Nutcracker Sweet

Tonight my fiance and I are going to see the Charleston Ballet Theatre's Nutcracker. This will be the first time I see CBT perform it. I actually take ballet classes from CBT and my teacher is a company member, so I will get to see her perform and some of my younger classmates as well.

Source: Charleston Ballet Theatre
I've seen many versions of the Nutcracker across the South, and so far my favorite is Columbia City Ballet's. I took classes there while I lived in Columbia, so of course I had to go see my classmates perform and William Starrett (CCB Artistic Director) probably would have had our heads if we hadn't gone to see the performance.

The reason I loved Columbia City Ballet's version is because my favorite scene (the snow scene) was beautifully done - from the glittery snow (not soap suds like Atlanta Ballet uses), the stage scenery, the lighting and the choreography was perfect.

Source: Columbia City Ballet
I'm excited to see CBT's version and see how it compares to all of the Nutcrackers I've seen before. The interesting thing about CBT's version is they use a company member for Clara - she happens to be very petite and young looking, so they always use her for Clara. So I'm expecting more advanced dancing from Clara in this version which I think I will like.

We're sitting front row, center left of the second level. I like to sit up higher so I can see the dancers' feet.

I usually dress up more for the Nutcracker, but I'm going more casual tonight. We're stopping by a happy hour before with my fiance's co-workers, so I didn't want to be too dressed up.

I'm going to try out a pair of brown booties instead of knee high boots to see what it looks like - but I might just stick with my tried and true knee high brown boots. We'll see. For jewelry I might try some pearls and see what that looks like.

Are you going to see the Nutcracker in your hometown this year?

Nutcracker Sweet by CharlestonGirlBlog featuring cable knit cardigans

P.S. That navy wrap cardigan is on Rue La La today for only like $30 or something.

Here, there and everywhere...

So I promised an update on my whereabouts the past two weeks - it was marathon traveling and vacation. My fiance and I put quite the number of miles on his truck in the process...here's where we've been...

Birmingham, AL (7 hour drive from Charleston) - my hometown to my parents' house, house I grew up in, for Thanksgiving. Joining us was my family and my aunt and uncle and my cousins. I was so excited that Bradley, my fiance, went home with me for Thanksgiving this year. He was a little bummed to be missing his mom's Thanksgiving for the first time, so we tried to make it as special for him as possible. My mom even asked him to carve mini-pumpkins for her table centerpieces...which he and my Dad preceded to do...with power tools. Men.

All the cousins - my sister is due in February! Her pregnancy is going by so fast!

Mom's holiday china, crystal and silver

Clemson, SC (4.5 hr drive from Birmingham) - every other year I leave home from Thanksgiving early (much to my mom's chagrin) to trek up to Clemson for the big rival game, Clemson vs. Univ. of South Carolina. That's me and my best friend, Jtay (her nickname).

In hindsight, I think we should have stayed in Birmingham - but I say that only because it was REALLY cold and because the game was so pitiful, i.e. Clemson played awful and USC whooped up on us. If we had not gone, it probably would have been the reverse. Oh well...we did have fun tailgating all day and hanging out with friends.

Disney World, FL (9 hr drive from Clemson) - Bright and early Sunday morning, Bradley and I woke up and hopped in the truck again for the longest trek of our journey so far down to Disney World. We met his entire family there and spent the next four days immersed in all things Disney. I hadn't been since college and Bradley hadn't been since he was 6 yrs. old - so it was fun seeing how much Disney has changed. It's amazing how easy it is to get wrapped up in the Disney spirit.

Bradley and I doing the Walt Disney and Mickey pose, mimicking the statue behind us

It was wonderful. The weather was perfect (low 80's beginning of week, high 60's end of week, sunny) and we squeezed in about everything imaginable that we wanted to do. Bradley's older sister is like a Disney pro and had our trip all planned out - we had meal plans already set up, meal reservations, etc.

We visited Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney Studios (formerly MGM) and Animal Kingdom.

Our favorite part of the entire trip was the night we went to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party. They close down the Magic Kingdom and only let in people who have tickets to this Christmas celebration. The entire park is decorated already with all things Christmas - but they go a step further with this celebration. It included access to all of the rides, but they had a Christmas parade, the most amazing fireworks show I've ever seen and they handed out unlimited free hot chocolate and sugar cookies the entire night (7pm to midnight). Plus...they made it snow on the main street!

