Snow Day Essentials

With a lot of the East Coast snowed in and there bound to be more upcoming snow days, I thought I would share with you my snow day essentials.  With me being a teacher in the Midwest, I usually have at least one snow day every winter and I’m pretty sure I enjoy them just as much as when I was younger!  Unfortunately I haven’t had one yet this winter, so fingers crossed I get one soon.  These snow day essentials are my must haves that make any snow day more enjoyable!

AGR Faternity Formal

Saturday I went to my boyfriend’s fraternity formal. He is in the fraternity Alpha Gamma Rho and this year was the third formal of his that I have been to. It was definitely bitter sweet with this being his last formal since he is graduating this year. With this being the last hurrah, I decided to go all out with my dress and hair.

My dress is Sherri Hill and my favorite part about it was the all open back. I got my hair done at my usual salon called Studio 7.

                                 

Before heading to formal we stopped at one of Michael’s fraternity brother’s house, that was on the way to the hotel and did some trap shooting. It was an interesting way to start off the day to say the least, but it was very entertaining. After that we headed to the hotel where the event was held and we all checked into our rooms. We all got situated in our rooms and did some exploring to figure out who was all there and to get a feel for where everything/everyone was in the hotel. As it started to approach the time for dinner, we all started to get ready and into our dresses. Before we all headed to the meal we of course has to take some pictures!

       

After we were all done eating we did some dancing, went swimming, hung out, and of course had to go on a late night run to Perkins. I would definitely say my last AGR formal was a huge success! I’m going to miss all the graduating guys and all the great times we have had together throughout my time in college so far! A huge shout out to my boyfriend Michael for being a great formal date throughout the past few years!

-Rachel

Baking, Shopping, & Eating

With Rachel being home for Easter weekend, we were able to spend the whole day together on Friday.  We both love baking, so we started off our morning by baking some donuts.  We tried out two donut recipes from Sally’s Baking Addiction.  You can find the chocolate donut recipe here and the funfetti donut recipe here.

We had a lot of fun making these donuts and they were quite simple to make!  Our favorite were the chocolate glazed donuts.   We think the funfetti donuts would be better with less sprinkles in the batter.

    

After baking and breakfast, we planned on going shopping and out for lunch.  Here are our outfits from the day!

Michelle’s OOTD

     

|Francesca’s top| Loft outfit (?) scarf| American Eagle jeggings| Red Dress Boutique booties|

Rachel’s OOTD

|Express tank top| J.Crew Factory necklace| American Eagle jeggings| TJ Maxx flats|

We headed to our local mall first for a little shopping.  American had BOGO so we couldn’t resist buying a few clothing items from there.  Michelle with being her indecisive self  decided to buy a new dress for Easter from Francesca’s.  We also made a stop at TJ maxx.  We each got a new small cross body purse.  Rachel stocked up on one of our favorite Dry Shampoos and Michelle bought an artificial flower arrangement.

For lunch we went to one of our favorite restaurants, The Loop.  Instead of ordering entrees, we decided to share some appetizers.  We went with chicken tenders, cheese curds and wings!  They were all very delicious.  Our favorite is definitely the cheese curds because they are served with siracha ketchup, which makes them so much better!  Needless to say, we were very full afterwards.

We’ve really been enjoying our weekend together!  It’s our last time together until Rachel is done with school for the year.  We can’t wait to spend the summer together! Keep an eye out for our Easter post tomorrow!

-Michelle & Rachel

Girls Day at Four Daughters Vineyard & Winery

With Michelle’s winter break wrapping up, we decided that we needed one last girls day.  We have been wanting to go to lunch and do a wine tasting at Four Daughters Vineyard & Winery since Rachel turned 21 in November.  This seemed like the perfect day to go there and do this!

When doing a wine tasting at Four Daughters, you have the option of red or white wine.  You then get five different wines to sample for $5, which is a great deal!  We went with the white wine because that’s what we both prefer.  We’re all for the sweeter wines and aren’t big fans of dry wine.  With this wine tasting, we had the opportunity to try a hard cider, three white wines, and a sweeter red wine.  We liked all of the ones we sampled, but are top two favorites were the Loon Juice (hard cider) and the moscato!

For lunch, Michelle ordered sloppy joe nachos and Rachel ordered the chicken pot pie.  The nice thing about the lunch menu here is that the choices are all quite unique.   As you can imagine from the pictures below, we were not disappointed with either choice!   

Because we both love bread and figured it would go well with our wine, we also ordered a lovely bread plate to share.  This plate came with a variety of breads to try, as well as with olive oil and and a spinach spread.  All of the breads were amazing.  We may or may not have ate almost the whole plate!

Even though we really didn’t have room to spare and were pretty full the way it was, we just simply couldn’t resist ordering dessert because it looked too good not to try.  We ended up getting two desserts to share.  We went with the Chocolate Chip Cookie Sundae (white chocolate chip cookie, vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and candy walnuts) and the S’more Pots de Creme (chocolate-hazelnut custard, sugared graham cracker, toasted marshmallow, and candied bacon).  Both desserts were delicious!  Unfortunately, we weren’t able to finish either of them since we were pretty full from our lunches.

Now it’s time to get into our outfits!  We decided to go the dressier route for this girls day to make it more fun.  Both of us went with skirts and channeled our inner Blair Waldorf.  Who doesn’t love Blair Waldorf’s style?!  Here’s what we wore:

Top- Francesca’s Collection
Skirt-Red Dress Boutique
Tights-Express
Booties- Express
Necklace- J Crew Factory

Top- Gap
Skirt- Express
Booties- TOMS
Necklace- Charming Charlie

Overall, we had a fabulous day at Four Daughters Vineyard & Winery.  It was a great experience that we enjoyed together.  The atmosphere was very laid back, which was great because it gave us plenty of time to enjoy our food/drinks and chit-chat!  We can’t wait to go back this summer so that we can sit outside to enjoy the views and also order some Sangria!

-Michelle & Rachel