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).

Chattalocal: 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.”