Spring Cleaning: The Kitchen

It's time to spring clean the kitchen! So lets get motivated to get this done!

Earlier this week I filmed myself spring cleaning my apartment kitchen which you can see here. It might help give you some motivation to get yours done too, so definitely check it out! 

Here's what I did to get this room squeaky clean...

I cleaned all the dishes that were currently in the sink and then dried them and put them away so all my dishes would be clean. I took my dish drying rack and washed it as well since it can get a little gross. I also took the drying mat and threw it in my laundry pile so that would get super clean as well.

Next I went through each cabinet and drawer and pulled everything out, wiped down the inside and then put everything back inside. I did make sure to only put things back in that we actually use. Since we have very limited space in our kitchen we use pretty much everything that we have. We actually have quite a few kitchen items that aren't stored in our kitchen because we don't have a ton of room.

I made sure to scrub down all of the utensil holders as well. I do have a couple of permanent stains inside some of them and at some point when we move into a house and have a large kitchen I may decide to purchase all brand new matching ones.

With only three big cabinets, two small cabinets (one over the fridge which is kind of inaccessible), and five drawers we don't have a ton of room for kitchen supplies but we make it work.

Since we live in the apartment I am also pretty limited on changes I can make and I would love to one day have white cabinets and a real granite countertop. Right now I can't change any of those things so I will just do my best to keep things clean until then!

All of our spices are kept above the stove and I talked about this transformation in this post and this post. 

There are some stains in this cabinet I also can't seem to get out which is frustrating because I feel like it never looks clean!

I also wiped down the stove and the front of the oven. I also cleaned the microwave and wiped down the counters.

The only things I didn't touch during this particular clean were the fridge/freezer, under the sink cabinets, and the pantry. I am planning on tackling each of these projects separately since each of those can be very overwhelming.

I also did a thorough vacuum of the floor (including behind the fridge!)

When I was done with this clean I was exhausted but very satisfied with how everything turned out!

What spring cleaning projects are you working on this weekend?

Our Honeymoon: Southern Caribbean Cruise with Norwegian Day 8, Antigua

Hey loves! Welcome back to the our honeymoon recap :)

Today we are talking about one of my favorite trip days, our day on Antigua!

We arrived early on Antigua and ate our breakfast quickly so we could get off the boat and get our day started!

We walked around the port for a little bit because we had reservations with Triflexcursion for a bike, kayak and hiking tour. 

We were in a small group of nine with the addition of our two guides. Giles and Mark were amazing hosts and although they just created their company in December they are super professional and we truly enjoyed this tour!

It had been YEARS since I had been on a bike. Tim joked that there's a reason they say "it's like riding a bike" but let me tell you the first few minutes were a little shaky for me. I only ever ride the stationary bike at the gym and this was very different. I ended up getting used to the feeling and was totally fine (definitely a little cautious) and would love to purchase some bikes for us to ride at home since we had such a great time!

They also did a great job of helping us with the bike seat heights and making sure we were on bikes that were appropriate for our heights.

We biked for a few minutes and stopped briefly at a harbor where our guides described some of the area we had already biked through.

Our next stop was kayaking!

The water was pretty low but both Giles and Mark were willing to help us when we got stuck. They pointed out the birds that were hiding in the mangroves and also helped us find the jellyfish that were floating in the water.

Pictured above is one of the jellyfish!

We really enjoyed kayaking around and got a great upper body workout!

After finishing kayaking we helped bring the kayaks back up to storage and then hopped on our bikes to head to Fort James Beach!

This beach was absolutely gorgeous! We were sweating from all of our biking and kayaking and were more then ready to jump into the water which is exactly what we did!

The water was warm and Tim and I enjoyed swimming around. I would've moved to this beach it was so gorgeous! The water was the clearest I had come across and the waves allowed us to do a little bit of body surfing.

This huge yacht was on St. Martin when we were there as well. It is the largest sailing yacht in the world and we actually watched a little boat come out of the big boat. Totally insane.

We swam a couple times before Mark and Giles announced it was time to take a quick hike.

We walked over to Fort James where cannons were fully intact.

It was an easy walk and we all mentioned that it was nice it was untouched but would be even nicer if it could be fixed up a little bit. There is also quite a bit of trash left in the area but if there was someone manning the area and maybe a trash can it would be in a little better condition.

