Best of Charleston Party 2012

The Best of Charleston Party is by far one of the best parties of the year. Being surrounded with all of Charleston’s winners  = tons of fun. This year’s party was held at Red’s Icehouse with a rainbows and unicorn theme.

(via)

Charleston City Paper dubbed it as “The Horniest Party of the Year.” Keeping it classy.

As my plus 1, I took my best friend Nancy. Elizabeth came with us, as she works for the S.C. aquarium, which won Best Attraction.

We saw lots of friends there, but also made met some really great people. It’s called the “Best of Charleston” for a reason!

The lovely Danielle was also there. She teaches at Pure Barre Charleston. Go to one of her classes. You will love it!

As the managing partner for The Becket Agency who represents Mellow Mushroom, Boomer was also there. Mellow Mushroom won the award for Best Gourmet Pizza.

DJ Moo Moo won Best DJ for a second year. This year was our first anniversary of friendship, as we met at the 2011 party.

Elizabeth and I found our friends Adam and Logan but apparently by then, none of us could stand straight. The party was catered by many of the winning restaurants: O-Ku, Wasabi, Black Bean Company, Cru Catering, Santi’s, Five Guys Burgers, and more. There was an obnoxious amount of desserts too.

Perhaps the best part of the entire evening was the dancing. I managed to keep my shoes on the entire evening and somehow did not sprain an ankle, foot, or knee. Great success! There was also a photo booth with all sorts of props – rainbows, unicorns, and feather boas. I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t bring my own toys. Nancy, Danielle, Elizabeth and I all walked around with glow sticks. Don’t worry, once the photo booth pictures are shared on the CCP site, I will share them with you!

Again, thank you for your vote and the congratulations! Cheers to a second year!

Saturday Survey

1. Are you more of a morning, afternoon, or night person?
I’m definitely a night person and always have been. Since I was a child, I loved staying up late. Going to sleep is such a chore to me…but sleeping in? Oh, I love that.

2. What is your favorite book / magazine?
Favorite books:

• any and all cookbooks
• The Secret Garden
• Speak
• The Lost Wife
• The Twilight Saga

Magazines:

3. What is your favorite thing in your closet?
All of my dresses. I may or may not have 59 dresses in my closet and 1 en route from Piperlime. Yeah. If anyone needs to borrow one, come over.

4. What are your top 5 favorite music artists?

1. Jem
2. Mute Math
3. Radiohead
4. Sia
5. Coldplay

5. What are your top 5 favorite movies?

1. American Beauty
2. Grandma’s Boy
3. Love Actually
4. The Little Mermaid
5. Man on Fire

6. What is your favorite holiday and why?
Halloween! For sure! I also love Easter for the overload of pastels and candy.

7. Do you have any weird phobias?
Nah. I don’t like random people touching me or standing too close to me, but that’s it.

8. What is your most embarrassing moment?
I have embarrassing moments daily. Nothing really fazes me anymore.

 9. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?
Hawaii, probably. But for some reason, I see myself ending up in Texas. Random.

10. What is your favorite food?
Chocolate chip cookies.

And pickles.

11. What is your weirdest injury?
Weirdest? Um, here’s a story. Before one of my best friend’s bachelorette parties, a bunch of girls and I were getting ready in a small room. While I was flat ironing my hair, one of the girls needed me to move over. I quickly grabbed the flat iron, but instead of putting the flat iron down  (there was no room), I quickly put it in between my legs, forgetting that it was ON. On both of my inner thighs I have a 2 inch scar from where the flat iron burned me. It was awful.

 12. What is your favorite store to shop at?
Target!! I could spend hours in that playground. 

 13. If someone visited your city/town, where would you take them?

• The Battery
• Upper King all the way to lower King, then Broad St.
• Rainbow Row
• Marion Square
• Old City Market
• Arthur Ravenel Bridge
• College of Charleston campus

Don’t you want to visit me now?!

14. What would your ideal day look like?
Sleep in (obviously), go for an outdoor/bridge run, go pick up coffee, lunch with friends, shopping downtown, wine tasting outside, dinner downtown, bar hop later…then TRIO!

15. Where do you want to be and what do you want to be doing in 5 years?
I WILL BE 32, but hopefully still acting like this.

(No, I’ll never answer that question seriously.) What else would you expect from me?

XO!

Best of Charleston Award Winner!!!

