Having been in the relationship for eight years, I thought it wise to take some real time off of dating and for myself. I had no intentions of getting together with someone new.
You know where this is going: fueled by an app and a need to satiate some insecurity (I hadn’t been ‘market-tested’ as a romantic partner in a long time!) I met someone new just two weeks later.
The first date was good — in true Getaway fashion we talked about the professions of our grandparents — but it was a date about three weeks in that sealed the deal.
Michael told his roommates: “I met this guy who has these cabins in the woods that don’t have WiFi. They’re in secret locations.” Back then, we didn’t tell you where the cabins were in an attempt to prevent you from planning out your time off minute-by-minute. “If you don’t hear from me for a few days, start searching the woods within a two hour radius of Boston?”
Trying not to make it awkward early-on (we hadn’t even DTR’d!) I didn’t tell him the day we were going away was my birthday. The Getaway team blew my cover: there were cupcakes, a bottle of Knob Creek, and balloons waiting in our cabin.
We stayed up until early in the morning. We stoked the campfire. We made s’mores and ate cupcakes. We talked about who knows what. We finished the bourbon. I delivered him back to his roommates alive.
Five years later, we’re still going strong.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
All Rights Reserved to Michelle Watt.
Ready to escape to nature with the one who matters most? Book your Getaway today.
We believe in disconnecting to reconnect with what’s really important, including your relationship with your significant other. It can be easy to let work and other distractions get in the way of spending quality time together.
This Valentines Day, find some time to bring you and your partner closer together as a couple. We have a list of activities to get you started on just that. Whether you’re in the comfort of your home or on a peaceful escape, this list of activities will help you and your Valentine bond together.
Answer the 36 Questions That Lead to Love
This famous list featuring 36 questions meant to build intimacy was popularized by a New York Times Modern Lovecolumn in 2015. Originally created by a team of psychologists led by Arthur Aron, the questions are based on the idea that vulnerability fosters closeness. Try them with your partner to get to know them better and don’t let the length of your relationship stop you. Answers can change with time and can remind you of why you fell in love with your partner in the first place.
Learn a New Skill Together
Whether it’s as simple as learning to tie a knot together or as challenging as learning a new language, let the process of learning bring you closer. Even just trying out a new recipe together can bring you closer. Talk about the shared experience and what may be easy or challenging about your activity. Ask each other for help when you hit a snag. It’s those little gestures that can foster closer connection.
Write Each Other A Letter
Sometimes communication is easier through writing. Try penning a letter to your partner telling them your favorite qualities about them and ask them 3-5 questions. Then swap letters and write each other back. Writing together will bond you and can give you another avenue to connect with one another.
Dance it Out
If you and your partner want to lighten the mood, have a dance party. Dancing will get your endorphins going. Don’t worry if you don’t think your dancing skills are up to par – there’s no winners or losers in a dance party. It’s good to let yourself be silly around your partner and make each other laugh.
While you can do these just about anywhere, we’re of course partial to Getaway. Let yourselves escape the city, put your phones away, and reconnect in nature together.
From experience, I believe Sisters who travel together create a stronger bond! After multiple vacations together, we were ready to book another trip come the new year. Many sponsored Instagram Getaway ads later… we decided to be adventurous and give it a shot. It seemed like an easy, stress-free trip that was booked with one touch on their site!
My Sister, Taylee, and I have a great relationship. We are both so different in so many ways and make each other laugh more than I thought was possible. We’re 2 out of 6 kids in our family and hope to bring the rest of the siblings back to the Getaway cabins soon.
Cooking meals together in the cabin was the highlight of the Getaway. The cabins seem small from the outside, but once you’re inside, they’re spacious and perfect! Enough room to have your own space yet close enough to talk, bond, and spend quality time together.
Waking up, looking out the window at the sunrise peeking through the trees was something we didn’t take for granted. WOW! Our morning nature walks were also a big hit! The beauty of nature is untouched. We would then head back to cook breakfast together while we listened to the radio. I’m reminiscing on the good times as I write about it. So good!!
