Category: Sponsored Posts

A Relaxing Sunday Night in with Sushi and Beer, thanks to Woosh Delivery!

8/1/2022

Last Sunday I did not want to leave the house.
Now to be fair, most Sundays I have absolutely no desire to leave the house (who's with me?), but this Sunday I just really did not want to leave the house.
I also had no desire to cook (plus, we went out Friday night instead of going grocery shopping, so we had zero food in the house [super responsible of me, I know])!
And I just really wanted to have a nice relaxing night in with the puppies and the boyfriend before we had to start the week over and go back to work.
So what's a girl to do when all she really wants is beer, sushi, and a relaxing night in?

Woosh Delivery to the rescue!

What exactly is Woosh Delivery you might be asking?
Good question!
Woosh Delivery is a food and drink delivery business from Ohio that serves Wooster, Orrville, Medina, Canton, and Columbus.
It was founded by Wooster local, Chad Tennent.
Woosh Delivery is a local small business, and you know how much your girl loves to support small businesses! So getting to order food and drinks from small businesses, delivered by a small business? Perfection!
Woosh Delivery was started on August 11th, 2018, so to celebrate its 4 year anniversary, for the entire month of August Woosh Delivery will be donating $1 per order to Persephone's Giving Plate, a local organization that prepares and delivers homemade meals to families in the community.

The ordering process with Woosh Delivery is super simple, just go to their website, put in your information, and order your food! If you create a profile you can save your address and credit card information so you have even less to do the next time!
I was actually shocked at how fast we got our food! We ordered from two separate places- a local Asian restaurant for the sushi, and a local drive thru for the beers, and we had all of it in our hands in less than an hour! Now if you've ever ordered food from some of the bigger food service deliveries, you know that it has a tendency to take forever, and your food is cold and unappetizing when you finally get it. Not my experience with Woosh Delivery!
The beer was still cold!

And our driver, holy moly was he awesome! He texted me letting me know that the drive thru was out of the bottles of beer we ordered and was it ok if we got cans instead! He also texted me keeping me updated letting me know when he was 5 minutes away. And he found the house with no problems. Plus he took these pictures with us, like a champ!
Amazing customer service if I've ever seen it!

So thanks to Woosh Delivery, Chase and I got to stay home all day, and relax in our backyard all night. We got to eat sushi and drink beer under the gazebo, while listening to 80's hair bands and talking, laughing, and looking into each other's eyes (ok there wasn't a ton of that last part, we were hungry!). After we were done eating we kept the party going by pushing the table out of the way, cracking open another couple of beers, and busting out the guitars, playing and singing together, then ended the night karaoking in the kitchen before reluctantly getting ready for bed.

Thank you Woosh Delivery for keeping me out of the kitchen this Sunday, and making way for an epic night spent with my love making wonderful memories together!

Have you tried Woosh Delivery yet?
What kind of wonderful memories are you going to make with a night in thanks to Woosh Delivery?

Follow Woosh Delivery on
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and
Download their app on Google Play

*This post was sponsored by Woosh Delivery. As always, the thoughts and opinions expressed here are all my own."

Peace Love and Woosh Delivery

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Make the most of your Summer, with help from New York Weekend Breaks

7/12/2019

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Make the most of your Summer with help from New York Weekend Breaks

Ok ya'll, how is your summer so far?!
Since today is officially the beginning of the third week of Summer, I just thought I would check in with you! Are you drinking enough water? Wearing sunscreen every day?
Are you making the most of your summer?
Because not only is Fall ten short weeks away, but you all know why I love July-it is the start to the second half of the year! The first half of the year is over now, and you know that the second half will go even faster! So make sure you are making the most of it!

Don't you wish adults got summer vacation? Me too!
So even though we don't have a summer vacation, and a lot of us don't even have the vacation days to go on an extended trip, we can still have a fabulous summer weekend trip! To...you guessed it, New York City!

New York City can be the perfect weekend getaway. Remember a couple summers ago when my mom, my sister, and I spent 14 hours in New York City? Such a blast! And in such a short amount of time, we saw and did a crazy amount of things!
So I can only imagine what a magical time could be had in a full weekend.

New York City however, can be quite daunting (this coming from a girl who traveled to China by herself!)-enter New York Weekend Breaks!
New York Weekend Breaks is the absolute go-to New York City website. It is the most thorough, and my favorite NYC site I have seen yet.

New York Weekend Breaks .com has the insider tips on restaurants, hotels, nightlife, culture, and attractions, even transportation.

Are you ready to plan your three day NYC Weekend Break? Perfect! Let's begin by checking out the 3 Day Itinerary page on New York Weekend Breaks. This page is the perfect place to start when you begin to plan your trip. This page already has three days in New York City perfectly planned out for you! Including how much time needed at each attraction! You can just print out this page and have your entire 3 days in New York planned, or if you want to customize your trip a bit more, use my favorite part, the Trip Planner!

New York Weekend Breaks' Trip Planner lets you build your perfect customized vacay by saving any content in the site on to the the Trip Planner page, so you can have access to your entire New York itinerary at any time!

