Friday was sort of Christmas-esque for me. I had a special package being delivered, and I couldn’t wait for it to arrive. From the time I got home from work till the time said package arrived, I walked by the front windows of my house every few minutes looking for my delivery guy. I wanted to be ready when the Fedex truck pulled up. And ready I was. I heard his truck coming down the street (yes, from inside my house) and was waiting for him on my front doorstep as he walked up to the house. He seemed a little surprised to see me, but I’m sure that happens all the time. Right? Riiiiiiiiiight? Surely.

I happily took my package inside and started opening it – my first online order from Zara. I’ve always thought their clothes were nice, but I really fell for the brand back in November when I visited the store in San Francisco. Not only are the clothes gorgeous, they fit my awkwardly-shaped body pretty well, and you probably know how hard it can be to find a clothing line that fits.

I ordered a few things, but I’m still trying them out and seeing how they work with other items in my wardrobe. I haven’t decided which pieces I want to keep. Well, except for the studded blazer…

I had to wear the blazer immediately. I threw a quick “outfit” together as I rushed out the door to catch the mall before it closed. I decided to pair my new blazer with the same top I wore last Friday. I’m pretty sure the long-ish blazer look is not a good one for me since I’m a shorty, but…I love it too much to care. I believe the trick is pairing it with shorter bottoms, like shorts and mini skirts. Does that sound right? Surely there’s a way I can make it work. Any tips?

Hubby and I had plans to go shopping for a locket for his mom for Mother’s Day. We hit up the mall, and I brought a couple items I needed to return while we were there.

And after shopping, we continued our date at PF Changs for dinner. We love their won ton soup…

…and their spicy green beans. And we shared mu shu chicken for the main event. Yum!

Reader question: have you ever been excited for a package delivery? What did you get (care package from your mom in college, special order, etc.)?

Did you guys have a good weekend? Mine was jam-packed but with fun stuff. The laundry will just have to wait.

{Wth is wrong with my hair in this photo!? lol}

On Friday night, hubby and I went on a date.

We visited the swanky theaters at the Epicentre. I love these theaters because you can reserve your seat in advance and choose exactly where you want to sit in the theater. Oh, and the seats are super plush, oversized, and comfy, by the way.

You can even order food (not just popcorn, yo) and drinks (cocktails, etc.), which you can enjoy inside the theater. We had pizza, popcorn, and sodas and watched The Avengers. I thought the movie was really good, but I wish I’d seen all the related movies before since they hinted at them throughout the flick. Also, did anyone else think that “Jake” has come a long way since “Not Another Teen Movie?” Just me? Okay…

We weren’t quite ready to call it a night after the movie…plus, my sweet tooth was calling. So, we headed next door to the Ritz’s Bar Cocoa for dessert.

The prices are surprisingly reasonable on the sweets – about $1.25 for a truffle up to $22 for a whole cake.

We did not buy a whole cake. We did get two macarons and a cupcake for under $6.

We found a cozy seat next to the dessert bar and enjoyed some live music. The place was pretty packed!

{pistachio macaron}

{chocolate cupcake to share}

{red wine to go with the chocolate}

Date night was so fun. I think we’re going to have to repeat this one again soon!

***

By the way, thanks for the suggestions on my last outfit. I’m going to try those out…as soon as I get that laundry done.

***

Reader question: What did you do this past weekend? Do you have any affordable date night ideas?

As if Saturday wasn’t fun-filled enough already…

…we got a surprise on Sunday that Bailey was really excited about – an impromptu visit by my parents to help us with our house, namely the yard.

But first, I headed out for Caitlin’s bebe shower.

Caitlin’s shower was at FABO, which was a gorgeous venue – so colorful!

The shower was put together so well – from the cool straws to the great refreshments. I really liked the game they played where Caitlin had to pull random baby-items from a bag and guess what they’re used for. I had fun guessing what they were used for, too, since I hadn’t seen most of the objects before. Hey, maybe if I attend enough baby showers, I won’t be quite so baby-clueless.

And do you see that hat on Caitlin’s head? Her mom made that baby-shower-themed-hat for her! I talked to her about how she made it, and she was so proud of her creation. It was really sweet and a fun touch to the shower.

After the shower, I headed back to the Chic house to help out in the yard. We pulled weeds and did basic clean-up. You know…stuff most people know but our house-clueless selves need guidance doing.

I treated my parents to dinner to thank them for their help. We went to Mama Ricotta’s.

The rolls were hard to resist. I definitely had a couple, dipped into their red pepper olive oil.

