Highlights from My Recent Press Trip to Nantucket

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a press trip in Nantucket, Massachusetts that was hosted by the CerconeBrownCompany PR & marketing team. Over the last several years in June, I’ve attended the IDEA World Fitness Convention in Anaheim, and since I was missing it this year, the CBC Summer House trip sounded like the perfect alternative for me to get my pulse on newly released products in the health, food, and lifestyle worlds.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with Nantucket, it’s a little summer destination island off Cape Cod, Mass. I had been wanting to visit there, and it definitely was the quintessential New England island that I was envisioning! Lots of cedar-shingled houses, beachy vibes, cobblestoned streets full of cute shops and restaurants, and preppy New Englanders sporting their I-just-got-off-a-boat attire.

The CBC team did a great job of hosting myself and several other writers and editors in the food and lifestyle spaces, and I thought that today I’d share some of the highlights from my trip!

Bose now offers audio enabled sunglasses. We all know Bose as a brand that offers top-notch audio products, and during the trip I was introduced to their latest innovation: audio enabled sunglasses.

The glasses pair to your phone via Bluetooth to play audio right within the frames. The cool part is that the user hears rich, immersive sound, but if the person next to you is listening to music with them, you can hardly hear an inkling of it – even less so if there’s background noise wherever you are.

I got to take home a pair that I’ve tested out while on walks with my dog. While I wish they were sweat resistant so that they could be worn without worry during outdoor workouts, the quality of the audio and fact that I don’t have to wear anything in my ears (headphones seem to never fit me right) is awesome. My husband has been trying to steal them from my possession because he thinks they’re so cool!

Boat riding at sunset. I mean, need I say more? You never have to ask me twice to hop on a boat on a nice night for a relaxing ride!

The excursion was hosted by Discover Boating, a national campaign to help people get out on the water and experience the fun of boating. It’s been shown that being near water produces a positive physiological shift in us that promotes better health and wellness. I can definitely attest to this, because after living in California for 10 years, I had a hard time spending last winter in the northeast not going for walks, doing yoga, and having picnics on the beach and being able to enjoy gazing at the ocean for months!

Home Depot now makes bomb outdoor furniture. My first night of the trip, Home Depot hosted an outdoor happy hour + dinner event where all of the furniture and decor used was from Home Depot’s outdoor line.

If you’re like me, when you moved into your first place where you had room for outdoor loungers, tables, and chairs, you were excited… until you started looking and realized that outdoor furniture is generally wildly overpriced. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Home Depot’s patio furniture line is reasonably priced and full of adorable pieces I would totally purchase for my home. I especially like their modern sets, so I know where I’ll be looking when I need my patio furniture replaced!

(Also, Home Depot is currently having a 4th of July sale if you’re in the market!) 

Essentia’s supercharged ionized alkaline water doesn’t just sound fancy, it could actually rehydrate your body more efficiently. A study done on the effectiveness of the brand’s “overachieving H2O”  showed that rehydrating with Essentia was more effective than rehydrating with a leading bottled water.

As someone with a super active lifestyle, I feel like I’m always drinking water and constantly thirsty, so I’m interested in this rehydration factor. I may do an experiment of hydrating just with Essentia for a period of time and writing a piece about the results sometime in the future – once I’m not pregnant, mom to a newborn or breastfeeding (Let’s be honest, there’d be too many external factors with all of that going on!).

Relaxing on the beach in Nantucket. While the other ladies of the group had a surf lesson, I laid on the beach with my baby bump and relaxed on Nobadeer Beach. It was the one day of the trip when the weather was nice – close to perfect – and SwimUSA hosted a delicious beach lunch, as well as provided us ladies with bathing suit options for the trip.

Making appetizers with Grapes from California. Did you know that 99% of U.S. table grapes are produced in CA? Not surprising since Cali is the perfect climate for grape growing (as well as wine growing and the farming of so many other crops that we enjoy throughout America on the daily)!

During the trip, Grapes from California hosted a demo that gave me a few fun ideas for easy grape appetizers to whip up. I also discovered that I love frozen grapes during this demo, so I’ve started freezing grapes at home to enjoy as a refreshing snack!

My favorite appetizer of the day, which I will definitely be making sometime soon, was the above pictured goat cheese + sliced grapes + green onion crackers. So simple, yet so good!

Biossance mini facials. The last morning of the trip, we were treated to mini facials using Biossance‘s plant-based, sustainable skincare products. I started getting regular facials around 6 months ago and have been really enjoying treating my skin well through those treatments, and I’m interested in cleaning up my beauty routine more, so it was fun to learn more about the Biossance line.

Biossance uses vegan nontoxic formulas and sets high clean beauty standards, so I wasn’t surprised to find that my sensitive skin was not at all bothered by their products. I got to take home some products to experiment with using, and I adore their new Squalane + Vitamin C Rose Mask!

My trip to Nantucket for the CBC Summer House experience was a lot of fun and very informative! Thanks a lot to the CBC team for having me, to all of the awesome brands that hosted great events during the trip, and to Demi Ward for her wonderful photography that I used in this post!

Tell me… Have you ever been to Nantucket? Questions/comments about any of the products I mentioned?