MY BIRTHDAY!!!

HI there!

I'm having the HARDEST time keeping up with posting in the way that I want to. We've been SO BUSY and I have so many things I want to share, but I'm just so exhausted at the end of the day that I don't have the energy to stay up until 1am to work on this like I did when I started. I was going to share the BUSIEST week we've had in a long time - MY BIRTHDAY WEEK!!! - in which we had something planned for every single day from Saturday through the following Sunday and how I got to dress up with full hair and makeup every day. But sharing it in that way just didn't work out. So, I'm going to break it up and just share this for now.
My 36th BIRTHDAY week was SO FUN!!! We had so may things to do, from dinners to private school tours, to sporting events to parties and I loved getting to go out so much and get dressed up. And really a few hours away form the kids is always appreciated :)

On Monday, November 2, quite honestly, I don't even remember what we did in the morning but I know we did SOMETHING! And this is what I wore:

I had a fashion challenge that day. Totally Tassled. I

used an old Avon necklace that my 96 year old

grandmother gave me a few years ago. The hassle

is molded - it doesn't actually move!

And a photo of me with my baby boy, just because he's the awesomest.

But in the evening, I had dinner with friends at a trendy steak house downtown called STK. We call our little dinner crew "Jermaine and Josh". It's a silly play on this meme -

I don't tend to be very sensitive to racial jokes and neither are my friends. We think this is funny. My husband is white. My brother in law's girlfriend is black. Our friends are everything in between and it's awesome to have such a diverse group of people to spend time with. We decided on this name as a little joke after our first dinner. 2 Black girls, an Afro-Latina and a White girl. It just fit and we think it's funny. (If you don't, sorry.)

We had a lot of fun that night. It's always fun to get dressed up and go out! Now that the baby is over a year and drinking more milk, I feel like I can be away more often and not feel stressed about nursing him. Thanks to my hubby for braving bedtime alone so I could go out! LOL!

My outfit that day was bomb! I styled it very similarly to how Eloquii styled it. (LINK) It's a departure from how I usually dress. I just loved the idea of the top buttoned all the way up and using the necklace as a collar. I loved it so much I wore it almost exactly the same way just over a week later to another private school interview.

Necklace is from Aldo

Top is from Target

Belt and Skirt are from Eloquii (link above)

PS - I have awesome friends.

I didn't eat any of this. Ew.

This was the dessert the restaurant gave for my birthday. They poured hot chocolate over the solid chocolate ball and it melted to reveal strawberry ice-cream inside. Very cool!

The food at STK was decent, but the service was a little rough. We found out that our server was actually brand new - it was his first day after training. That explained why our food took sooooooo long and Kelly's order of 2 sliders came out as 6 with some really expensive truffles on them, which annoyingly the manager gave to the table next to us. So rude. That table was ridic - like 6 REALLY old men with 4 or 5 younger girls, definitely in their 20's, drunkenly singing Piano Man. Ugh. Stop it.

On November 7th, I decided to throw myself a birthday party. Just family and good friends at our house. It almost got cancelled when, last second, #2 woke up from her nap with a freaking 101.7 fever. I didn't know what to do! Everyone we could have asked to watch her for us so the party could go on was already coming to our house! So husband drove her to the Walgreens clinic at 3 pm. The party started at 5! She ended up throwing up in the car on the way, but by the time the nurse practitioner checked her at the clinic, her temp was back to normal and she said she felt better. She was just fine the rest of the night. No more fever or vomit and ate just fine and had a great time, thankfully!!! The nurse practitioner said that she may have just eaten something bad. Husband gave her Coco Wheats for the first time that morning, so we assume that was what made her sick. I would have been so sad to have to cancel the party, especially 1 hour before it was supposed to start! Thankfully, she's very good at telling us what is wrong and we could trust that she was good to party on.

I got to wear the most AWESOME cape blazer that night. From Eloquii. I just HAD to have it!!!

I thought these pink suede heels from Nine West would be a

fun pop of color. I've had these shoes since 2007.

I just can't part with them. I've also hardly worn them.

This may be the 4th time in all those years I've actually

worn them out of my bedroom.

Here are a few highlights from the nice evening we had. Some friends I haven't seen in a long time were able to make it, and I was very happy to see them.