And for eats, we got 2 family-style entrees – this penne with chicken, broccoli and a lemon cream sauce. It came out piping hot with al dente penne. It was mouth-wateringly good (as in, my mouth is watering thinking about it while I blog…yum!).

The family favorite was angel hair with meatballs, which i really enjoyed, too.

My parents really loved the meal, which made me happy. It was the least I could do before they had to head back home for the night.

Reader question: What did you do this weekend? Anything fun?

After my Zumbatomic training, I went home, baked up a double-batch of dough balls (that I prepped the night before), got ready, and headed out to meet up with some friends for a casual dinner…old-school-style.

{Jason with Carson, hubby, Matt with Liam, and Nate}

{Caitlin, me, Kate, and Kath}

We haven’t been able to get together with our whole group together since Kath moved, so we were really excited to see everyone…

…plus a couple adorable, new additions.

Nate was our grill-master.

{The spread}

We did a traditional pot-luck and had quite the spread.

{Chardonnay for moi}

I had a little bit of everything – salad, quinoa salad, grilled veggies, and a cheese burger. Everything was delicious as always!

{Liam & Kath}

For dessert, I brought sugar cookie dough balls (click for recipe) (sans the drizzle frosting), and Kath & Matt brought lots of Great Harvest goodness – muffins, scuffins, and Savannah bars.

A little bit of everything – watermelon, a dough ball, plus some Savannah bar.

I definitely picked up a couple more pieces of Savannah bar over the night – they were so good!

It’s funny how you can go for a long time without seeing your friends and when you see them next, it’s like time never passed. We had so much fun catching up with everyone’s recent life changes – from family additions to work. We’re definitely going to have to do this again soon!

Reader question: What’s your favorite thing to bring to a pot-luck?

A great game night should include the following: a fun game, a delicious meal, and a dance off.

Wait.

Oh, that’s just what we did with our game night this past weekend.

My friend Erica and I hosted a game night at The Chic House.

Our friends aren’t the biggest fans of cooking, but we had a great solution. Erica made chili, I was in charge of corn bread, and we asked everyone else to simply bring chili toppings. Okay, so we also asked my friend Sarah to make her famous cheesecake, but other than that, we left things pretty simple.

I had a bowl of chili with onions (a first for me, and it was awesome) and plenty of cheese.

And Erica does her chili Cincinati-style – with pasta. It’s a pretty awesome way to eat chili, and I definitely recommend it, if you’ve never tried it.

Dessert included Sarah’s cheesecake and some chocolate chip dough balls I whipped up earlier that day.

After eating, the gaming began. The word box was definitely my least favorite, while the drawing one was my most favorite. I’m pretty terrible at real trivia, but luckily, my other teammates picked up my slack on the red box. And Sarah and I split up the green box, which made for an interesting show.

My favorite moment was probably when Sarah chose a green card and kept making faces after reading it that screamed, “I have no idea how to act out this person.” She sighed, lifted up her arms and went “RAWR!” My teammate Amy screamed “The Hulk!”, and I followed up with “Shrek!” As it turns out, Shrek was correct. I still can’t believe we won that round in about 3 seconds from her interesting impersonation.

After my team lost, we held a quick Jekyll dance-off. Okay, it randomly came about, but it was still pretty awesome. I’d never seen “the Jekyll” before, but we convinced Shamecia’s SO to show us, and after some serious pleading, he gave in. I tried to find a YouTube video of what this dance looks like, but I can’t find one. It’s sorta similar to what this guy looks like after he drinks his concoction – think shaky hands. It’s a joke dance…sort of like “The Bernie.” You’ve seen that one, right?

***

By the way, thanks for the sweet comments on my last outfit post!

***

Reader question: What’s your favorite board game?

Confession time, people – I am baby clueless.

I’m going to go ahead and place blame on my parents for not having more family friends over to the house and not exposing me to other children at a younger age. In their defense, my mom’s family is in the Philippines, and my dad’s family is pretty much all up north, so we didn’t have much family around growing up. But, my dad traveling for work didn’t help. I mean, it’s hard to have friends over when you’re not there, right? But in all seriousness, I really am jealous of the 12 year olds (and other kiddos) I see walking around helping their mom’s or mom’s friends out with their infants. They know how to hold them, change their diapers, and make them giggle. At 12, they already know more than I do about babies. *sigh* It’s not that I don’t want to know more about them, I just don’t. Someone please tell me that this doesn’t mean I will be a failure whenever I decide to finally become a mother. *fingers crossed*

Anywho, I went to my friend’s baby shower this past week, and in the tradition of all busy, working girls (ok, maybe it’s just me), I stopped on the way to the shower to pick up a gift.

