Girl Meets Life | a lifestyle blog by Gracie Gordon
style | wellness | new york city.
1 || Bea Arthur ice cream cone from Big Gay Ice Cream
2 || overallin’
3 || Misfit Conference
4 || fresh watermelon juice/mimosas at Bubby’s
5 || cheers
6 || LA or whatever
7 || Speakable plug, because I can 
8 || I felt cool in these jeans
9 || death by Stair Master
10 || lazy girl’s way to eat cantaloupe
11 || WHAT HE SAID
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What’s been a highlight of your week so far??
Hi!
HI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(insert a zillion celebratory emojis)
I’ve got to say I’m really, REALLY happy to be back. I definitely loved the time off, but over the past week or so I found myself counting down the days to return to GML. That was actually what I hoped would happen, so…mission accomplished.
I’m putting together a post to share what I learned/realized during my blogging break, but for now here’s a little update on what I’ve been up to.
I think I left off around 4th of July, which I spent out in Montauk.
It was so much fun! A huge group of my friends were there, and we got some great beach days and nights out.
Loved wearing my Flash Tattoos on the beach!
After Montauk I spent a few days back in the city before heading to my family’s shore house, where I stayed for almost two weeks.
While I was there I got to spend a ton of time with my family (cousins and all) AND my sister Katie even flew up from Florida for a few days!
It was the perfect summer getaway – I treated it almost like it was a retreat of sorts.
If I’m being completely honest, when my vacation was over I wasn’t fully ready to go back to NYC (which is rare). But as soon as I got back, I fell in love with the city all over again.
NYC skyline from the Top of the Standard:
Beautiful church in East Village:
Pretty red windows in West Village:
Movie in the park at South Street Seaport:
Saturday with my girl friends:
Washington Square Park:
Oh, and of course I enjoyed lots and lots of great food over the past month.
Brunch at Freemans:
(The biggest and best ever) Avocado Toast at St. Balmain:
Homemade Snickerdoodle Almond Flour Pancakes:
Big ol’ dinner at The Meatball Shop:
Above: chicken meatballs with pesto over polenta
Below: snickerdoodle cookies with brown sugar ice cream
SHAKE SHACK:
A few of many delicious dishes from ABC Kitchen – pizza with gold bar squash, cherry tomatoes, chorizo, garlic and stracciatella:
Sundae with salted caramel ice cream, candied peanuts and popcorn, whipped cream, chocolate sauce (image via Rachel):
…and some delicious DRINKS thanks to Nespresso!
Latte on the left, cappuccino on the right:
(Jessi and I went to their event hosted by Tim Gunn last week, and it was so much fun!)
Other than all of that there’s just been things like…
* spending a lot of time with friends
* working on Speakable
* leading Community Group on Wednesdays
* catching up on reading
* (trying to) catch up on movies I’ve wanted to see
* joining a new (closer) gym
* OH, and I found out I’ll be going on a work trip to Vegas later this month! I’ve never been, so I’m really excited about that.
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Soooo that’s what I’ve been up to! Like I said – I’m SO very happy to be back. While I was gone I got some ideas for blog posts that I’m excited to share, so stay tuned 
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How has your summer been going? What have been the highlights?
Sooo these snapshots are going to be another regurgitation of my Instagram feed, for the most part.
If I’m being completely honest, I’ve stayed in a bit of a blogging funk since taking a break a few months ago. I wasn’t really going to address it because I sort of can’t stand when bloggers are all “woe is me, blogging is sooo difficult,” because the truth is that it’s an incredible platform and I’m lucky to even have people who follow me.
I think this funk is a mixture of a few things – mostly a) after over 4 years of essentially documenting my entire life, it’s very freeing not to and b) the time commitment involved to produce “real” content is just not something I can do right now, especially with my other job(s).
So – that’s that. I’m not going anywhere and will definitely continue posting, but if you’ve been noticing my posts being more sporadic/few and far between, that’s why. I’m sure I’ll get back to a place of blogging more, but I just never want to force it, you know? In the meantime you can always keep up with me on Instagram (and Tumblr, if anyone actually still uses that…?).
I wasn’t planning on sharing that at all, but I’m glad I did On to the snapshots…
The summer makes it very difficult not to snap pictures of this city…
The latest via Speakable.
Last weekend we celebrated Monica’s birthday. I love her. Like, a lot.
I don’t know what it is about photo filters that turn my hair blue…
Speaking of blogging being an opportunity, Jessi and I went to a pretty cool event last week.
There were hundreds of amazing products, but we found ourselves most excited about the fondue fountain. Oops.
(image stolen from Jessi)
On Monday we celebrated Parker’s (Jessi’s husband) birthday, by way of a surprise party at Cannibal.
If the name of the restaurant didn’t give it away, it was definitely geared toward the carnivorous type. Challenge accepted.
Last but not least are these devos from the past few days, which I just loved…
(both from “God’s Promises Day By Day”)
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What’s been a highlight of your week so far? Any fun summer plans coming up?
