CBC Summer House Experience with Under Armour, TomTom, Miracle Suit, and Vineyard Vines

On Tuesday, I arrived in Nanctucket for the Cercone Brown Company Summer House. I first met the CBC team in 2007 while working with Bethenny Frankel and finally got the invite myself this year. CBC invites magazine editors to stay at a rented house for 2-3 days while testing out their client’s products. Since they have a mix of products, fashion, beauty, accessories, home and more, the editors come from all verticals. My group had editors from Women’s Health, Glamour, Lucky and Complex as well as other web based outlets like Refinery 29, SheFinds.com and the Huffington Post. I was beyond excited that Vineyard Vines, one of my favorite stores, is a client.

Miracle Suit is also a client. Their suits are all one pieces that promise to help you “lose 10 lbs in 10 seconds.” While I’m not a one-piece kinda gal yet, I’m seriously considering rocking this one I got on the beach this summer. Since it was requested in the comments, you can buy this Magic Suit Solid Leah Ruffled Tank 1 Piece
on Amazon. It looks really cute on and was super flattering. The size they gave me was an 8 and fit pretty well, but the 6 sucked me in more.

Miracle Suit sponsored our first activity, sailing around the Nantucket Sound. It was a beautiful night to go on the boat. We had Allagash Beer and wine from Chateau St Michele featuring their new line called Anew. Anew is Riesling, a kind that is usually too sweet for me, but I liked it. It was crispy, fruity and light, perfect for summer happy hour.

Gabby in the middle is the fashion market editor at Women’s Health and Julee is the style and beauty editor at the Huffington Post.

After our sail, we went to dinner at Slip 14 with Miracle Suit. I ordered the scallops for dinner and split an amazing calamari appetizer. For a cocktail, I enjoyed a skinny margarita with strawberry puree before switching to white wine.

The next morning, my buddies from Surfset fitness came to put us through a workout. It was my third experience on the board and my favorite yet. You can’t compete with an outdoor workout on a beautiful day. 

Under Armour sponsored the workout as well as a tasting with The Ripe Stuff and lunch catered by a Taste of Nantucket afterwards. The clothes naturally were provided by UA as well. The white tank is a racer back burnout with cheetah print. We were all pretty obsessed with it.

While in Nantucket, it’s kind of essential to go for the seafood option which was lobster salad. There was an amazing blueberry salad and gazpacho that I wish I had the recipe for. The gazpacho was seriously the best I think I have ever tasted. It was straight up drinkable.

After lunch, we went strawberry picking compliments of Seventh Generation who is coming out with a line of natural skin boosting serums which are essentially moisturizers made from 100% plant oils. The strawberries are grown organically at Bartlett Farm and like wise all Seventh Generation products are environmentally friendly and aim to reduce toxins that you are putting on your skin.

After strawberry picking, we stopped by my favorite place on earth, the Cisco Brewery! I had my favorite Bloody Mary made with a horseradish and garlic infused vodka. If you come to Nantucket, it’s not an official visit unless you come to the brewery in my opinion. They don’t sell food but they have beer, wine, mixed drinks, bean bag toss and now a food truck from the famous Millie’s which makes amazing tacos. You can bring your own snacks too!

After a much needed shower and rest, we headed to a cocktail party hosted by Vineyard Vines where we drank their signature cocktail, a Dark and Stormy. The PR gals from VV as you would expect looked perfectly put together in their pretty cocktail dresses, like the models in their catalogs. I wore a dress I bought at Marshalls before leaving the main land  so I didn’t look like a scrub in front of the fashion editors.

We ate dinner at CRU which has become one of my favorite restaurants. They have the best calamari. We shared a variety of appetizers and I ordered the swordfish entree.

Our last activity came this morning courtesy of TomTom. They are debuting a new GPS watch that will be available soon. They are two different watches, one is a running watch and the other is multi sport. The multi tracks running, biking and swimming, perfect for triathletes. It syncs up with a bluetooth heart rate monitor as well but does not come with one.

We only used the watch for a mile run but here are the things I like about the watch:

-Picks up a GPS signal really quick. This is a pain in the butt in the city. Usually it takes me about 5-10 minute with my Polar.

-You can race against yourself! It allows you to choose a previous workout to compete with. For example, if you used the TomTom Multi Sport for a half marathon you could wear it the next race and compete with the previous time that you got. I thought this was really cool and a feature not many watches have. It allows you to set your own personal goals and it keeps you accountable while you run.

-You can wear it swimming to track your swim distance! I do not have anything that I can use like this. It is waterproof up to 150 feet.

I reviewed PEAR a few weeks ago, and it’s a good complement in my opinion if you are a nerd about pace, distance and knowing your heart rate at all times. The Pear is great for workouts and training but when it comes time to race, this watch would be helpful for staying on target for a PR. All these devices are not required to be fit, train or lose weight but they sure are fun for those of us that love numbers and are always trying to reach our next goal.

So, the next time you see a TomTom watch in a magazine like Women’s Health and wonder if they’ve ever used it, now you know they probably have! I have companies send me products to try on my own all the time, but the CBC Summer House was amazing and gave us all a full experience of their client’s products. I have some more goodies, I’m excited to share with you.

Did you know this type of experience existed for magazine editors (and now bloggers) before? For more experience details, check out my Instagram!