Random things Bradley and I observed from our Disney trip:
1) Everyone moves in Disney at what we've coined "The Disney Pace". Even though we ate pretty unhealthy the entire time we were there, I'm pretty sure we maintained our weight or even lost weight. Everyone is speed walking everywhere...and you walk from the time you wake up (7am!) to the time you collapse exhausted onto your hotel bed (midnight-ish).

2)Disney is amazing at how they make everything seem like magic - from processes to 'herding' the crowds to setting up and dismantling parades in seconds - they are truly amazing at what they do. It's brilliant. So many companies could learn a lot about process improvement from Disney. We heard they offer 'behind the scenes' tours of the underground workings of Disney...but we both agreed that we would never want to do that. Why spoil the magic for yourself?

3) If you can go to Disney World with a five year old...do it. Five years old is the dream age for a child to go to Disney World. One of Bradley's nieces is five and it was so fun watching her at the parks - every character was real to her and her face was always lighting up. It was just as fun experiencing it through her eyes as it was to be there ourselves.

4) You become low maintenance - when you're waking up at 6:15 am to make your Princess Breakfast in the castle reservation, and not getting back to your hotel until midnight that night... you learn to not worry so much about your appearance... which if you know me, can be a challenge. I showered at night, woke up in the mornings and usually wore my hair all pulled up, little makeup, and always...always... sneakers, no matter what the outfit. I actually had cute outfits planned for each day...but you soon realize that it's t-shirts, jeans or shorts, and sneakers - comfort is key.

5) Do NOT mess with parents and their strollers. Goodness gracious I almost died several times dodging parents wielding these speedy weapons in front of them. And I don't remember stroller parking lots from the last time I went to Disney...but man oh man are they everywhere in the parks now. Guess when I go back and have kids I'll be more empathetic to the stroller thing.

6) There are a LOT of people riding motorized scooters in Disney parks who should definitely NOT be riding scooters. I don't know what you have to prove to get a scooter, but I was really taken aback by the amount of people riding motorized scooters through the parks (and in the stores, and in the ride lines, etc.). Now I'm not heartless...if they have an ailment or are elderly, I get it... but we saw several folks that looked our age, healthy (well, smoking cigarettes, but..healthy enough) and average weight riding around on a scooter. Really? Are people just that lazy? They'd have their three year old sitting on the front with them, riding along. Well that's teaching them healthy lessons at an early age. :-/ In our hotel parking lot, we actually watched one lady (cigarette dangling from mouth) ride her scooter to her car, back it up to the trunk, get off the scooter, lift it, put it in the trunk, then walk around to the driver side and get in the car to drive. Maybe I'm cynical...but seriously? That was probably my only complaint the whole trip about Disney - I hope it becomes an issue where Disney will put a wrangle on scooters.

7) Why did we not intern, co-op, or just work over a summer at Disney World when we were in college? Bradley's older sister was a dancer growing up as well, and we were both talking about how awesome it would have been to spend a semester working at Disney as a dancer, performer, character, etc. I have close friends who did the Disney semesters while we were in school and they still rave about it today. Opportunity lost - I'm pretty sure they don't hire nearly 30 yr. olds. If you're in school now and you love Disney... do it!

8) Fanny packs...while hilarious and very 80's in theory, these were indispensable during our entire trip! Bradley's mom bought all of us one and I really didn't think I would use it - but I did. It was a life saver. People may laugh and point and your friends may post "Is that a fanny pack I see?" on your pictures after you post them to Facebook...but I don't care, it was crucial! :)

9) Visit Disney in the off-season. We hardly ever waited for rides, transportation, etc., which allowed us to squeeze in more fun stuff. I could not ever imagine being there when it's packed and hot...no way will I ever go other than off season months! And we loved that the parks were covered in Christmas decorations.

10) Your hotel doesn't matter - not exactly anyways. We stayed at Disney's All Start Movies resort. It was way cheaper than the large resorts that are actually 'in' Disney World... way cheaper. It was still a Disney themed resort and we had Disney 'towel' characters each day from our cleaning ladies like you get on cruises. But the room wasn't much to write home about - two small double beds, a 1990's style 20 inch TV with limited channels, and a small bathroom. But the only time we were ever in our hotel was the six or so hours we were there to sleep. That was it. So we both agreed that next time unless we're miraculously wealthier, we'll keep the same hotel or something similar - hotel isn't an important factor of your Disney experience.

11) Return from a long Disney vacation on a weekend...with days left. We drove back to Charleston on a Friday (6.5 hour drive). I can't even explain what a relief it was to have Saturday and Sunday to unpack, do laundry, and just relax!