Next time I visit New York City I will definitely be staying longer than 14 hours, and I will definitely be using New York Weekend Breaks to plan my entire trip (you can even book your flight and hotel directly on the home page!).

So are you ready for your summer vacation?! Start planning today at
www.newyorkweekendbreaks.com

*Huge thank you to New York Weekend Breaks for sponsoring this post! The content and opinions expressed here are all my own.*

Peace Love and New York Weekend Breaks
Jess <3

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A week in Vietnam with saigon om

11/20/2018

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"Sitting on our mats on the ground, joining in a guided meditation, listening to the birds chirping in the top of our shala, and the waves just beyond, I couldn't help but smile, and just be thankful to be alive, and to be spending a part of my life in this glorious slice of God's earth."
This was an entry I wrote in my journal I kept while at the retreat. I don't normally journal, but there were so many moments, and so many emotions happening, that I didn't want to forget a second of it. A good portion of this post has been taken from the journal I kept at the retreat.

As I am sitting here looking at my three hundred plus pictures, and going through my pages and pages of hand scribbled notes, I am wondering how on earth to truly share with you guys, and do justice, to the five days and six nights I spent with saigon om. I guess I will just share with you what our week looked like, and start by telling you our daily schedule while at the retreat. I know I wrote a little about the schedule in my previous post, where I told you all about saigon om and how excited I was to attend a retreat by them. If I'm being honest, when I wrote that schedule down, and then showed it to my husband, it left us both feeling a little overwhelmed. Neither of us were super advanced in yoga, had ever attended a retreat, or knew anything about mindfulness, and that schedule, while it looked amazing, was a bit daunting! If any of you felt the same way when you looked at it the first time, don't feel bad! But I knew it would be good for us, we wanted to do it, and so we did it! And wow, I can't even begin to explain how happy I am that we did! So with that in mind, here is what our week looked like while at our yoga and mindfulness retreat with saigon om in beautiful Mui Ne, Vietnam.

Daily Schedule
6:00-7 a.m. Qi Gong, mindful walking on the beach, and guided meditation
7:00-7:45 a.m. Fruit, tea and coffee
7:45-8:30 a.m. Lecture
8:30-10 a.m. Morning yoga
10:00 a.m. Brunch
11:00 a.m -4 p.m. Free time
4:00-6 p.m. Evening restorative yoga, mindful tea drinking, group sharing
6:15 p.m. Dinner

6:00-7 a.m. Qi Gong, mindful walking on the beach, and guided meditation
I am a bit embarrassed to admit that one of the things I was worried about, was our schedule beginning at six o'clock in the morning. I have trouble getting to bed before midnight, and getting me out of bed before eight is nearly impossible, so the thought of having to start my day every morning at six, was a bit troubling! However, I discovered with delight, traveling to a place eleven hours ahead of home, is the perfect solution for that! I fell asleep every night before eight, and every morning we arose before sunrise. Sneaking out of our villa, following the trail to the ocean, we would watch the magnificent sunrise, the clouds slowly peeking above the ocean, the sun casting its fiery rays. This was a beautiful moment for Nick and I every morning.

Once the sun had rose, we would wander up to our shala, which was a second story open-air hut with a beautiful thatched roof that housed a large number of birds, that had a breathtaking view of the ocean. Shala means house in Sanskrit-it is used in yoga to mean a house of yoga. This is me at the front of our shala.

The Chinese practice of Qi Gong was a delight! Qi in Chinese means energy, and Qi Gong is the practice of using breathing, meditating, and movement to get your energy moving (Sarah and Hang explain it much better!).
I loved learning about this thousands of year old art form, and getting to use the free flowing movements to wake up my organs, and even ease some of the tension in my shoulders!
The photo above and below are courtesy of Pascal Lefebvre, the owner of Full Moon Village Resort.

Our mindful walking was a beautiful time spent every morning walking in mindful silence, as a group, along the beach.

Guided Meditation
During our first morning guided meditation I sat on my mat, and participated in the guided meditation. I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of Sarah's voice gently guiding us on our meditation journey. Tears ran down my face as I listened to the birds chirping, the waves crashing, and focused on loving awareness towards myself. I was overcome by such deep feelings of joy, peace, and a love for myself and my surroundings.

7:00-7:45 a.m. Fruit, tea and coffee
Once the guided meditation was over, we all walked down from the shala where fresh fruit and teas were awaiting us. If that wasn't enough, we got to order a fancy tea or coffee from the wait staff. My iced Vietnamese coffee with coconut cream was probably one of my favorite parts of the day! I also loved the opportunity to sit and conversate with the amazing individuals from five different countries, and all walks of life that were at the retreat. Being in a group of like minded people, talking, sharing, and nobody on their cell phones (!!!) felt like paradise to me!