The Getaway book was a huge surprise! Like, seriously! I can’t tell you the last time Taylee and I even touched a book (before our Getaway). We are more knowledgeable than before after reading THE BOOK. We didn’t think we liked reading until I picked it up the first day, thinking it had some info about the cabin. Let me tell you; it had a lot more than that! Advice that has stuck with us and information that actually makes sense. I started by opening the book to a random page and reading it in my head. I found myself reading on to the next page and so on. Taylee stopped me and asked if I would start reading it out loud so she could hear what I was so intrigued by. We had to pause and make dinner, but right after, we picked the book back up! We started taking turns reading each chapter, and by the end of our Getaway, we had completed the book. From asking questions to explaining what different inferences meant to one another, we learned so much! We’ve used so many things from the book post Getaway and have seen real improvements!! You’ll have to read it to understand. We even want to order the book so we can reread it. It was that great!
We didn’t want to leave our cabin. You’d think that we would be sick of each other by the time we had to go, but that wasn’t the case with Getaway. We wanted more quality sister bonding without a schedule, work, phone calls, texts, and social media. So refreshing and good for the soul. We WILL be booking another getaway. We’re thinking about flying somewhere and booking a getaway cabin in another state! My sister and I would love to get ‘unplugged’ in every state where Getaway offers their cabins!
Cheers to new adventures and sister trips, highly encouraged!
Ready to escape with your favorite sibling? Book your Getaway today.
I’m Tatiana – I’m a 32 year old fur mom who works on digital marketing ads by day and all things creative by night. When I’m not searching through the internet for the latest digital trends, I’m cuddling with my 4-month old puppy Lucky, painting, taking care of my plants, or writing blog posts about what interests me in my spare time. My amazing girlfriend Sarina is also 32 years old. When she’s not risking her life daily, performing essential work throughout this pandemic, she’s a wordplay genius (freestyle queen, for the culture), teaching me about how to maintain life balance, and/or being creative in some magical *mystical way (modeling, sketching drawings – you name it, she can do it all).
Processed with Focos
Sarina and I decided to go on a Getaway together, because we absolutely LOVE nature, and we needed an escape from the daily noise. It’s already bad enough that we had to alter our lives to be super secluded over the past year, but we typically take at least one vacation a year, and COVID-19 put those plans on pause. I looked into Getaway – Yas! About a year or so ago, I found out about this amazing tiny cabin experience in nature, and I thought, “We need to disconnect. This is perfect.” Not to mention, Sarina’s birthday was coming up, so we thought this would be a perfect birthday trip for her. We also needed a break from the day-to-day stresses from work, listening to the news, and really wanted to spend some alone time together. Needless to say, we were very excited to book our trip! We searched and landed on our dream tiny home in upstate New York (Getaway Eastern Catskills).
My girlfriend, Sarina, and I have known each other since high school, and are from the same neighborhood *blushing*. However, we never crossed paths, although our lives were parallel in so many ways. We reconnected a few times throughout our early 20s, and we had to grow through life lessons individually for a while before we divinely connected to become *love life partners. It was just so fluid. When our flirty 30s rolled around, we reconnected once more (after I slid in her DMs), and the rest was history. She is THE ONE for me, and I absolutely love this woman with every fiber of my being, so I was super excited to spend the weekend with her in our tiny cabin with our puppy, Lucky.
When it comes to nature, we love everything about it. Sarina and I first bonded on my roof in our old apartment, and I fell in love with her AND the stars in those moments. We watch the Moon and try to guess star constellations all the time. Hiking (when the weather permits), is one of our favorite pastimes, and we absolutely love the flowers (and chipmunks). If we ever had the opportunity to just live rent-free, comfortably in nature forever, we would do it, so this escape was everything for us.
