- Herbivore Clothing: When I went to Portland, Oregon last year, I was super excited to finally visit this vegan-owned clothing company. Their designs are adorable and over the last year I’ve started to collect shirts from them. These shirts are some of the most comfortable clothes I own and I LOVE supporting them because they are doing so many cool things. I wish I lived in Portland so I could visit their storefront on the regular but they do offer all of their designs online which is awesome. I just saw them yesterday at Boston Veg Food Fest and had to buy their cute elephant tank top – obsessed!
- Spring Natural Kitchen: I love this place. This restaurant in the Upper West Side of New York City is adorable and has a really diverse menu with a specific “VEGAN” section! My boyfriend and I first had dinner here a couple of years ago for a belated anniversary celebration and then we recently hit it up again on our last trip to New York. He got a burger and a Manhattan that he said was insanely good and I got a salad and a ginger mocktail – yummm. This place is great when you want yummy vegan food but want to enjoy dinner with non-vegans.
- Liane Moriarty books: So far I’ve read three of her books in the last few months and she tells some of the most suspenseful stories I’ve ever read. They manage to suck you in and when I’m in the middle of one of her books I find myself thinking about it all of the time, wondering how it is going to end.
- Essential oil diffuser: This is one of my favorite things that I own. I bought it when I was having trouble sleeping and needed some help calming down at night after getting home from work around 9pm and it’s become a staple in my nighttime routine ever since! I usually sleep with a mix of eucalyptus, peppermint, and tea tree oil and it makes my bedroom feel like a fancy spa. You can have the lights cycle through, you can have it steady on one color, or you can turn the light off and just use the diffuser. It’s so calming and now I prefer it to lighting candles because you can leave it without worrying that it’s going to burn the house down!
- Local honeycrisp apples: I LOVE apples but there’s nothing better than locally grown (I know I sound pretentious!) honeycrisp apples. They’re perfect on their own as a snack and they bring me back to my days of playing field hockey in high school when we used to devour entire bags of apples on the bus to away games. I’m obsessed right now!
- Pumpkin spice waffles: I love all things pumpkin and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I saw these at Harvest the other day and saw that they were gluten-free and nearly squealed with joy! They have a lot of flavor and go perfectly with some maple syrup!
- Autumn leaves: This is incredibly cliché but it had to make the list nonetheless! The leaves this year in New England are so insanely beautiful – there are so many colors! Autumn has always been my favorite season because of my birthday and Halloween and the relief from the summer heat. It offers so much beauty before everything gets dark and dreary and depressing in the winter. I’ve lived in New York and Pennsylvania but the autumns I’ve experienced while living in Vermont and Massachusetts have been the most vibrant. There’s truly nothing like it!
Love, Brenna
openbookkitchen.com 