YIPPEE!! Words cannot express how excited I am to announce that, for the second year in a row, I won the Charleston City Paper award for Best Local Blog!

 

This year’s announcement:

(what a strange description??)

Last year’s announcement:

See the rest of the BOC awards HERE.

This year’s Best of Charleston party will be held at Red’s Icehouse and the theme is Rainbows and Unicorns. Oh  my. Can’t wait to see how people will be dressed!!

In case you missed it on the blog last year:

• Last year’s announcement
• Last year’s BOC party

HUGE thanks to each and every one of you who voted for me this year. And to those of you who tweeted or posted a link on facebook, thank you too! Seriously…

THANK YOU.

I genuinely appreciate your vote and your loyalty to my blog.

Beets with Yogurt and Walnuts

Last Friday I mentioned that I had borrowed a few cookbooks from the library, one being Food From Many Greek Kitchens. This book had a couple of good recipes I wanted to try, but one in particular caught my eye.

Beets.

Greek yogurt.

Walnuts.

Uh, yeah. I needed that in my life.

Beets with Yogurt and Walnuts slightly adapted from Food From Many Greek Kitchens

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pounds beets, leaves trimmed
• 1 1/2 tbsp. olive oil
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp. coarsely chopped parsley
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 (6 oz.) contained of plain Greek yogurt
• 2 tbsp. chopped walnuts, for topping

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Wash the beets well, being careful not to pierce their skins. Wrap each fresh beet individually in aluminum foil and bake for about 1 hour or until tender.

In a small bowl, whip the oil with the lemon juice and garlic.

Once beets have finished cooking, peel them. Trim away the root and cut them into chunks. Put in a bowl. Add the lemon oil, parsley, and season with salt and pepper. Add the yogurt and mix gently. Scatter the walnuts on top and serve.

You know you’re intrigued by this color. Just wait until you see what it does to your pee! (If you’re a chosen one. Sorry, Holly, this doesn’t apply to you.)

In fitness news, I’d like to share a quick treadmill workout with you. It’s quick but will kick your behind! And your quads too. Maybe more!

Now listen up: For the main part of this workout, you will be doing intervals of running with 15 second breaks. During the 15 second breaks, you can hop to the sides of the treadmill, one foot on each side while gripping the handlebars. Be so careful not to fall or you will fly backwards and hurt yourself! And then you probably will never want to come back to your gym out of embarrassment.

Though you are only doing the intervals for 20 minutes total, you will have had enough by minute 25. Trust me. Each 15 second break is enough for your heart to think “Oh, cool, we’re done...oh wait…shoot…just kidding.” Bam, you’re sprinting again. Get sweaty people!

Are you a fan of beets? Favorite beet recipe? I have a slew of recipes that readers have sent me if anyone is interested!

Do you prefer interval workouts or long, steady runs? I get so bored on the treadmill that intervals are my preference.

Wine and Food, Wine and Food.

This weekend was full of wine and food. So much wine and food.

Friday evening, my best friend Nancy came over for some girl time. She and I have been friends since we were 13 and though we don’t get to hang out as often as I’d like, we’ve remained very close over the years! She’s my future maid of honor, whether she likes it or not. We spent the evening catching up with a fun bottle of wine. Sassy white? Perfect for us.

We also stopped by the new(ish) froyo place, Yobe..My friends Danielle and Angela rave about their froyo, so when Groupon offered a $10 for $5 deal, I immediately bought two. I had four different flavors: taro, vanilla, red velvet, and strawberry. Red velvet was so nasty but the vanilla and taro were great! Yobe’s frozen yogurt is different – it’s more icy than creamy. The good news is that it’s all-natural, non-fat, and about 25 calories per ounce. Thanks for the rec ladies!

Saturday was spent running errands all day. And by errands I mean shopping. I only finished with lotion, chap stick, and lip gloss. Darn.

Saturday evening was much more successful. Boomer invited me to the Charleston Wine and Food Festival After Hours Party at the bus shed. Next year, if I attend any of the events, it will definitely be this one.

Thank you, Sarah, for photobombing that picture.

By far, the most delicious thing I ate was a peanut butter & jelly cannoli. It was an emotional experience.

Aside from the food and wine, there were break dancers and drum roll….hula hoopers!

And some circus freaks. Boomer realllllly wanted to take a picture with these people for some reason. He must secretly want to be one.