Ahh…the baby superstore (aka store of confusion for the baby-clueless). I always feel so lost in these places. Luckily, these stores usually have a really great registry system and helpful people to show you exactly where things are so you don’t get too lost.

Dog toys? Not so much.

I’ll get the hang of this one day.

They had a really great drink at the shower – champagne punch. It’s basically strawberry slices, a bottle of champagne, and a can of Fresca. If you let the strawberries sit in the cup for awhile, they get all zippy, which makes them really fun to eat.

{The spread}

They had a great assortment of food.

The shower was from 3-5 and I’d already eaten lunch, so I got a little bit of a couple things to taste. I especially liked the chicken salad and bean salad.

And who doesn’t love a cupcake?

I know I do!

The baby shower was lovely. Everyone was so friendly, and the vibe was super low key and comfortable.

They even had fun games. This is my all-time favorite baby shower game – gift -BINGO! We played this while my friend opened her gifts. If she opened a gift on your sheet, you got to ‘X’ it. Unfortunately, I didn’t win, but I did have a great time playing at least!!

Reader question: Are you baby clueless or a baby expert? Or maybe somewhere in between? Any other baby-clueless peeps who now have babies? Tell me there’s hope for me!!

Did you do anything fun for St. Patrick’s Day? I actually ended up having a pretty busy weekend…

After a full work day on Friday, I headed out with friend and fellow Zumba instructor, Sarah, to represent our dance-fitness company at a local charity Zumbathon for ALS.

The Zumbathon was a huge success – the place was packed and had guest appearances from ZES Renee Pickett and ZJs Andrea Riggs and Erica Dixon. The event was a whopping 3 hours long, and Sarah and I got to shut the show down by leading the last 2 songs. I did Candyman, and Sarah did Get Low (merengue version).

And for an update – I found out the event raised $1,800 for ALS! Woohoo!

***

As for Saturday…

I headed out with about 20 friends for our second annual St. Patrick’s Day Bar Crawl. Last year’s 13 hour bar crawl was more of an impromptu outing, but this year, there were thousands of people signed up to crawl from bar to bar around uptown Charlotte. I’ve heard varied reports on just how large the event ended up being. Some people say 9,000 people were signed up, while others said it was closer to 14,000. All I know is, there were people everywhere, packed into every bar around town like a giant frat party.

This year, we started a little later and ended a little earlier. The weather was gorgeous almost all day – warm and sunny like summer. We hit up about four bars, had apple-tinis and gatorade shots, enjoyed some junky eats, and played plenty of spin-the-bottle-dance-off (please see this post for a how-to). And now that I think of it, I think we did the Wobble in almost every bar we visited. Did I mention my group contained several Zumba instructors and the rest were Zumbaholics?

We actually ended the night at a decent hour – right around 10pm. The downside? Getting caught in the rain.

We had to run down several blocks in the pouring rain while onlookers yelled, “Run, Forrest, run!” (yes, they really did yell this at us). Here I am after getting home. Told ya it was raining! I am completely soaked! It was all worth the fun day, though. I had a blast!

Anywho, I came home in time to catch the end of a couple basketball games. I’m not much of a bball fan, but I always join hubby’s bracket pool, which gets me to pay attention to games and cheer for various teams I would normally not know existed. I’m currently in 2nd place. Let’s hope this lucky streak continues!

How was your weekend? Did you make any green food?

They say you shouldn’t get your hair cut immediately following a break up, but I wonder if the same can be said of a stressful situation (regardless of the cause).

I knew things were getting pretty crazy (stress-wise) in my life, but when I started considering doing this (see spikey hair-ness above) to my hair, it was more obvious to me than ever that things were off-kilter. I should probably clarify that I do still think this hair cut is pretty bada$$, but I’m not sure it would work on me.

When I laughingly mentioned the idea of the short look to my hair stylist, Jason, (tell them I sent you for a first-timer discount!), he told me I needed a vacation…not a short hair cut.

I do need a vacation, and I’m actually planning one (yesssssss!). In the meantime, I did NOT cut my hair short.

Instead, I did this – a pretty dramatic trim (my hair had gotten so long – I think he took off at least 7-8 inches) and a fun (and more importantly temporary) addition of a purple streak of hair. A good look for the office? Not so much. Age-appropriate? Doubtful. Fun for Zumba class? You’re d*mn skippy. Better than a super-short hair cut that would take forever to grow out? You know it!

