. The only problem with having an apartment that is significantly larger than any place that I’ve lived in throughout my entire adult life is that we have hardly any furniture. So it looks pretty . . . sparse.

Living out of a suitcase for a year would give anyone a deep appreciation for the minimalist aesthetic (that’ll teach you to pack LIGHT, that’s for sure), but after five weeks of being here, it’s bordering on slightly unfortunate. Not to mention the corner of stacked DVDs and other assorted crap, plus the as-yet-unpacked box of frames that will remain so until I get proper prints of our wedding photos, sigh.

The biggest challenge is our living room. Essentially, we want it to be a truly multi-purpose room: appropriate for entertaining guests, for Dan as an office/workspace, for me to practice/teach yoga in, and finally, a cozy nook for reading would be nice.

I’ve been thinking that something like this Fiera Chaise would be perfect for the corner by the window – I’ve always secretly longed for a chair like this for napping, daydreaming, pretend-fainting. (“My word, this corset is simply too tight! Oh! Maeve, be a dear and fetch my smelling salts!”)

I love that it’s a fairly substantial piece of furniture, but the white sandy color keeps it light and airy – always a plus in my book. Anyone seen anything like it in the U.S.? Anyone? Bueller?

Anyway, holler at yer girl if you have thoughts, ideas, home photos to show, design expertise to share, life advice to impart…making decisions is hard work. :-/

(<< It’s hard to tell here, but I organized our bookcase by color! If you look closely, you can also see the Mexican Day of the Dead skulls we picked up from our honeymoon in Cancun. Yay for souvenirs!)

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