let's play catch up: Kay's Wedding

So, I've mentioned my friend Kay getting married and talked about the bachelorette party but haven't gotten to the actual wedding yet! It was December 11, 2010 (12-11-10...cute) and it went a little something like this...

This is what the reception hall looked like before we spent the ENTIRE day decorating it ourselves! So fun!

Everyone tied and fluffed the chair cover bows :)

Adorbs

Hours and hours later!

Groom and his groomsmen at the rehearsal!My boyfriend Cody is on the far left, we met during the wedding festivities :) Such a doll.

Me and my bestie on the party bus on our way to the church the day of!

The church

 LOVE this picture...complements of my friend John since I was doing my bridesmaid thang

Bride and all the bridesmaids after the ceremony on the party bus

Gorge

Best friends since we were little kiddies

First dance as a married couple :)

And there are a million more pictures, but you get the picture!

So beautiful and so much fun.

My favorite parts:

+Meeting Cody <3

+Dancing the night away in celebration of my best friends

+Decorating the hall

+The fact that Lindsay and I were bet on that we would be the first to cry...and indeed we cried like babies

Halloween!

So, after narrowing it down to 3 Halloween costume ideas, naturally, I chose none of the above. Lindsay and I went into a costume store the day before Halloween and never have I seen 2 people display more ADD behavior. We were looking mainly at the accessories to see what kinds of costumes we could concoct and came up with a thousand ideas in a matter of minutes. Finally,  I stumbled upon a pair of white gloves and black bow tie and somehow my mind traveled to MIME!

I already had the perfect black and white striped t-shirt, black skinnys, and black pumps so there really wasn't much left to complete the ensemble.  I bought white face paint, a black béret (H&M) and some black suspenders (Hot Topic) and BAM! 

We  spent Halloween on W. 6th downtown Cleveland and had a blast! Well, our alter egos for the night (mime, magician, Chili miners, Jabawaki, Audrey Hepburn, scary old man, detective, "some one you can count on", and a surgeon) had a blast! 

I take Halloween seriously...It gives me a hall pass to be silly and act out my costume in public! I was giving performances all night- putting myself and others in invisible boxes, walking an invisible dog, fishing in an invisible lake....ohhhh yea!

Let's try this again

So we can call it hibernating? On hiatus? Being busy? Pure laziness?  Whichever....I have been MIA from blog land and I didn't realize how long it had been until I looked at my last post which was from tailgating in OCTOBER! Yikes! A LOT has gone down in the months that I have been missing...SO many missed bloggertunities (opportunities to blog...I like it! Yes I will use this!) SO I'm going to spend the rest of this week updating on any and all exciting highlights from the past 4 months (yes my paparazzi ass has plenty of pictures to share!) and then I will be a good little girl and blog regularly like I should :) 

I mean it's fun, it gives me something to look forward to, and this might sound weird...but it totally keeps me on track! When I start "being good" in one part of my life, it makes everything else fall in line! Routine baby ;) Kinda like when I start to work out again (which I'm REALLY trying to do!) then all of a sudden my room stays clean, I keep up with plucking my eyebrows... does anyone else feel me on this one? Anyone? Bueller?

So let me start precisely where I left off...

The bachelorette party went a little something like this...

After a little pregame action in the hotel, gifts for the bride to be, and of course, pin the junk on the hunk, us ladies hopped a shuttle downtown for dinner and drinks at Howl at the Moon!

The bride, her sister, my best friend, and the infamous butt pincher that I nearly over drafted my bank account to buy....but it was so worth it! (According to me anyways!) Anyone within my arms reach got pinched whether they liked it or not and not only did Lindsay confiscate it from me by the end of the night, but I also woke up with a legitimate blister from excessively pulling the trigger...Luckily no one got mad at me for the pinching...I think it had something to do with the power of the boa, but this is just a theory. Wearing a boa downtown draws a lot of attention and in my experience, excuses any drunken behavior. Party on Wayne...

Of course we got on stage and made a spectacle of ourselves...

Howl at the Moon was located right next to the "All Male Review" which is, I believe, the only male strip club in Cleveland, so naturally we wandered over there next! Ladies, do not waste your time...it sounded fun in theory but it was creepy, smelly, tacky, dirty...and none of those are adjectives you want describing any part of your girls night out, whatever the occasion. We managed to have a good time, but I think it's safe to say none of us were at all disappointed when it was time to leave.

And that's all she wrote. I'd say the first bachelorette party of my core group of best girlfriends was a success! I'm still slightly freaked out that we are at the age where getting engaged is normal! EEEEK! One of my closest girlfriends from OU just got engaged  about a week ago too, so I have another bachelorette party to plan and wedding to look forward to! This time in the Columbus area! Bring. It. ON! :)

What have you been up to? 
Any new blogs that I should be following? 

Who Dey? Dey da ones who lost to the BROWNIES :)

Once again, my weekend highlight was tailgating! It is one of my happy places, have I mentioned that? 

