Ohio Wanderlust

I've been interested in trying the classes at Barre Fly since I moved to Green about eight months ago. Of course, there's a yoga studio down the street, so I've used that as my primary form of exercise whenever I get around to getting out of the house to take a class. During the month of September Barre Fly offered a special called the Barre Crawl -- for $50 you had one month to try each of their most popular classes once, and their (H)HIIT (hammock high intensity) class twice. A single drop in class costs $15.00, so the price of $6.25 per class was too hard to pass-up, especially since I'm working on getting toned and sculpted for my wedding in about a year. I tested all of these classes for you! Barre Fly Breakdown : The very first class I signed-up for was the Barre Fly Breakdown taught by Laura. It was my first time at the studio and Laura was incredibly friendly and welcoming when I arrived. A few other people were there for their second class, s...

Two Saturdays ago we made the trip up to Cleveland to have dinner at Empress Taytu. I first heard of Empress Taytu at the Akron Coffee Roaster's event that I attended at the Akron Art Museum in January. In Ethiopia it is traditional to perform a coffee ceremony after dinner, and the Akron Coffee Roasters highly recommended visiting Empress Taytu to experience that tradition. You can make a reservation through Empress Taytu's website which I suggest doing, we unknowingly booked on Ethiopian New Year and they were much busier than usual. Empress Taytu has a full bar, Dave and I started off our meal with cocktails from off the menu, but some of our friends just ordered standard drinks. I ordered the Anagew (translated as "Knock You Down") a mix of mango juice, orange juice, vodka, and grenadine. Dave ordered Empress Taytu made with dark rum, grenadine, triple sec, and orange juice.  Our server warned us that the place was pretty busy, so Dave and I ordere...

Two vegetarians and a carnivore walk into a burger joint...sounds like the start of a joke right? Earlier this week Dave and I had lunch at The Rail with a friend -- now this is a burger place, so it wasn't really somewhere I had ever considered eating before I saw a friend post their veggie burger on Instagram. Between the salads, appetizers, veggie burger option, and veggie sandwich I figured that I would be able to find something great to eat. The Rail is an all Ohio restaurant, aside from the Canton location there are three other NorthEast Ohio locations. The Rail serves 100% Ohio beef and 1/2 pound burger patties (that's a lot of beef) in addition to Ohio brews and hand dipped milkshakes. The Rail is owned by restaurateur/chef Mike Mariola who also owns The City Square Steakhouse in Wooster. Although The Rail is in Belden Village, we happily took advantage of the patio and didn't deal with too much traffic noise which was surprising due to the proximity to ...

I first heard of Art Uncorked via Facebook, another friend wanted to attend one of their Family Name Sign classes and all of the events were sold out. I kept an eye on the class schedule until there was an opening and Dave and I were first able to get into an April class for the name signs. After seeing the finished product my mom said she liked the window signs, so I went back to make one for a gift. Most recently we took a class this past Wednesday to make a sign for a wedding and a gift for someone else. There's no painting/art experience necessary just bring yourself, some wine, and a snack or two and you're all set to participate at Art Uncorked. The classes usually seem to sell out, so if you want to take the class with someone else I've found it's best to sign everyone up at once. You can select a project from any of the signs on their Pinterest  or you can be inspired by the projects of others as seen on Art Uncorked's Facebook page.  Our firs...