Some of our favorite moments during our Getaway were:
Cuddling up in the bed, doing absolutely nothing but staring out of the window and looking into the trees. The huge window makes it so lovely, because you definitely feel like you’re in a tree house nestled in nature.
We also love photography, so we really enjoyed capturing these moments together in the woods (and have the pictures to prove it).
Sarina especially loved building a fire for the first time. I personally, really enjoyed making s’mores – yum!
The Cell Phone Lockbox was a nice touch. We appreciated the way that the cabin was set up for us, to really disconnect. Even though there was no direct contact with anyone, the staff communicated with us through notes, emails and text messages to provide all of the details we needed. They were SO friendly.
Within the cabin we found a variety of books to read, and the bluetooth (analog display) music player was super cute! We love music, so once we connected, the vibes were so chill throughout the entire weekend.
My girlfriend is also a really great cook, so we definitely enjoyed eating the fabulous fire-grilled dinner that she prepared for us right outside of our cabin, *chef’s kiss.
There are times when work, and so many other factors of life, can contribute to stress and massive amounts of anxiety. I know so many of us dealing with worries and concerns, outside of the pandemic. I am one of them, so this experience not only brought us closer together, it cleared my head. I truly needed to unwind, and disconnect in order to let go and release all of the tension I had built up from overworking myself. I am so grateful for that moment of clarity and balance. I also feel so fortunate to spend time in nature with the one that I love, in our favorite place, with our fur baby. My girlfriend and I felt at peace when we left, and we recommended it to all of our friends.
Life can be what you make it. Even with ‘outside’ being closed, you can still maintain presence and enjoy all that life has to offer you in this moment. When you ground yourself, you find so much weight lifted. What better way to do that, than to spend it tucked away in nature. After returning home from our stay, we already began talking about booking our next extended weekend to unwind, because — it’s very necessary and #SelfCare. The cabin is comfortable, warm, cozy, fully stocked with the essentials, and perfect for a weekend for two. We fell in love all over again, and will certainly be back to create more memories with our camera.
I walked in carrying our youngest child and took a deep breath. We were finally here, again.
The kids already made themselves at home—giggling, rolling around on the beds, and claiming their beds for the night. We were welcomed to the warm cabin with a sweet note on the table for us along with a s’mores kit waiting for our kids. I look around the familiar cabin and it’s a similar feeling you get when you finally see a good friend you haven’t seen in a long time. The kind of friendship where your conversation picks up right where you left off, and nothing has changed.
Getaway is a place much like a friendship that we look forward to seeing each year. Our family settles in quickly and we just pick up right where we left off—my husband starts a fire outside, I heat up milk on the stove for hot chocolate, and the kids station themselves by the large window and stare into the woods.
A few years ago, our family started a tradition. We drive 2 hours away from the city and to the Getaway. Our first trip started in 2018 to take a step back from a busy season—a retreat for our family to intentionally spend time with each other.
It’s always been our uninterrupted time together and the memories we have that pulls us to go back every year but this past year was different. It was the feeling of normalcy that we craved that made us want to escape.
Summer vacation, a trip to visit cousins, travel plans for our 10 year anniversary, birthday celebrations, Friendsgiving, and Christmas with family. These were some of the traditions we had to let go this past year—some by choice in exchange for safety and others taken away from us because of the pandemic.
This past year prematurely forced us to accept loss, disappointment and fear. It showed us how uncertain this life is and we needed to remind ourselves that our happiness is not rooted or dependent on our current circumstances.
We were at home, everyday, together. Even though we were always together, we spent most of our days next to each other and not necessarily spending time with one another. Like many, we did our best to fill up the extra time after online school and work at home by learning to cut hair, baking sourdough bread, finishing up home projects, starting up new hobbies while picking back up old hobbies. Much of our time was spent trying to fill a seemingly unfillable void, finding things to distract us as we desperately wanted 2020 to end.
