Galentines Babes Take on Nashville

If you're not into celebrating Valentines Day, it's ok. I totally get it. There's so much pressure to impress your loved one(s) with heart shaped mystery chocolates (what is that filling anyway!?), fancy dinners (just deliver a pizza to my house & I'm golden), and over the top dates (then again, I wouldn't say no if a limo arrived to pick me up). It seems like every year, we try to one-up the year before, and eventually, you either run out of ideas or just get so exhausted from it all that you just decide to stay in & eat leftover Chinese food from the safe confines of your couch. But even if you loathe Valentines Day, there's one other made up holiday that you should absolutely be celebrating: Galentines Day!

Officially celebrated on February 13th, Galentines Day is a day all about those special ladies in your life. Thanks to Leslie Knope, we now have a completely legit excuse to spend an entire day brunching with our besties over waffles & mimosas, followed up by a luxurious spa day of mani-pedis & lounging poolside in a private cabana somewhere warm & sunny. Ok, so that's really more so just my ultimate girls day fantasy, but the brunch part, I can definitely do. So I did!

Must See Chick Flicks

I have zero shame in admitting it: I love a good chick flick. They’re fun, they’re cheesy, & they’re usually complete escapism. This time of year, I love loading up my Netflix queue with rom coms & pulling out all the chick flick DVDs from my stash (yes. I still watch those). So I thought it would be fun to share a list of my favorite girly films (& also tell you what you NEED to be streaming right now)! February is a great time to spend cozy nights in watching movies, while cuddled up on the couch with your pets (because my hubs sure as hell isn't sitting through double features of The Notebook & How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. My pups however, have no choice).

Pre-Valentines Breakfast Date at Syrup & Eggs

I'm one of those people that procrastinates, hard. I plan vacations on the fly (like 3-days-before-we're-supposed-to-leave-oh-shit-what-are-we-doing-with-the-dogs kind of fly), I buy birthday cards weeks in advance but then put off mailing them until the day before (sorry, Dad!), and I may or may not have speed-read The Iliad and then wrote an entire essay on it all in one night for a college history project due the next day (the pinnacle of my procrastination career). So when it comes to Valentines day, I'm that person that waits until the last minute to think up something DIY-ish & cute, but ends up frantically calling every restaurant in town trying to get last minute reservations when my Pinterest idea goes up in flames (literally. I told y'all I can't cook).

So this year on the actual 14th, I'll probably be staying in with the hubs (ordering takeout & watching SNL reruns), since we've got a toddler with a 7:30 bedtime and babysitters are a rarity these days (especially this year, with Valentines being on a Friday! If you hadn't booked a sitter 3-4 months in advance by now, you're not going anywhere, honey). But who says you even have to celebrate Valentines on Valentines? And why does it always have to be a fancy dinner? It's fun to do the whole dinner & a movie thing for date night & wear something other than fleece PJs once, maybe twice a year, but when you procrastinate so much that you never even book a sitter in the first place, you just take the fam to breakfast instead - because hey moms, you're up at 6:30 on a Sunday anyway, so why the hell not?

Galentines Gift Guide (AKA: things I bought based on packaging)

Let’s talk Galentines gift guide! Wait, don’t you mean Valentines? No, girl, GALentines. Because let’s face it, if you’re a girl reading this, looking for Valentines gift guides (as in gifts-for-your-man), you’re in the wrong department, babe. You need to take yourself on a date to Victoria’s Secret, grab something cute (& that makes you feel cute), and hand deliever that jazz in person with a beer in one hand & a pizza in the other because literally nothing on this list I’m about to share would be of any interest to our red-blooded male spouses (pro tip: those bacon bouquets on Pinterest are a great man gift & 100% easy to make. I speak from experience & I am a horrible cook.) We all know Valentine’s Day is more for us ladies anyway (we want to wear cute pink & red outfits, drink Prosecco, and gossip over brunch while instagramming the whole shebang).