Anywho, all this rambling to say I’m hoping to return to regular blogging very soon. My crazy-busy work schedule is starting to let up a little. I haven’t been able to blog because the project I’ve been working on for the last three years went live two weekends ago, and I was inundated with work in the weeks approaching the go-ilve. And the weekend of go-live? I worked a regular work week up to go-live and then a little bit around 10pm on Friday, 9am/1pm/4pm/8:30pm on Saturday, and noon/4:30pm on Sunday. Phew! Things actually went pretty smoothly on my end, and I’m just helping wrap-up some post install items now. I’m almost down to 1 month left on this project, and then I go somewhere new. Where? Who knows. Time will tell.

In other news…

I managed to (slightly) injure myself (again! grr). This time, I didn’t do anything stupid at least. I think my knee (body?) is succumbing to age, use from years of figure skating, and working out when I’m already tired…plus maybe some bad posture/alignment. Anywho, I’ve been seeing a sports doctor, who has been shooting me with electricity and laser beams. Ok, not really, but he’s been treating me and…

…taping me up with Kineseo tape. Luckily, my injury wasn’t too bad, and I didn’t have to miss any Zumba classes! I got cleared to do low intensity Zumba sans squats, which was sort of a shame because I was just starting to actually enjoy doing squats in class. Weird, I know. Anywho, I’ve also been doing physical therapy and re-training my body to do squats and lunges properly. As a result, I’ve now become extra careful about doing squat and lunge-like moves in class, which is probably something I should have been doing anyways.

I do have some recipes queued up for you guys, and some new ideas for future recipes jotted down on random pieces of paper. Hopefully, I can bring some to life to share with you all soon.

Bailey says Hi!

Reader question: Have you ever done something dramatic to your hair? What did you do, and did you like it?

The steak, the steak, the steak is on fire. We don’t need no water let the…

Have I dated myself now? Please raise your hands if you get the above reference. #holla

And for those who don’t, feel free to google “the roof is on fire” (or click the link and let me google that for you)

Anywho, not sure if you follow me on Instagram, but I did post a photo of this meal yesterday after setting off the first alarm in my house cooking this steak. I think it really did almost catch on fire. Ok, so I didn’t see flames or anything, but cooking this bad boy in my cast iron skillet caused enough smoke that the alarm definitely went off. Oops.

But, the good news is that the steak was delicious. At least something positive came of it, right?

What does this have to do with TCL? I guess my dinner was about as hot a mess as I feel like my life is right now. Work is stressing me out and though my current project is almost over, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the near future. I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m an IT consultant. My company basically sends me on various projects, so when my current project ends, they will send me somewhere new. The trouble is…I have no idea where I’m going – not the customer’s company name…heck, not even the location. I could be in Alaska in a couple months for all I know. But anyways, I guess we can cross that bridge when we get there.

In the meantime, my last major project goes live in less than two weeks, and I’m counting down the days. And as I count down the days, I am guaranteed some long days and late nights. Unfortunately, with all the stress from work, TCL is getting a bit of the cold shoulder. Sorry, blog. I actually have a few cool recipes queued up to share with you guys. I had photos for a leftover-pot-roast-morphed-into-shepherd’s-pie recipe picked out, but I can’t find the darn piece of paper with my recipe notes. And then I have some fun dessert recipes (heart-shaped mini pies, a yellow cake with chocolate frosting Cake Mini, and emergency chocolate chip cookies for 2) in the pipeline, but lately sleep > blogging.

So, I have the recipes, I’m just short on time… *sigh* I’m hoping to post at least one of them soon. In the meantime, may I direct you to my Pinterest profile or my TCL Facebook page? Or maybe you should just check out the Pinterest popular page – I usually make some fun finds there.

Reader question: Have you ever (almost) caught anything on fire in the kitchen? What happened?

I’m sure you’re all waiting with bated breath to see how I’m doing with my menu plan, or Eat in Month…or what recipe I’m posting next. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to disappoint you. It seems working from 8am to 8pm is simply not conducive to blogging (or having a life…or sleeping).

As I try to shake away the work-induced zombie-like state I’m feeling at the moment so I can go to bed, let me share a teaser photo with you. I had a reader request a slow cooker beef stew, so I played around with one on Tuesday. I think I browned the beef a bit too much (stupid multi-tasking!), but overall, the stew came out pretty good.

Hope you’re all having a great week!

By the way, does anyone have any easy, weeknight recipes you’d like to share with the Eat-in-Monthers? Please leave a link to the recipe (or the recipe itself if it’s yours and you don’t have a blog), even if it’s to your blog or someone else’s blog/site.