We're going back for our one year wedding anniversary. We already decided. :)

So I did spend most of Saturday and Sunday doing nothing but a staycation from our vacation...but we did plan one thing that we knew we would probably be tired for, but we didn't want to miss... Charleston's Reindeer Run 5k!

Jtay and I dressed up as Christmas trees. Before I left for my marathon vacation, we went to the dollar store and purchased all of this random stuff and created for ourselves some pretty creative and fun costumes. The lights on our costume blinked! And yes, we ran the entire race in these...lol. We even won the group costume contest...coming in second place! :) I saw our photo on the local paper's website, and we've had several people tell us we were on the local news... ha ha.

Bradley was Santa's gift to women...and he got a few laughs as well. And yes...sadly..his costume was my idea for him, lol. He wasn't even planning on dressing up. His gift tag says "To: Women, From: Santa".

So phew...are you tired of reading yet? That's about it in a nutshell... even though this post is so long it doesn't seem anything like a nutshell. Hopefully I'll be better about keeping the blog updated in the upcoming weeks since I won't be riding in a car or running around theme parks. :)

Note: These photos are not high res - so ignore the 'made for web' quality. :)

P.S. Please come back tomorrow and visit my blog - I'm hosting my very first giveaway and the prize is pretty awesome, so you don't want to miss out! Yay!

Mac & Cheese is my Middle Name

One of my friends sent out a message today on Facebook to our whole crew of friends about a Macaroni & Cheese cook off that's happening Friday night in downtown Charleston.


WHAT?!?! How did I not hear about this until today?!?

The gist is that 12 different restaurants are cooking up a ton of their best Mac & Cheese recipes and then the public samples the different selections and votes on their favorite.

It's downtown Charleston at the Visitor Center Bus Shed (big, covered outdoor area used for events like Oyster Roasts, etc.) this Friday night, 7pm to 11pm. Tickets are only $5 in advance and then you purchase a $1 ticket for each Mac & Cheese sample you want to try. A portion of the proceeds will go to charity.

There's going to be live music and drinks...plus all the Mac & Cheese you could eat! What's not to love?!?!

"Come Back Song" starring Darius Rucker...co-starring Charleston

Check out this video to get a glimpse of the city I now call home...pretty cool that Darius featured Charleston (his hometown) in his video and named his latest album, "Charleston, SC 1966".

Virtual fist bump to another Charleston girl blogger Megan at Fried Green Pickles for sharing the video on her blog.

My Birthday Weekend in Photos

Weekend Recap

It looks like the new trend in blogger-land is to recap your weekend activities... and so I am jumping on the bandwagon and following suit. Here goes...

Friday night was intended to be a wild ladies' night -- almost all of our guy friends were in Cancun this past weekend for my fiance's Bachelor party. So all of us ladies decided, "While the mens are away, the ladies will play!" and Friday was our designated night to do so.

We started the night off with dinner and drinks at the new Basil in Mt. Pleasant -- and unlike other Charleston area restaurants, eh hem, our expectations were met and exceeded!

{via}

Parking wasn't fun though because Basil doesn't really have their own parking lot (something they probably should have figured out maybe?) so you have to park in the limited parking along the street OR in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot about a block away - which is where I parked and it really wasn't a bad walk. Basil should work something out with Piggly Wiggly and offer valet parking - I think that would be awesome.

A few of us got there early and headed upstairs to the bar area that has a nice wrap around porch with couches, tables and flat screen tv's. This is going to be an awesome happy hour location come cooler weather. As soon as I sat down a waitress was out there to take my order and promptly brought me my glass of house Chardonnay - which was delish.

When most of us had arrived, I was sent down to let the hostesses know our party was there -- we had a reservation at 8pm, but we let them know about ten minutes prior we were there, just in case we'd have to wait. We actually expected to have to wait even with a reservation because they were packed! However, when I let the lady know we were all accounted for and ready when they were, she said, "Oh! Your table has been ready - come on down!" So I scurried back upstairs, grabbed the rest of the ladies, and we were quickly seated at a nice long table.

The food was delish! I have never had Thai, so I was pleasantly surprised. We started with bottles of wine (of course) and several apps -- we had a coconut soup that was pretty good... but it tasted like a warm pina colada to me, and I think you can only have a few spoonfuls, not a whole bowl. My description of a warm pina colada actually kept a few girls from trying it, lol. Oops.

We also had the stuffed shrimp which was SO good. It came with a sweet and sour sauce that was pretty good too.