7:45-8:30 a.m. Lecture
After we had our fill of the glorious fruits, teas, and coffees, we made our way back up to the shala. I thoroughly looked forward to, and enjoyed the lectures. The word lecture conjures up for most hard chairs, fluorescent lighting, and a long-winded professor. More opposite of that this could not have been! We sat in a semi-circle in our shala, on our yoga mats, with the wind in our hair, and the ocean beside us, learning lessons that we would later practice on the mat, and in everyday life. Hang and Sarah enraptured and delighted us with their vast knowledge, humor, and contagious joy. We learned about the different doshas, mindfulness, the garden of the mind, and how words can affect us, and more! I took lots of notes and am so excited to keep applying these wonderful principles to my life.

8:30-10 a.m. Morning yoga
Ahhh morning yoga...can you think of anything more perfect?
Lying there on my back focusing on my breathing, hearing only the gentle sounds of Hang's voice, and the crash of the ocean, with its cool salty breeze blowing delicately on my face, I knew i was truly in paradise. And yes, this is the view from our shala!

10:00 a.m. Brunch
Brunch was an absolutely glorious time! After four hours of yoga, meditation, and lectures, we were all invigorated-and hungry! We made our way downstairs where a buffet of freshly squeezed watermelon, coconut and other various juices were waiting, along with a different vegetarian pho every day, as well as fresh salads, coffee, and other various brunch foods. We ate these with the glass doors wide open to allow the outdoors access to us. Sigh, heaven.

11:00 a.m -4 p.m. Free time
After brunch we had five glorious hours to do whatever our hearts desired. This included for Nick and I spending time at the pool, walking the beach, and spending time in our room.
A note about the hotel, I have never stayed in a place more secluded, delightful, and luxurious, all rolled in to one, than the Full Moon Village Resort in Mui Ne. It housed the most beautiful pool I have ever swam in, incredible and authentic vegetarian Vietnamese cuisine, amazing staff, the ocean right at our back yard, and don't even get me started on our room! It was not even a room, but our own private villa! A completely fenced off, perfectly private villa with a spacious kitchen, dining and living room, bathroom, and a bedroom with romantic netting surrounding the bed! This luxury was completed by our very own outdoor hot tub! I will be writing more about this amazing resort in an upcoming blog post about Vietnam.

4:00-6 p.m. Evening restorative yoga, mindful tea drinking, group sharing
At four we all arrived at Sarah and Hang's villa, yoga mat and couch cushions in hand.
We would start the evening with a mindful tea drinking ceremony, first reading the above mantra, then partaking in mindfully, gratefully, and with purpose drinking our tea.
Next was group share. I loved group share! We took turns sharing whatever was on our mind and heart. Some were joyful things, some had realizations and epiphones, and others were struggles and losses. We shared together, we cried together, we experienced together.
Last was restorative yoga. If you are a person who thinks yoga is too hard, then you must try restorative yoga! The lights were dimmed, soft music was played, and we all lay on our yoga mats using big fluffy couch cushions for comfort. Hang and Sarah took turns guiding us on this relaxing, and healing yoga session. Nick even fell asleep one day and started snoring real loud. And Nick never takes naps! It was that relaxing and good!

6:15 p.m. Dinner
The first fifteen minutes of dinner was spent in mindful silence. We first gave thanks to our higher being, and then gave thanks to the food. We were encouraged to say hello to each piece of food, imagine the journey they took to get to us, and to chew slowly and thoroughly. Doing this, we got to experience mindfulness and a different way of thinking in something we do every day, in something as simple as eating a meal. Truly amazing! I actually really enjoyed the mindful silence at dinner time. I got to really taste, and really enjoy every bite, instead of wolfing it down like I normally do. After fifteen minutes we were free to get seconds, and talk. Nick and I usually stayed until about seven thirty talking with all our new friends, then went back to our villa for bed.
The next morning we got to do it all over again!

I am someone who loves to totally immerse myself in things; cultures, languages, experiences. And being totally immersed in this culture of mindfulness was completely transformative! We got to listen to teachings about mindfulness, and then experience it during a yoga session, a walk on the beach, even eating! And that was just perfect.
And yes, yoga and meditation can be daunting. But Sarah and Hang guide you through it with ease. Giving you tips, helping your form, and always teaching you new techniques and sayings, it was such a special experience.

Not a bad way to spend five days!
I 1,000% recommend trying a yoga and mindfulness retreat at least once in your life. Hang and Sarah hold retreats and trainings year round in Vietnam and Australia, if you've ever wanted to visit one of these delectable places, and also Canada if you live in Canada or the States and don't want to venture too far from home. It doesn't matter which location you choose (though I'm quite partial to Vietnam...), just go! Go on this transformative, once in a lifetime journey with saigon om.
If you have any questions about the retreats or different training courses, feel free to email them (saigonom@gmail.com), Sarah and Hang are the greatest and will be happy to answer any questions. Just tell them Jessica from My Peace Love Life sent you! Go like them on facebook to see all the amazing things they are doing!

*A million thank yous to my wonderful husband Nick for going on this adventure with me, and for all of these amazing pictures he took, and also to saigon om for sponsoring this post and for being so so incredible*

Peace Love and saigon om
Jess <3

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A Relaxing Sunday Night in with Sushi and Beer, thanks to Woosh Delivery!

Make the most of your Summer, with help from New York Weekend Breaks

A week in Vietnam with saigon om

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