Peppermint bark is one of those seasonal confections that looks really impressive and makes a great gift, but is actually really easy to prepare. I make a batch every year and every year it’s a bit different. For our Holiday Sweater party this weekend, I used a new recipe that layers a chocolate ganache between white chocolate for a softer bite. It feels very festive and who doesn’t like chocolate and peppermint?

Keeping with the video theme of the week (it wasn’t on purpose, it’s just worked out that way!), here’s another one for you: Daisy and I were lucky enough to see a preview screening of the movie Brooklyn last week. The movie was beautiful and has gotten lots of great critical acclaim. It tells the story of Eilis Lacey, a young girl in Ireland who’s having a hard time thriving, so she moves to Brooklyn to pursue a better life for herself.

My bachelorette weekend was just about a year ago in New York City. I was living there at the time, and it was fun and central to all of my friends, so I kicked Matt out for the weekend, we all piled into my friend Vincenza’s East Village apartment, and settled in for #AVERYcrazyweekend. Sam, Me, and Daisy at my Bachelorette in 2014 I wasn’t blogging at the time, so I figured a year later is a good time to recap the weekend, right?

I’m all about easy weeknight dinners, and this southern inspired Shrimp & Grits took literally minutes. Precooked frozen shrimp is one of my favorite food hacks. It requires literally no preparation other than running under cold water for a few minutes. It’s great with cocktail sauce at parties (make your own by mixing ketchup and prepared horseradish), in pasta, on salads, or with grits and okra like we had last night!

We decided to buy a 5 lb bag of carrots at Whole Foods (because why not, right?), so get ready for a lot of carrot related food posts. Starting with these muffins. I knew I wanted to make a form of carrot cake because 1) SO MANY CARROTS and 2) our new food processor can shred like a champion. So I searched for recipes using my usual technique and ended up with this one for Gluten-Free Vegan Carrot Apple Muffins.

Beautylish is the exclusive retailer of Bioderma (cult favorite French micellar cleansing water) in the US and they just debuted a 500mL bottle with a pump top! Speaking of beauty e-retailers, Birchbox is launching their own makeup line. We’ve been indulging in affogatos for dessert. And breakfast. And anytime throughout the day. It’s fine. (P.S. You don’t even need to click through to that recipe, it’s literally just ice cream and espresso!

My new favorite pizza topping (pair it with Italian sausage – YUM) Returning home from San Diego to all of the snuggles from this handsome (yet suspicious) fella I’ve also been living in that white sweater from Madewell. It’s now sold out, but I’m eyeing this one next. So much lust for the new Everlane Petra Backpack in leather. Unfortunately it won’t fit my laptop, so not the most functional for me, but so beautiful.

Matt and I are both huge fans of pie (fun fact: our wedding was on Pi Day – 3/14/15). His favorite is pumpkin, and I can’t get enough blueberry, and we both agree: pecan is also at the top of the list. But really you can’t go wrong with any flavor. My easy pie making secret is to buy the pre-made rolled up pie crusts from the grocery store. I always get better results from the Pillsbury brand crusts rather than generic, but you can stock up when they’re on sale and keep them in the freezer for emergency pie situations.

Happy Friday! What have you been loving this week? My picks below! Madewell v-neck pocket tees are the best closet staple (and on sale!) I’m stocking up on fall colors, like Compass Gold (below). Glamour Magazine’s Lipstick Index tracks social media beauty posts to find out what’s hot. So cool to see a real time indicator of beauty trends! This tilapia recipe is the best I’ve found. We paired it with wild rice and roasted broccoli for an easy weeknight dinner.

Moule-frites is just a fancy French/Belgian way of saying “mussels and french fries”. During an excursion to Whole Foods (we tried out the new one in InkBlock and omg it’s enormous) we discovered some Maine mussels and thought, well why not? We looked up a recipe for a white wine broth that seemed reasonable and bought a regular old potato for frying. For the mussels: Ingredients: 2/3 bottle dry white wine (we used the Three Wishes Pinot Grigio from Whole Foods because it’s about $3) 4-6 tablespoons butter One onion 4 cloves garlic Dry and fresh herbs to taste (we used fresh basil and dried cilantro because… well, that’s what we had) 1 pound fresh live mussels Bring the wine to a simmer with the butter, onion, garlic and herbs.

Earlier this week, I was feeling inspired by this recipe from one of our favorite celebrity chefs, Daniel Boulud. Except we had approximately none of the ingredients and it looked far too time consuming for a regular weeknight. So instead, I cooked up what we had on hand to create a dish that Matt has cited as his favorite ever. The highest praise! Just kidding, he says this about everything I cook; it was part of our marriage vows.

Part of my inspiration to write about what we miss from NYC was that Matt has been requesting that I make bagels for weeks. Probably because we haven’t found a decent place to get one in Boston. It was his birthday this week and I had the morning off (#labordayweekend!), so I decided to dig out my tried and true bagel recipe and get boiling. Bagels sound impressive when you tell people you made them yourself, and they take a good amount of time to prepare from start to finish, but it’s so worth it and actually pretty easy.