That being said, girls are WAY more fun to shop for anyway. It is because of this reason that places like Target & TJ Maxx are time warps. One minute, I’m walking through the aisle putting diapers & milk in my cart, and the next I’m waking up at home, post-blackout, with a chocolate raspberry face mask still on, next to 2 bags worth of dollar spot tea towels, Valentines socks, and cartons of Prosecco cotton candy. I don’t ask questions anymore. To quote the Baby Yoda show, I’ve just accepted that yes, “This is the way.”

January Favorites

As part of a new series on my blog (that I will hopefully keep up with), at the end of each month I’ll be rounding up my favorites & “currents” - anything from movies/tv, to music, to fashion, to...well, basically whatever I feel like I’ve been into and/or obsessing over & that I think is totally shareworthy!

With January coming to a close, I wanted to kick off the series this month (& we’ll see how many months I make it before I forget to do a roundup)! First up...

Caffeine Queen: A Comprehensive Guide to Chattanooga Coffee

A good cup of coffee is like liquid gold running through your veins and wrapping you in a warm hug, right before it swiftly slaps you in the face and screams, "Time to be an adult!"

Like many, coffee has become a necessity for me before I can actually "adult." This magical elixir can take me from a frazzled, still-half-asleep grizzly bear of a girl to a fully functioning member of society (outfitted in something other than the entire loungewear section of Target). Plus, it's freaking delicious. I like to joke that I take my cream & sugar with a little coffee: that is to say, I enjoy coffee that has lots of flavor to it - the weirder the better. Iced banana latte with almond milk? Yes, please. Coconut latte that tastes like liquefied samoas? Absolutely! Black coffee? No thanks, I'm not entirely crazy. Enjoy your bitter bean water.

Rock the Dots: How to Style Polka Dots

Well, well, well, if isn't another "national holiday" I can go all out for. Nice to see you, National Polka Dot Day. Obviously, I couldn't pass this opportunity up. I have always been a fan of polka dots; it's just such a fun pattern! The first thing I think of when I see a polka dot pattern (especially a red polka dot pattern) is Minnie Mouse. She has the ultimate classic style, and I had to join in the fun to rock the dots today!

I threw together a quick little post featuring some of my favorite past polka dot looks & ideas on how to style them, and I scoured the internet for some cute polka-pieces for you guys.

Build a Better Cheese Board: National Cheese Lovers Day 101

These days there’s a holiday for everything and some of them are truly ridiculous: National Lost Sock Memorial Day (unofficially celebrated every laundry cycle), National Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day (there’s something very satisfying about popping good bubble wrap), or National Lazy Day (literally me every day after I get home from work) - just to name a few. And don’t forget all those foodie holidays we love to celebrate: coffee day, guac day, and oh yea, National Cheese Lovers Day!!

(Stay with me here, guys. This post might get a little cheesy, but I think it’s really grate.)

Disney Passholder: Top 5 FAQs about becoming an AP in 2020

Reflecting back on 2019, I got to check off a lot of things on my bucket list, and one of them was  finally becoming a Disney Annual Passholder. Ok, so I technically bought my AP in fall of 2018, but that gave me a whole year of trips! I also never got around to posting my thoughts & experiences on the subject, so why not open 2020 with an AP review & why its 100% worth it? Well, if you’re a Disney fan of course!

Disney is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. While I see it as a magical land where time stops & your inner child can run wild, others see it as...well, a hot & overcrowded tourist trap where children are literally running wild (yes, Disney can be meltdown-central, but what else could you expect from a place with probably the highest concentration of toddlers at any given time?)

First Trip of 2020: Knoxville

One of my New Years goals is to travel more - whether it’s a short day trip, a long weekend, or a full blown vacation, I just want to get out and travel more often. I love visiting new & favorited/frequented places (hi FL!), especially if it involves getting to taste-test new restaurants or finding cool coffee shops.

Since Chattanooga is so centrally located to major cities like Nashville & Atlanta, those are usually in the rotation. But one place we don’t go as much is Knoxville (& that’s about to change)! Knoxville offers so much to do, but since we were just going for the day, we stuck to just a handful of things.