Backing up to Friday, I FINALLY got called for my first day of substitute teaching! Such a relief to finally be getting calls! I slept through my first phone call (due to my phone being on silent from waitressing the night before! :( I have changed my ringer to a loud obnoxious one and make sure it's on full blast each night) and I chickened out my second time getting called (because it was for seniors in high school and, let's face it, I still look 16...BUT I have vowed to accept any and all jobs that I get called for in the future, scary high school seniors included!) All this glory was almost ruined when I got a flat tire half way to the school... I held back tears and called my mom who came to my rescue! I made it to the school on time and had an awesome first day of subbing for first grade! It reminded me why I want to be a teacher and how wonderful it is to be in the classroom as opposed to a jobless post grad. I'm hoping that since I have gotten 3 calls in the past week and a half that this is a good sign!

Saturday most of the bridesmaids met with our bride-to-be (one of my best friends, Kay) and her mom to finish up some last minute shower planning, and to discuss the bachelorette party and wedding plans as well. The shower is next weekend, the bachelotette party is in 3 weeks and the wedding is now less than 3 months away on December 11! 

After our wedding planning sesh, the tailgating crew (including our husband-to-be's parents which was a fun surprise!) cuddled up and watched Paranormal Activity. I love a good scary movie, but this one was terrifying! For me anyways. If you're into scary movies I would recommend it just because it seems real and should give you a good scare, although some of us complained that it was a little slow, and I would have to agree. I think I would have had nightmares but luckily we had one big giant sleepover so I felt safe, even when Kay and Brandon's apartment was making scary noises all through the night :) 

We got up bright and early at 5 AM again to tailgate and we are now 3 for 3 for having an awesome time tailgating! We watched the game at the Blind Pig, and what made the day even more amazing was that we beat the Bengals! It's about time the Browns won a game! I'm not going to complain (much) because we won...BUT my question is where is Eric Wright's head at?! Every team we play knows damn well to cover Cribbs and their defense is on him instantly, yet Wright showed poor effort to cover T.O. when he knows (or should know) damn well that's who to cover. Imagine if Wright would actually do his job well? I mean you're only getting paid millions of dollars....you could at least pretend to try and do your homework before you hit the playing field sheesh.

Lindsay, Kay and me! Best friends :)

Cuddled up like grannies!

Love my Lindsay!

Most of the girls!

Girls flip cup team!

Pictures by the FREE stamp...Always necessary!

 Good Times! Had to borrow some of Lindsay's pictures! I wasn't the best paparazzi this time around!

"I love this city because of the hard working people that are here. It's a blue-collar town. When I think of Cleveland, I think of myself. They accept their football players with open arms and they show up every Sunday win, lose, or draw"
- Peyton Hillis {my boyfriend} ;)

Lebron who? Hillis is the man! How refreshing to have a professional sports player on a Cleveland team NOT trash talking this great city of ours and who appreciates their fans (Ahem, EDWARDS & LeBRON!)

 

Better late than never...Highlights from LAST weekend!

Up before the sun! 5 AM wake up call...arrive at 7AM! My two best friends!

All of us!

Well third times a charm I guess! The first two times I tried to blog about my tailgating experience from last weekend I got so frustrated trying to upload pictures that I quit. They wouldn't go in the order I wanted them in! GRR! So I decided not to be a quitter and let the big bad blog win and settled for just these two, although I took almost 100 pics!  Paparazzi much?

Tailgating has recently become a new happy place for me! Such a positive atmosphere and so far I'm 2 for 2 for an awesome time! We're planning on continuing to tailgate until the weather gets too brutally cold. 

We learned that tailgating is like camping, seriously. I made a checklist after our first attempt and we are constantly adding to it. We gave ourselves a D- grade for our first attempt....basically only getting points for showing up. Last weekend I'd say we moved up to B+ range! Lindsay and I found some good deals on browns gear for tailgating such as a browns folding chair for $20 at Target, reusable browns bags,  a mesh browns satchel, and tattoos all for under $5 each at Five Below, and t-shirts for around $6 at Marc's. We're set! :)

Weekend Highlights

Nick invited us back to his lake house for another fun weekend of tubing! It was a little chilly so we left the tubing to the boys and just took pictures, but just being on the boat was super fun! As soon as we were ready to head back, the boat decided to stop working. The bottom left picture is of Andy's plan to paddle us back to shore with a water ski, FAIL. The boat finally decided to work again but would not reverse, so the bottom right picture is of Nick pulling us into the dock! Good times!

Put-in-Bay

My lovely friends showing off our living room. If you ever stay in Put-in-Bay (which I would recommend), ask for Island Club 23. We saw the insides of other houses and they weren't nearly as nice.

Some more of the girls in our kitchen.

Birthday girl blowing out her candles! (Back patio, very nice! Right by the pool, but it was a little too chilly to swim).

All us girls! Nothin' like some porch drinking and reminiscing with college friends :) What a fun, relaxing weekend! Thinking about making it an annual trip!