Tim and I both agreed that we need to come back to Antigua some day and spend a full week on the island. It was absolutely gorgeous and is a place I would like to explore more.

We did a bit of shopping before getting back on the ship to eat lunch and hang out on the front deck while we pulled away.

Our night consisted of a buffet dinner, getting a drink at O'Sheehans,  Deal or No Deal, and a show called Swing. We thought the shows put on by the singers and dancers were okay but we really did prefer the comedians and acrobats. The songs that were done this particular night were all songs from the 50's so we didn't recognize many of them.

We were completely exhausted from our active day and we had another great day ahead of us in St. Thomas the following morning!

Our Honeymoon: Southern Caribbean Cruise with Norwegian Day 7, St. Lucia

We are officially in April you guys! While we did enjoy some lovely spring weather this weekend we are going to go back even further to day 7 of our cruise when we enjoyed some lovely 80* weather in 

St. Lucia!

Now we arrived in St. Lucia early in the morning and Tim and I went to eat breakfast as we were pulling into port. We only had plans to wander around on our own on this day but when we looked from the deck it appeared that the port was very isolated from everything else. We quickly ran downstairs to the excursions and asked if we could book the rainforest trek and were told yes!

Norwegian is great about getting you on excursions at the last minute if it's a possibility. After booking our excursion we quickly got off the boat and headed over to our designated meeting area.

St. Lucia's port was one of my least favorites. There were a few stores but beyond that you had to walk pretty far before actually getting to anything and all the touristy places are far away from the port so there's not a whole lot to do in the immediate surrounding area.

On our drive to the rainforest we could see that we had made the right decision because there was truly nothing but houses on our drive. Our driver knew the roads very well but it was still a wild ride as we drove in the mountains on roads that only fit one car at a time. It was very hilly and there were a lot of sharp turns where he would beep before getting close in case another driver was coming towards us.

When we first arrived we were introduced to our guide who took us on a short hiking tour of the lower rainforest. He showed us the differences between the trees and gave us some local tips about how they use certain plants as remedies. 

Our guide even was able to coax a hummingbird close to our group. There were tons of hummingbirds in our vicinity and it was very unexpected to me when we first saw them. We were told there weren't any large mammals in the rainforest of St. Lucia but there were a ton of birds, insects and reptiles.

Many of the trees were so massive it was unbelievable. We also learned about the vines that will strangle trees so they can get to the sunlight in the dense forest.

The aerial tram ride was great! We boarded with our guide and he continued to educate us on the rainforest but there were many times when we were just silent listening to the sounds of the forest and looking around in awe. We climbed through all the layers of the forest to the peak and then the tram turned around and we had some beautiful views of the island.

Now, if you are fearful of heights I would certainly not recommend this excursion but if you aren't it's a wonderful adventure! The tram itself moves very slowly so it's not a scary ride at all even though they warn you it doesn't follow U.S regulations. I felt very safe the entire time.

It was definitely a laid back activity where we didn't have to exert a ton of energy which is what we needed with our fresh sunburns from the day before. 

After our tour was complete we had a local drink that was complimentary and delicious and then walked around the gift shop. Once our bus was ready we hopped on and headed back to port.

After going in a few stores we decided to get back on the ship. Honestly, if you are stopping in St. Lucia with a cruise ship I highly recommend you book an excursion or find something not connected to the ship that you take a taxi to. We saw a ton of people get off the boat, walk around and then get right back on. There was truly nothing in the immediate surrounding area.  

St. Lucia was truly nothing like I expected. It is such a different vibe from the other islands on our cruise since it was a lush island. All the others had a more beachy vibe but this one was truly a dense rainforest. 

St. Lucia has the worlds only drive in volcano which we would have loved to have done but it was very far away from the port and would have been cutting our day very tight. We have added this island to our list of places we would like to visit again in the future.

The rest of this day was pretty low key. We ate lunch at the buffet, napped and ate dinner at the buffet.

We watched as we pulled away from the island again which is one of the most magical things to experience. I loved looking at the scenery each night as we left the island and thinking about how we only explored a small area.

The sunset was magnificent again, every night was so beautiful!

That night Keith Bender was the comedian performer. He was hilarious and we really enjoyed his show!

We also went to the game show This or That afterwards and although we didn't win we enjoyed it!

We arrived back to our room to this cute stingray! Then it was an early bedtime for us since we had a super exciting adventure the next day in Antigua!

Stay tuned :)