Wits Review

Happy Monday!  It's been so crazy and hectic the last week or so, I realized I never really shared about our night out at Wits last week.  It was a lot of fun, so I thought I'd do a little recap today before it's no longer fresh in my mind!
If you're unfamiliar with it, Wits is a radio show that is broadcast locally on Minnesota Public Radio and I believe is syndicated in other NPR outlets as well.  It's been kind of described as the younger, hipper version of a Prairie Home Companion.  It's a similar concept, there are guests that come on and do sketches and skits with the regular host and his troupe.  We had a chance to go a couple of years ago when the guests were  Kristin Schaal and Rufus Wainwright.  This time the guests we had a chance to see were Danny Pudi from Community and local singer Har Mar Superstar.

The taping takes place at the Fitzgerald Theatre in Downtown St. Paul, the same theatre where a Prairie Home Companion is taped as well.  It's such a charming theatre.  The last time we went, we had general admission seats and were up in the balcony, which wasn't actually a bad place to be, but this year we decided to splurge a little bit on regular floor seats and I will say - totally worth the upgrade!  The atmosphere before the show is a ton of fun, you're encouraged to use Twitter if you wish and they project everyone's tweets (hashtag Wits of course) up on a screen and it's fun to watch for your name.  A DJ from one of our local stations plays a bunch of upbeat dance music and it's just super fun to hang out before the show.

The house band comes out and plays a song to get everyone all pumped and warmed up and then the host, John Moe, comes on stage and kind of explains for anyone who hasn't been to a show before what's going to happen, he explains that it's a radio show and that there may be re-shoots at the end if there are any mistakes, that kind of thing.  Then they bring out the guest stars and start the show.

They do a couple of sketches and skits, interview the guests and the music guest gets to perform a couple of songs.  We had not seen Har Mar Superstar live before and let me tell you - he is amazing! He's a machine up there.  Danny Pudi is also hilarious - nothing like his character Ahmed from Community at all.

One of my favorite things about going to Wits is they let you bring food and beverage from their snack bars into the theatre and you can consume them all during the show.  The beer is cheapest before the show begins, they run a happy hour.  So we had one before and grabbed another during intermission.  Another thing I've learned in the couple of times I have attended now - sneak out during a skit to use the restroom.  The ladies room at the Fitz is TINY, so unless you want to spend the entire intermission in line, it's best to go a different time!

After intermission they do some more sketches, play a game or two with the guests and then the musical guest gets to sing a few more songs.  They close the show with an audience sing-a-long. This time they did the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back".  After the show is over they do the re-shoots if there are any, this time it didn't take too long at all.  And then that's it.  The whole thing probably lasts around 2 to 2 1/2 hours.  By the time they edit for radio though, it is only an hour long.  It'll be fun to listen to it later to see what changes they made!  Overall it's a super fun experience.  I'm looking forward to seeing who is coming next year and will probably make plans to go again!  

For The Locals

Hey hey, it's FRIDAY!  And there was rejoicing throughout all the land!  Anyway, this is just a short and sweet post about a couple of neat things coming up for any MN readers - sorry to my out of town peeps!
If you're in the Minneapolis area tomorrow, I'll be trying to downsize my closet with some other bloggers and participating in a garage sale hosted by Megan of two birds.  There are about five of us I believe who will be selling clothes, purses, accessories, shoes (rumor has it there will even be a pair of Coach shoes...that might fit yours truly, so you may have to arm wrestle me for them), vintage goodies, knicknacks and other goodies.  More info on the Facebook event here, or feel free to message me for the address and more details.  We'll be open 9 am to 2 pm!  And when you're done shopping our sale you should hit up Craftstravaganza over at the MN Fairgrounds, there are always so many cute vendors there, a friend of mine and her father sell pottery/photography every year and it's a really neat event.  Support local!
And then Monday I'm off of work again and I'm really excited about the reason - I will be in the audience with some other bloggers for Twin Cities Live!  They're doing a show on blogs and blogging and asked any and all local bloggers to come be part of the audience.  It's going to be so cool, I've never seen a taping of a live show before! I'm sure I'll have more fun things to share after the event, but wanted to let all you local folks know that you should tune in at 3:00 on Monday - maybe you'll even see me!  I'll wave!

Tonight I'm excited for a date night with my husband to go to Wits - it's a local radio show that has been described as the younger, hipper version of a Prairie Home Companion.  We had a chance to go a couple of years ago and it was tons of fun, so I'm excited to go tonight.  The guests are Danny Pudi from Community and Har Mar Superstar, so it should be a great show!  

So lots of fun happenings.  Can you see why I love where I live so much? Always something going on! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!  