After the after party (that sounds bad, but I swear it was over at midnight), Sarah, Danielle, and I went to Oku and danced like crazy people.

Sunday was Wine and Food Festival Round 2 at the tasting tents. Trish was sampling some of her incredible wines from Vidalco Wine and offered me extra tickets. So generous of her! Thanks love!

Rachel and I spent an hour and a half gorging ourselves with treats and enjoying the sunshine. The weather was great, but so windy, as you can tell by our wild hair.

I wish I had more photos to share with you, but it’s difficult holding a purse, plate of food, goodie bag, and glass of wine. Priorities people.

Highlights: Bourbon chocolate:

Carrot cake:

Mini goat cheese ice cream cones:

and wine from Josh’s company, Spanish Vines. Remember Josh from our Pour Favor wine launch party back in November? Sadly, he did not attend the event this year.  Josh, I better see you in 2013…or the next I’m in NYC!

For the record, I’m eating only vegetables for the next week.

Kidding.

Maybe.

XO!

The Friday Five

1. What I’m Reading: More cookbooks. I don’t think I’ve ever borrowed an American food cookbook from the library. What’s the point when I can go eat a Chick-fil-A? Haha, just kidding. Sort of.

2. What I’m Listening to: Another old, but awesome song.

3. What I’m Eating: My very favorite Greek yogurt. Nothing compares to the thickness and creaminess that is Fage! I eat one almost every day. Yay protein!

I typically don’t like cherry-flavored things, but this is just dreamy. My second favorite flavor is blueberry.

4. What I’m Re-Tweeting:

5. What I’m Pinning: This is quite possibly the coolest beach chair I’ve ever seen. Truly made for nerds.

So…are you guys enjoying the Friday Five posts?

Any blog post topics are welcome! Share your ideas.

HAPPY WEEKEND! XO!

It’s March and We’re Saving Money!

So the other day at work, my friend Dane and I were talking about how easily we’re both convinced to go out to lunch or buy overpriced food from our cafeteria. After a few minutes of complaining how much money we probably spend, we decided to turn a negative into a positive with a competition. By Wednesday morning, we recruited Rachel and Hannah, two of our coworkers.

The Rules:

1. We cannot eat out (breakfast, lunch, or dinner) more than 13 times during the month of March. We decided on the number 13 so we could splurge 3x per week, and there are 4 1/2 weeks in March.  (31 days / 7 days in a week x 3 = 13.2 –> 13) 
2. If anyone goes out to eat more than 13 times, they automatically lose.
3. The next part of the competition is keeping track of how much we spend. At the end of the month, whoever spends the least amount of money WINS!
4. The winner gets to choose the prize they receive from the loser, but it has to benefit the other two people as well. For example, if Rachel wins and Dane loses, Rachel wants Dane to bring in a cake for us. If I win and Hannah loses, I’ll probably ask her to bring us some cookies!

After we all agreed to the competition, I went home and pulled up my bank account online. I reviewed the past 4 months and calculated how much I spent on food  (grocery shopping, restaurants, and bars). To be honest, I was disturbed. I knew it seemed like too much, so I looked up the Official USDA Food Plans. This table shows the average cost of food for individuals and families based on a thrifty plan, a low-cost plan, a moderate-cost plan, and a liberal plan. Seeing as my monthly average exceeded the liberal plan, I was even more disturbed.

THIS IS NOT OKAY!!

My weak spot for spending? You guessed it. Chick-fil-A. In November, my worst month, I spent over $90 at the joint. NINETY DOLLARS ON FAST FOOD IN A MONTH.

To put it in a different perspective, a typical visit would cost around $10 for a salad and diet lemonade. Guess how much I spent on the Spicy Chickpea and Lentil Stew on Monday? Less than $10 and I got 4 meals out of it. See what I mean? Grocery shopping = winning.

Starting today, the 1st of March, the four of us are dedicated to eating out less, which will save money, and probably save us a ton of calories! If I get too competitive and start looking a little frail, don’t worry, I’ll plump back up next month.

If you want to join in on our challenge, let me know! Keep track of how much you spend at restaurants & bars (not grocery shopping) and send me your totals at the end of the month.

Another great part of this competition is deciding what to do with the money we’ve saved! Donate to charity? Throw some in savings? Splurge on a plane ticket?

What would YOU buy with the money you’ve saved by not eating out as much?