And we ordered a few Fresh Basil Rolls -- which are wrapped in rice paper, which I noted made the rolls look like a certain male body part... but despite the appearance, lol, they were very good... but I avoided the house sauce that came with it because several girls were gulping down their water after tasting it, telling me to not go near it because it was so spicy.

I am not a spicy food connoisseur. I order mild salsa at Mexican restaurants (which, I don't even like Mexican food because most of it is spicy) because the salsa they put on your table is too spicy for me. I know... everyone says I'm crazy, but for some reason I just can't handle spicy food. So when I ordered my Pad Thai at Basil, I was pleasantly surprised that I could order it with no spice at all.

I didn't get a picture of it, but it was very, very good! I haven't had Pad Thai ever before and it tastes to me like pasta with peanut butter mixed in... lol... but it was good! And the portion size was great -- I ate half and was full with half to take home (that may or may not have gotten eaten late night later in the night).

So I definitely recommend Basil (in Mt. P!) if you get the chance to go - but a reservation is a must!

After dinner, several of the girls went home (lame!), two headed off downtown (we should have followed),  and the remaining five of us tried to rally for a girls' night out. And then there were five....

We just couldn't get motivated to go downtown and two girls actually said they'd probably go home if we went downtown... so we decided to pick a place in Mt. P to just have a beer, let our food settle and then decide on the best place to go out. For some reason we picked Hatchell's Tapas bar in Towne Center. Ugg..why did we pick there? The whole place smelled like a bathroom...for real. It was so gross. And there were three people working there: two girls on their phones texting, standing around, and one guy bartender who was awful.... I ordered a beer, handed him a $10 and watched as he held onto my money and had conversations with patrons instead of giving me my change. Finally got my change. We quickly finished our beers and were trying to get the heck out of there because the smell was so bad, so one of my friends asks the bartender to close her tab. We then proceed to watch the bartender fix other people's drinks, talk, etc. while we just sit there staring at him... he finally heard us saying, "Uh... any day now please?" and finally came over with her tab. Geez! Needless to say we won't be going back there any time soon.

One of the girls then left us to go to the Windjammer to meet up with some other folks to see a concert (she didn't get to bed until 3am, we should have followed)... And then there were four.

We. must. move. on. We tried to rally...we really tried...

The last fun night we had in Mt. P. started with a quick stop at Art's Bar for shots...so we decided to try and recreate that momentum by going to Art's on Coleman Blvd. Art's is fun and random. It's either dead or it's packed. It was pretty dead when were were there, but the live band (forget the name) was really good. We had a few beers, took that shot, sat outside and talked... and next thing we know it's almost 1am. For some reason we just couldn't get motivated to go anywhere else -- so we all agreed that while we tried to make a valiant effort, wild girls' night just wasn't in the cards for us. So we all agreed to call it a night.

Can't remember what it was - something cherry lifesaver maybe?

Fell in love with my friend's Michael Kors purse and wanted to steal it - it matches my outfit! I want it!!

We did take some fun pictures at Art's though...including our own makeshift photo booth. Turn your camera timer on, balance on top of Bud Light bottle placed on top of the bar, lean back and pose. Ha!

The rest of the weekend was pretty lazy....Saturday was quality beach time on Sullivan's Island, followed by a matinee viewing of The Help -- it was great! Totally met expectations, did the book justice, and would definitely see it again!

{via}

After the movie we went to Los Arcos for dinner where I had my mild salsa and a chicken quesadilla, the only Mexican menu item I will eat. Since my fiance and his friends were living it up in Cancun and posting pictures to Facebook, we decided to post one of our own... hey, if he's partying with Mexican girls, I can party with Mexican boys, right? Lol... these waiters were good sports.

To go box says, "She misses you Bradley". Friend posted to Facebook and tagged my fiance. :)

After dinner I was excited to head home, put on my PJ's, and snuggle up on the couch with my Willow dog. Sunday was a day of cleaning out closets, trying to get organized and cleaning -- trying to get ready for all of the company coming in town next weekend.

This week is officially the last week I will be a 20-something... ahhh!! My 30th birthday is Sunday. This coming weekend brings family and friends in town for an Alice in Wonderland themed girls' shower for me (YAY!) and then my big birthday bash at Local's in Mt. Pleasant Saturday night -- if you're a 'Local', consider yourself invited. The theme is "Saying Goodbye to the Roaring 20's" and we're all dressing up as Flappers and Gangsters. :) I can't wait!

I hope you all had wonderful weekends as well... time for me to get back to work. I will try to be better about commenting on your posts today... Cheers!