Celebrating 3 years with the love of my life...

On March 15, I had the honor of celebrating my 

three year anniversary with the love of my life!

Originally, we had planned to go away that weekend and spend time skiing and enjoying each other's company but because of a dance audition, we had to cancel last minute.

Regardless, we had a wonderful night. 

We went to one of our favorite restaurants in downtown Boston, Abby Lane, and enjoyed delicious gourmet cuisine.

If you are ever in the Downtown Theater District of Boston, I highly recommend Abby Lane. Especially in the spring and summer month, I suggest sitting upstairs because they open all the windows!

Anyways, we spend the majority of our night enjoying wine and beer, talking and laughing.

Because of my crazy dance schedule lately, Brendan and I hadn't gotten a lot of time to hang out, catch up and just chat like we usually do.

He's the most understanding, flexible, supportive person I've ever met and I'm lucky to have him in my life. 

It's funny because when we hit out 1 year anniversary, I can remember thinking, "Wow, it feels more like 5 years have gone by!"

But not that it's our 3 year anniversary, I find it hilarious that now I'm thinking, "Wow, it only feels like 1 year."

The reason I say this is because it literally feels like just yesterday that I met him 6 years ago in high school. Or that it feels like just yesterday when we had our first kiss outside my house 3 years ago when we started dating.

I find it interesting that in the beginning it felt like time was going so slow and that it felt as though years and years had gone by, and now I'm looking at out relationship and I honestly can't believe it's already been three years.

It's been three years of nothing but joy, laughter, support, love, listening, affection and any other synonym I can think for any f these words.

My only wish is that more people in the world got to experience what I experience with Brendan everyday. 

I love him to the moon and back a thousand time and I always will.

Until next time,

XOXO Ines

Does drinking 64 oz. of water a day ACTUALLY work?!

Do you actually drink the daily recommended amount of water? 

I know I definitely don't! 

According to WebMD: “In general, you should try to drink between half an ounce and an ounce of water for each pound you weigh, every day."

That being said, I weigh about 122 lbs., so I should be drinking between 61-122 ounces of water everyday.

Click here to calculate how much water you should be drinking daily!

According to Authority Nutrition and the 8x8 Rule, we should drink 8 glasses of water that are 8 ounces (64 oz. total) each. That's about two liters, or half a gallon of water. 

Why, you may ask, have I been looking into this? Well, I am always dehydrated. Because I am always dehydrated I am constantly tired and get chronic headaches. When I go to sleep, I wake up al test once, and when my alarm sounds in the morning I have the absolute hardest time getting out of bed. I also lack motivation, desire and ambition to carry out simple tasks like returning phone walls or email. Not to mention lately I have been suffering from extremely dry skin, random acne breakouts and chapped itchy lips.

I've heard through the grape vine that not only can drinking the recommended amount of water daily improve all those things I suffer from above, but it can also improve other aspects of your life, such as decrease the amount of stored fat in your legs and tummy and filter more impurities out of your body.

My goal will be to go a whole week (then hopefully a whole month) drinking at least 64 ounces of water everyday.

I am looking forward to hopefully seeing some major improvements. I understand that the will take time (much more than a week or month), but I am ready for the challenge. 

It's time for me to make a valid effort to improve my health and overall well being.

If you would like to join me on my journey, or just follow along, make sure to like, comment, +1, and subscribe to my blog!

Until next time,

XOXO Ines

I quit blogging?!

Hello everyone,

You may be asking, where the heck have I been?! 

Has Ines quit blogging?!

The last time I wrote a post was on Christmas day. I decided to tackle the 25 day leading up to Christmas and challenged myself in something I called "25 days of Blogmas". Well, that consumed my entire existence and I guess you could say that up until now I've had no motivation to continue writing.

A lot has happened since then... I mean, it has literally been three months.

I am currently sitting in my living room, on my phone. I've refreshed all my social media and nothing has changed. That's when I remembered my poor blog and all of you amazing people! I've been so neglectful and with a little extra time on my hands and some sudden motivation and inspiration, I have decided to challenge myself yet again. 

But, this time I challenge myself to never go three months without blogging again.

Since I last posted on My, Myself and Ines, I have...

1. Received my degree!

2. Been given my teaching license.

3. Made the Dean's List.

4. Auditioned for my fifth year as a Boston Cannons Dancer.

5. Auditioned to be a Patriots Cheerleader for the first time.

6. Been given a pay raise at work.

7. Applied to grad school!

8. I turned 24.

9. I went on yet another Caribbean Cruise as a grad gift from Brendan <3

So far March has been the most wonderful month!

That just names a few. There's so much more that has been going on, and each of those things above have so any more details associated with them, so for now I hope to create a blog post dedicated to each of those milestones.

Anyways, I have to get ready for work. 

It's so great to be back and I'm super excited to see where this year takes me!

Until next time,

XOXO Ines

New Year's Eve | OOTN

Happy New Year Everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful transition into 2015 :-)
Let's get right into my New Year's Eve OOTN

The whole month of December I browsed numerous websites for the perfect New Year's Eve dress! I found many that I loved, but most were totally out of my price range. I wanted something full of sparkle, but not tacky.

I already own so many sparkly dresses, tops and bottoms that I think subconsciously I wasn't letting myself buy anything because I already owned so much. I couldn't justify the purchase.

After Christmas, I meant to go to the mall to see what they had but I just kept putting it off... until Dec 31st rolled around.

Oops! 

Around 2pm on New Year's Eve, I finally went downtown to the local Marshall's... just to see if they had anything at all. By this point, I was just going to wear something I already owned.

I was leaving the store, empty handed, when I decided to brows through one last clothing rack. I found 4 dresses and quickly went to try them on in the changing room, something I never do! 

Well they were all hides except for one dress. It was perfect.