I had received an email from the Getaway one morning carefully detailing their safety regulations and protocols for their cabins. Out of curiosity, I pulled up the dates for our location and saw an opening. I booked it almost immediately and texted my husband who was in the middle of a Zoom meeting.
Being able to go on this trip meant more than just leaving the house. It was more than keeping a tradition. Our family got a chance to regroup and reflect on 2020, individually and as a family.
Disconnecting from our devices allowed us to talk to our older children about how they’ve been feeling and shared some of their favorite moments from the year. The uninterrupted time let us enjoy our children’s company as we hiked together in the snow.
My husband took the bags out to the car and our children did one last check around the cabin to see if they left anything. I caught our daughter lingering and looking out the window saying, “See you next time, Virginia (our cabin’s name)! I’ll miss you!” Needless to say, we’re looking forward to our Getaway in 2021.
Ready to escape to nature and start a new tradition with your family? Book your Getaway today.
Gifting can be hard, so we have curated a collection of meaningful gifts to give this Valentine’s Day. Think your less traditional chocolates and flowers, and more thoughtful ways to bring you both together.
There’s a special thing we like to say about going on a Getaway, which is that we provide you with everything you need and nothing you don’t. Gift giving can be a challenge in that respect – why clutter with more “things,” when really the ultimate gift is just one another? That’s why we’ve compiled a very short list of some very no frills things that will surprise, delight, and reconnect you with your loved one – whether it’s a partner, a child, or maybe even just falling more deeply in love with yourself.
Monthly Plant Subscription
As minimalist houseplant company, The Sill, tries to remind us, plants make people happy. Bring a piece of the natural world inside and give your partner (and/or yourself) the ongoing gift of greenery. Learn how to tend to a plant, and bask in that humid glow.
Savor those special moments. Buy a photo book and fill it with cherished places, artifacts, and memories you’ve spent together. Bonus points if you leave space for your future adventures together.
There’s that not-quite-yet tired cliche that food is the language of love. Gift a cooking class and learn how to create delicious meals for each other from scratch.
Try the handmade pasta class at Taste Buds Kitchen or check out the vegan options at Natural Gourmet Institute.
Time Spent Together
The best thing about Valentine’s Day is spending time together. Give the gift of an unforgettable few days of disconnection, a stay when time seems to stretch right before your very eyes.
We believe in getting back in touch with what matters, especially time with loved ones. There’s no better time to celebrate and reconnect than Valentine’s Day.
One thing we love hearing after our guests have returned from their Getaways is that they connected more deeply with their partner, their sibling, their parent, their friend, once they were away from their daily distractions. It seems inevitable that with time away from screens and stress, and time spent in nature, we start reflecting on larger themes and questions in our lives, and we start asking our loved ones deeper questions.
Here are some of our favorite questions to ask to get to know our family and friends better.
What is your favorite childhood memory?
If you could’ve been born anywhere else, where would you have wanted to grow up, and why?
What’s your go-to stress reliever?
What songs have you memorized?
If your life was a book or a movie, what would the title be, and why?
What song, movie, or book has meant the most to you, and why?
Describe your perfect weekend.
What is something you really want to learn, and why?
What is your favorite place that you’ve traveled to, and why?
If you could become bilingual in another language right now, what language would you choose?
Which if your friends or family do you look up to most?
What were some of your favorite hobbies when you were a kid, and what are your favorite hobbies now?
What’s your favorite city, and why?
Where is your favorite place in nature, and why?
What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done?
What pets did you have when you were growing up?
What’s the most important element to strong friendships?
What’s something small that always makes your day better?
What food couldn’t you live without?
What’s your most-worn piece of clothing?
What’s the most impressive thing you know how to do?
What’s one question that you’d most like to know the answer to?
What’s something that you think everyone should do in their lives?
Who inspires you?
What are your favorite smells?
What’s something you’ll never do again?
What’s the most memorable gift you’ve received? What’s the most memorable gift that you’ve given?
