KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON: celebrations

Happy Monday, everyone!

How was your weekend? Three words to describe mine would be it went by: way.too.fast. This would be one of those times I'd love to have a rewind button. I heard there were record breaking highs in the weather all around the U.S, so I'm sure most of us had gorgeous weather. Atleast, I hope so! :) The weather was 75-80 here all weekend and I'm pretty sure it was the best weather we've had for St. Patrick's Day since I've been born. Maybe even longer.

There were so many fun things to celebrate this weekend so let's exactly what I did...celebate all weekend long. Who doesn't like celebrating things?! Obviously, it was St. Patrick's Day on Saturday, but it was also Holly's birthday (at midnight) so we combined the two. We started the celebrations on Saturday around noon at a local Mexican restaurant (hello..patio, sun, and Corona's) and gave Holly her gifts, had the staff sing..err..chant..a birthday song to Holly, followed up with a shot of tequila. After lunch, we spent the entire rest of the day and evening at Flannagans. Flannagans had the biggest St. Patrick's Day celebration in Ohio..2 stages with bands, an outdoor area with food stands, tables on the sand volleyball courts, and hundreds of people. Pretty legit, my friends. Alicia got all the girls hooked on the band, The Personnel (from Chicago), and they were playing at 7pm & 9pm, so we decided to stay to watch them then head home. So glad we ~~lasted all day~~ we stayed to see them play because they rocked it, and we took shots with them in between their performances haha ;) If you live in Chicago or if the Personnel ever comes to your city {they travel around Ohio a lot!}, definitely go see them play! They are awesome.

Anyways, let me just say this...this St. Patrick's Day definitely took the cake for best celebration in many, many years.

I'm going to let the pictures do the speaking today...

{my blouse and green crops are both from F21..}

...are you surprised? Green staches are the new thing... ;)

Bottom right: Two of the boys of the Personnel - Seth (left) & Sean (right).

See that green/white bracelet Sean is wearing?

That may or may not be mine.

#loveit

...and what would a celebration be

without a photobooth session?

This same photobooth company (Columbus Photobooth) we used for our wedding and the owners are awesome and let my girls and I get a free session. They gave each of us girls a free printout of the pics to take home with us.. :)

Moving along to Sunday--

My girlfriend Rachel's first baby shower!

All of our close girlfriends from high school were there and we had so much fun together. Rachel is the first out of our close friends to have a baby, so we are all so excited for her!! Rachel looked adorable and so happy.

{my girlfriend Genna made Rachel this ribbon wreath in her nursey colors and she's going to hang the babies first initial letter in the middle of it :)}

Phew.

I'm seriously tired just recaping all of this ;)

+Of course, I cheered on my BUCKEYES all weekend long as well.

Who has them in the Final Four?!

..you better :)

Ohio has FOUR teams in the Sweet Sixteen this year!! Isn't that amazing?

I can't wait to see what you all did this weekend!

Xo.

Alright, ladies.
(and the few gents who read my blog-aka Billy & Beau)

There is SO much going on this week.......

to L O V E.

and I have finally uploaded all my pictures

from Thanksgiving & other various birthday celebrations

to finish my recap today!

Let's chat about all these celebatory reasons, shall we?!

#1. I got 4 Christmas presents done yesterday. This is HUGE for me...I don't remember the last time I got gifts bought before December even hit. I'm feeling prettyyyy good..don't burst my bubble for those who have all their shopping done!

#2. The VS Fashion Show last night was by far one of my favorites they have ever done. The aquatic section {along with most of the others} blew my mind and had me hoping a pair of huge wings show up under my tree for Christmas....oh, and light up tutus and bras.

Fun fact: Not many people know, but the owner of VS lives in Columbus and last year on the fashion show they played Ohio State's hang on sloopy when the girls walked down the runway for a bit! It was prettyyyyy cool, if I do say so myself ;)

#3. Did you guys also see what happened last night in sports?! #2 OSU basketball had a big game against #4 DUKE and well.....WHOMPED on them! Wasn't even close! Final score?

85-63.

No big deal.

In addition, I know you all have probably already heard, but Urban Meyer has accepted the head football position at Ohio State and obviously, everyone and their dog in our city is over the moon excited!!!!! I have even more reason to like this deal because I went to BGSU and Urban Meyer also coached at BGSU and totally turned the team around! So now, not only has he represented my college team, but now my hometown team. Let's just forget he ever coached the gators, shall we? just kidding, Florida fans. :)

I will be honest though...

I still miss my Jimmy Tressel and wish he were still the coach somewhat.

#4. I woke up to a tweet from Michael Stagliano from the Bachelorette & Bachelor pad 2. Well, he tweeted both me and Kristin, responding about his upcoming trip to Columbus {weekend of Jan 7th}. I'm still a newbie with Twitter, but this must mean I'm somewhat cool right? ~~or just that he's trying to promote his new singing career.~~ I tried to contain my excitement when I shared the news with Billy. Michael was my fav on Jillian's season and I loved him on BP2. You better believe I'm going to round up my single friends and try to "run into" him that weekend...

follow me on twitter here

#5. The Columbus blogger meet up is THIS SATURDAY! I'm so excited to meet 20-some bloggers & friends around the area..some of which I've talked to for months now. It will be so nice to put a name with a face!

...and then blog about it, of course.

Thanksgiving weekend we had a lot going on -- many many reasons to celebrate! Not only was it the yummiest holiday of all, but it was my Dad's 60th surprise birthday party, the OSU/Michigan game {let's not talk about it.}, my niece Mara's 7th birthday party, and my good friend and cousin came home from Colorado to visit. That's like celebration overload right there and I loved every minute of it.

At the same time, it was also the last party / weekend in my parents house as they are officially moved out now :( There are so many great memories from the house and I just wanted to stay there all day. My Dad's 60th party was a great way to spend the last weekend there.

the view.

the back of my parents house.

such a fun, beautiful home. I will miss it so much!

For Thanksgiving, we went to my Aunt Donna's house in Xenia/Springfield area which is about an 1 from our house. There were about 50 of our family members there and it was a grand ole time! Our thanksgiving is a whole day thing...we get there around 1pm, snack and drink for a couple hours, eat around 5pm, and don't head home until around midnight. My family always has the tradition of picking teams & playing euchre, but they also started a talent show tradition. This year, all the kids in the family got up and sang songs or did tricks they had been practicting. It was so cute!

You can kinda see all the kids sitting here. Unfortunately, I didn't take too many other pictures. Too busy eating I guess ;)

My niece Mara turned 7 and her birthday was the day after Thanksgiving. She is getting so big so quickly!! I just can't believe it..she's like a young woman and it makes me sad. Here's what I wore and pictures from the day.

{boots: Charlotte Russe, top: Target, Jeans: American Rag, belt: from another shirt, watch: La Mer collections}

the birthday girl and family pictures.

So, I've mentioned it before but for those of you that don't know..my stepbrother has quintuplets - 3 girls and 2 boys! They also have another baby who is almost 2 :) That is the quintuplet girls pictured above.

Billy playing rock paper scissors with my nephew Brady.

sigh.

The next party was my Dad's 60th surprise party. That morning of, he was still clueless even when people were showing up for the party. He knew that some of us were coming over to watch the OSU/Michigan game, but he didn't know the extent of WHO all was coming. It ended up that 60 of our closest family and friends showed up! He was so surprised. I made two big batches of cowboy cavier and it was a big hit. I also put up some pictures of when I was younger with my Dad scattered around the basement. I wouldv'e liked to do more, but I just didn't have enough time with everything going on.