Want to know why it was perfect? 

It was classy, it fit me so well, it was cute, comfortable and ONLY $10!

  

 

I styled it with gold heart stud earrings from Forever 21, a chunky gold chain necklace 

from Princess P Jewelry and my diamond gold bracelet (that was given to 

me as a gift from my father).

I also paired it with my black leather jacket, black quilt stitched cross-body bag, 

and my black leather 160mm Daffodil Louboutines.

Then, off Brendan and I went to celebrate New Year's Eve together in Boston at Abby Lane.

My night was absolutely perfect, too!

I even got to kiss the love of my life at midnight in my favorite city!

Until next time,

XOXO Ines

CHEERS to 2015!

25 Days of BlogMas | Day 25

Thursday: December 25, 2014

Merry Christmas! 

Today was a wonderful day! 

My whole family slept in until 11 am and I woke up to the smell of pancakes and bacon. 

Usually my mom makes pancakes every Sunday but Christmas is the perfect excuse to make pancakes during the week. 

After breakfast, it was time to open presents!

It's funny because now that we are older, the presents under the tree look different. It's not big boxes full of you sets, DVD players, tvs or sterios. 

And some Christmases are different than others. In the past it's looked empty under the tree, but this Christmas is the first in a long time that we've had gifts spilling out from both sides. 

Regardless, it's never about the presents! It's about the company. 

So we spent about an hour opening ll our gifts. 

My parents got me a MacBook Pro (which doubled for a graduation gift too)

My brother and his girlfriend got me a Vera Bradley curling wand holder and a coach name tag lanyard. I also got tons of chocolate and little stalking stuffers. 

There was wrapping paper, bags and fissure paper everywhere, but this picture doesn't do it justice. 

After opening presents, the cleaning started. 

Some houses do spring cleaning, but my house does Christmas cleaning. 

And guess who actually cleaned the whole house; vacuuming, mopping and dusting included? ME? Because my parents were in the kitchen cooking for 4 hours. And, that's because we had company coming over for dinner... Brendan and my brother's girlfriend. 

My family consists of me, my brother and my mom and dad. The one aunt and one uncle I have living in the United States (actually both within 15 minutes from my house) my dad doesn't talk to. Besides that, all my relatives, ALL of them, live in Portugal. 

I guess you could say that my parents, specifically more my dad, have a hard time letting other people into my family. The fact that my dad came up to me this past weekend and asked me to invite my boyfriend to Christmas dinner really meant a lot! I'm not the type to invite my boyfriend either without my parents being fully excepting of it. 

So, I was excited! 

Brendan was too! He knows how closed off and reserved my family can be. He's so understanding too. He knows it's not him, it's just the way my parents are. When I told him he was invited to Christmas dinner he was ecstatic!

He came over around 4:30 and we were eating by 5:30. 

We enjoyed honey ham and seafood casserole. 

There was also asparagus and baked potatoes. 

Brendan's personal favorite was my dad's rice. I think he could have eaten the whole pot!

Then after dinner we dug right into dessert! 

Completely 100% home made, my mom made a three tiered desserts. Yellow egg custard on the bottom with Portuguese cookie crumbles sprinkled on top. Then chocolate mousse is added to make the middle later. Finally whipped cream is the too layer. Usually we roast some almond shaving and sprinkle them all over but because Brendan has a tree nut allergy, we substituted almonds for chocolate shavings.  

This Christmas was wonderful. I spent it with both my family and Brendan and I couldn't be any happier! 

The rest if the evening, I fooled around with my brand new Cannon T5.
Here are some of the pictures :-) 

Until next time,

XOXO Ines

25 Days of BlogMas | Day 24

Wednesday: December 24, 2014

Merry Christmas Eve!

Want to guess how I started my day? 

... Going to the local mall with my mom! 

My mom has an extremely sensitive stomache, IBS, and krones so petty much all December, when she gets home from work she can't do anything. I've been doing most if the Christmas shopping for her. 

Today she was finally feeling better so she decided that we should go out together and finish our Christmas shopping. 

We went out for about an hour and I have to say we were extremely successful. There weren't too many people out surprisingly so that was even better!

After we came home, I finished wrapping everything! 

Then went into the kitchen to make my moms mousse. I made the chocolate mousse totally from scratch and as soon as I put it in the fridge, I ran upstairs and showered. 

I was having Christmas Eve for the third year in a row at Brendan's house with his mom and dad so I needed to get myself ready. 

His family opens presents and has their big dinner on Christmas Eve while my family opens presents and cooks a big dinner on Christmas. I love this because it doesn't make us have to divide our time on the same day. 

I went over at 6 pm and his parents had appetizers waiting on the table. I brought over all my presents for Brendan and his mom and dad, which we would eventually open after dinner. We also sipped on a Portuguese cocktail drik which I had brought them this past summer from my vacation in Portugal. 

We watched Christmas Vacation and at 8 o'clock had dinner; fillet mignon and mashed potatoes with corn and asparagus! So delicious!

After dinner, that's when the present opening began!

His parents got me the Harry Potter Books box set, something I've always wanted but haven't been able to afford. They also bought some shore excursions for us to do on our cruise in January. 

Some of the things Brendan got me in life a Canon EOS T5, a Coach Watch and the new Louboutin nailpolish. Smaller items like giftcard sand a coffee mug were in my stocking and he also bought me a massage at a really nice spa!

After opening gifts, we enjoyed the chocolate mousse and each other company. 

This Christmas I was more than spoiled! 

It wasn't about all the lovely gifts I got. Instead it was about the thoughtfulness behind each of those gifts. 

I know that Brendan and his family love me; I can feel it. 

I just hope that they know just how much I love them too!

Merry Christmas Eve everyone!

Until next time,

XOXO Ines