What are you most grateful that your parents taught you?
What are your favorite and least favorite things about getting older?
What’s one responsibility you wish you didn’t have?
What’s the best and worst advice you’ve ever received?
What small gestures from strangers have meant the most to you?
What personality traits do you value the most?
What do you bring with you wherever you go?
Who was your most interesting teacher in high school or college?
What question have you not asked me?
What is the most amazing true story you’ve ever heard?
Want to reserve some time off in nature to ask someone these questions? Book your Getaway today.
My cousin, Jackie, gave me a call one night and asked me, “Do you want to go camping for my birthday?” To give you some backstory, Jackie is ten years younger than me, but she’s like the sister I never had. Even though we live thousands of miles apart, we always make time to chat or FaceTime one another. When she told me, she wanted to go camping, my initial reaction was “of course!” But we’re two city girls who barely know how to set up a tent ha-ha. Of course, she didn’t mean camping-camping, but rather Getaway. It’s a short drive outside the Austin city limits where I live with my husband and our two pups. I’ve been wanting to book a Getaway for quite some time but never had the chance to. We wasted no time in booking our Getaway and the planning began!
One of the things we both have in common is that we are huge foodies. Jackie lives in Brooklyn and I’m in Austin, so there’s no shortage of incredible food in both cities. But when we get together, we always have to cook at least one meal together. There’s a certain connection to be made over a home cooked meal and an ice-cold Ranch Water (look it up 😊). So, the majority of our planning was mainly focused on the menu. We planned on some steak kabobs for dinner and some Challah French toast for breakfast. We were also excited because there’s a fire pit outside the cabin and you know what that means: s’mores for dessert!
Other than the opportunity to cook good food together, the allure of Getaway was the ability to get away from it all. We have both worked from home during this pandemic, and the opportunity to shut off email, and put phones away was too good to be true. But it absolutely is. There’s even a box to place your phone! And when we mention quiet, we really mean it. We heard nothing. It’s so still, it’s unreal. And when night falls, I’ve never seen so many stars in the sky. Jackie and I were able to sit outside by the fire with a cold drink in hand and just enjoy each other’s company. No browsing social media or “playing” with your phone. Just two people surrounded by nature, enveloped in the light of a campfire. I get chills just thinking about it. I felt it really recharged my batteries and it was so nice to get away and enjoy the outdoors. There’s also a sense of comfort because Getaway provides everything you need inside the house. I’ve never started a campfire before in my life. But Getaway makes that easy for you.
The night we arrived we made easy, yet delicious steak Kabobs on the grill.
Steak and Pineapple Kabobs
Ingredients:
1lb skirt steak or flank steak
1 ½ cups fresh pineapple
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
1 small Red onion
Mushrooms
Marinade:
½ cup olive oil
½ cup coconut aminos
1 Tbsp garlic powder
1 Tbsp onion powder
1 Tsp pepper
1 Tsp salt
Directions:
In a medium bowl whisk together all the ingredients for the marinade. Next , add the cubed steak to marinade and toss to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and let it marinate for at least an hour or more.
Once the meat has marinated, thread it onto the skewers.
Cook directly over the grill or you can even use aluminum foil as a base
I wanted to make something really special for Jackie’s Birthday and the best way I know how is to make a delicious breakfast. I decided to make her Challah French Toast with some eggs and berries.
Challah French Toast
Ingredients:
4 thick cut slices of Challah bread
1 Tbsp Coconut oil
1 cup Almond Milk
2 Eggs
½ Tsp Vanilla Extract
½ Tsp Ground cinnamon
⅓ cup coconut sugar
Directions:
In a medium size bowl whisk together all the ingredients except the coconut oil and challah bread. Whisk until fully combined (no streaks of egg remaining.)
Melt 1 tablespoon of coconut oil in a large pan over medium heat. Next soak the challah bread one by one for about 1 min or until completely soaked.
Brown both sides of the bread to a nice golden color.
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