It’s Fridayyyy! Here’s a look at some of this week’s favs!

1. It was announced this week that a documentary titled Banksy Does New York will premiere next month in the city and follow the month-long stay the artist had in the city last year.
2. It’s backkkk! Crumbs that is. After shuttering all of its locations earlier this summer, the business re-opened select locations this week with a new owner and new business plan.
3. Want to take a bubble bath with a panoramic view of all of Manhattan? Now you can! For the price of $95 million that is.. 432 Park Avenue became the tallest residential building in the western hemisphere and with a view like that, it had to make my Friday Favs ;)
4. NYC and Company launched a “See Your City” campaign to encourage locals to explore different parts of the city. It’s so easy to get sucked into your routine and sticking to your neighborhood favorites and I think it’s great that the locals instead of tourists are the focus of this campaign.
5. The city had a special visitor this week.. Little TurboRoo, a two-legged Chihuahua. The little guy was born with a birth defeat causing him to only have two legs and he was in the city for Purina’s Better with Pets Event. He’s been making great progress thanks to some cool technology advancements and the city was lucky to have him in town! 

I am so excited to finally tell you guys about my trip to Napa! So let’s do it!

This trip has been a long time in the planning for somebody’s fabulous monumental birthday, Kathy! I’ve been so lucky to have her as a second mom in my life and when she invited me to come to California and celebrate with her and her friends I could not wait! 

Before I made it to Napa I took a little stop in Seattle (only for an hour) but it was a nice little start to say hey to the home state! Oh yeah, and all of the Seahawks gear ;-)

From there WA, I hopped on another jet plane and headed south to good old San Francisco! There I met with one of Kathy’s wonderful friends Nicole and we took on the next leg of our trip, driving to Napa! Lucky for me too, Nicole grew up in the area and took on the driver’s seat ;-)

We had some great views on our way out of the city and it was pretty cool to drive over the Golden Gate Bridge! I visited the city once when I was in middle school, but it’s definitely somewhere I need to come back and explore!

A nice drive later we arrived to our home for the weekend, which was absolutely beautiful, inside and out!

I could seriously get used to the life in wine country.. oh yeah and this view! :)

Once all of the lovely ladies arrived we headed downtown Sonoma, which is totally cute btw, to this amazing restaurant called Harvest Moon.

It didn’t take too long of getting to know everyone before we were exchanging stories and laughs. If dinner was any indication of how the weekend was going to go it was going to be epic, and spoiler alert, it totally was!

The food and wine was the perfect way to kick-off the weekend too. I’m not normally even a shrimp kind of girl, but their shrimp they had on their menu for the night was to. die. for. I absolutely love farm to table style restaurants. Fresh and seriously delicious.

The next morning we were greeted at our house with our driver for our wine tour party bus with a day full of fabulous wineries to visit!

First stop, Frog’s Leap Winery in Rutherford!

This location was beautiful! The perfect place to start off our tour and day of tastings!

Next we headed up a long curvy road up some hills to our next stop, Clif Family Winery, which just so happens to be from the same people behind Clif Bars.

This place ROCKED! It was just our party and our guide for the day, Jeff, who also seriously rocked!

For this tasting we had pairings with fresh cheese from Cowgirl Creamery with fresh preserves and then also some nuts, bread, and olive oil with seasonings. It’s pretty amazing how much of a difference food pairings can make on wines and this pairings were truly impeccable.

Their wine was so fantastic too! I’m pretty sure we all went home with a bottle or two… plus most of the ladies joined their wine club. It was that good! Clif, you’re going down officially as my favorite winery. If you get a chance to go to Napa, check this place out!

To close out our day of tasting we ended at Sinegal Estate. It just so happened that a lot of the women on the trip work at Costco and this winery had ties to Costco so we headed there to check it out!

Beautiful grounds.. the estate was postcard pretty. Bonus, there was a winery weenie dog!

Here, we got to see some of the behind-the-scenes of the wine making process.

We closed up our tour with some more tasting and there may have been a gondola ride gone wrong in the pond ;-) That story is for another time though!

For dinner, the ladies cooked up a mexican feast and we laughed the night away with some Cards Against Humanity and some other games!

For our last full day in the Napa Valley, we started it with some sweet delicious scones and then off for a little more wine tasting!

This time out to Dutton-GoldField in Sebastopol. It was a little bit of a drive from where we were staying but the drive in was really pretty. A little different scenery than the other parts of wine country we had been through too.

We had a yummy lunch and then stopped by some fun shops in town.

On the way back we saw a sign for In-N-Out Burger and decided we had to stop since I’ve never been to one before!

Had to go all out with the animal style fries too. Of course!

And with one more final evening our trip came to a close… SUCH an amazing and memorable trip! :)

And while I was sad to head home.. I still had a little something to look forward to on the trip back. Kathy spoiled me and upgraded my flight back to first class.

American Airlines means serious business with their first class too. I had like a whole row, pod thing to my self. Pop-out TV, unlimited movies and like a 6 course meal? Traveling across the country isn’t so bad when you fly like this!

Farewell Napa trip, you’re definitely one that will go down in the record books..

I’m so excited to tell you all about a brand new app that is about to make your life a wholeeee lot easier when it comes to planning! Meet Flashplan, the mobile app that allows you to easily plan events on your phone in one convenient place.

Since college, I’ve heavily relied on Facebook events for planing purposes.. it’s always just seemed like an easy option and for the most part, my friends are all on Facebook, but the longer I’m out of college (going on 5 years already..) the more I’ve realized that it might not be the best option anymore. I don’t host parties all that often but when I do I’ve noticed that I end up having to also email or text some of my friends who don’t check their Facebook events. Kind of defeats the one step process, huh?

For smaller get-togethers I usually try the group texting, email or Facebook message option, but let’s just say I’ve been open to exploring other options. That’s why I was pretty excited to talk to Shravan from Flashplan about their brand-spanking new app!

Flashplan is a really cool (and free) app that is making planning events with your friends a whole lot easier by incorporating all the features you need in one place. Location, invite system, group-messages, and a text-invite option. The great thing too is its run through your contacts on your phone instead of Facebook or emails, so as long as your friends have a cell phone (which I’m assuming most do ;-)) you’re all set.

Creating an event is easy and intuitive. You simply click the “+ create” button and fill in the event basics: name, location, date/time, notes, and an event photo (if you’d like!) Once you’ve created your event you select the “invite friends” button, click the friends you’d like to invite and you’re all set! Your friends who have the app will receive your invite and then you’ll be prompted to send a text to those who do not.

The handy text option is great and it opens your messaging app with a pre-made text that is ready to go, or be customized if you want. The really cool thing about this app too is that your friends can access all of the event info whether they download the app or not. 

Once they click on the link, it looks like the image below. Users are then able to interact with the event or if you scroll down you have the option to download the app. 

Another cool feature of the app is the group message option. I’m all about being organized and love that this feature is all contained within the event so that you have all the details, messages, and location info all in one place.

Not only is the app great for planning your events, but it also organizes them. Once you have created events, they appear on your “home” tab and allow you to interact to each separately. Clean and simple!

I really enjoyed this app and think you will too! Whether you’re planning a bigger event like a Halloween party, or just a girls’ night with a couple of your friends, this app is really great. Quick, organized and intuitive — all components of a great app!

To check it out for yourself, you can find it in the app store. Get to planning!