The Beer Dabbler

So it's no secret to readers of the blog here that Nate and I are pretty into beer.  We're lucky that the craft beer industry is absolutely booming here in Minnesota.  There are quite a few festivals throughout the year that we have enjoyed going to and this year we decided to try one we hadn't before - The Beer Dabbler at the Winter Carnival in St. Paul.  The event was this past Saturday and we had a blast!  We decided to splurge and get "VID (Very Important Dabbler)" tickets and that was the best decision we could have made!  We got in a half hour early and got to start drinking beer right away, we got free hats, free food, access to a heated tent and no lines for bathrooms - yeah, totally worth the extra price!  Anyway, I thought I'd share some pictures here (if you're Facebook friends with me you've already seen these, so apologies for the double post in that case).

Above I'm drinking my first beer of the day.  You'll notice too that this event was outside.  Normally in Minnesota you'd be crazy for going to an outdoor festival in January, but we lucked out and had a day of warm weather - it was actually in the 40's, so I got by with a sweatshirt and a puffy vest!

Of course I had to take a selfie with my favorite person.  We don't look at all excited about the fact that we had a babysitter and could be out of the house drinking beer together do we?

You could choose which color hat you got as a "VID" ticket holder.  I chose a pink/blue/purple one because I'm such a girl.  Nate chose a maroon and gold one (Go Gophers I guess!)

No beer festival is complete without a lineup of food trucks.  I was SO excited that one I've been wanting to try for ages was there - O'Cheeze, a gourmet grilled sandwich truck.  Yep, sign me up!!

We had some sort of chicken chipotle grilled cheese with cheddar and pepperjack cheeses.  Sounds like it would be super spicy, but it wasn't too bad.  Another awesome thing at this festival was that they had meat and cheese samples available for free inside the Colosseum (this event took place at the MN State Fairgrounds) - so we ended up spending close to an hour in there sampling cheeses.  There were some beers being poured in there as well so we didn't have to go without!

These last couple of pictures are just me being silly.  Above I was showing off my dorky necklace that was very useful - it holds your beer glass so you can be hands free.  However, somehow mine managed to fall out of the necklace in the mud, so I was sad panda thinking I was done having any beer, but Nate said "come on, let's just ask for another one".  I didn't think there was anyway they'd give me one, but when they saw we were "VIDs" they said we could have one.  Um, score!

One of the MN Breweries, Dayblock Brewing, also has bacon, so they had a giant bacon strip outside their booth, so I was like, I need a picture with the bacon.  Because bacon.  I love bacon.

We didn't partake too much in the free booya stew we also got as VID members, we could have as many bowls as we wanted, but given the food trucks and cheese samples, we pretty much filled up on that and didn't need the stew.  Also, it was just not that cold out, so we didn't feel the need for that to help warm us up.  As for the beers?  There were good ones out there, we found a lot of the breweries weren't stepping outside the box too much, but I will say the two best ones I think I had was Stir Crazy (winter ale) from Indeed Brewing that had peppermint added and then Summit had their Oatmeal Stout with cinnamon and vanilla on cask - that was quite delightful!  Overall we had a great time and I would definitely consider going to this festival again and I would absolutely pop for the VID if we do.  Our next big beer event won't be until the summer more than likely, so I'm glad we did it up pretty big for this one!  
Hope you all had a great weekend too!  If you're on the East Coast, I'm thinking of you, hunker down and stay safe in the snow!

Inspiration Monday - And I said hey, what's going on?

Happy Monday!  If you're lucky enough to be off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, enjoy it for me!  I'm not so lucky, healthcare stops for nothing.  But, I had a good weekend, so that takes the sting off a bit!  I am also linking up with two birds for Inspiration Monday today which is also fun, so that helps too!

They chose a fun look from Emma Stone.  Can I just take a second to say how much I like her?  She is one of my new favorite actresses I think.  She seems smart and funny and like someone I think I might actually like hanging out with in real life.  Anyway, enough of my girl crush.

I chose to style a look for a night out with some other blogger/Instagram friends on Saturday night. My look is a loose interpretation, but I think it works.  Megan told me I looked kind of Harry Potter chic and I can dig that.  Just point me towards Hogwarts!

Blazer - F21, Shirt - swap

Scarf - from Secret Santa Exchange, Jeans - Old Navy

Boots - Target 

We had a bunch of fun, it was great meeting some ladies I hadn't had a chance to meet in person yet, but have been communicating with online for quite some time now!  I always have so much fun meeting up with my fellow blog friends - I think we all feel a kinship because we're all people who put ourselves out on the internet for the world to see and somehow that just really connects us!  As always there was a lot of laughing, a lot of hashtag jokes and this mama even got up and sang a little 4 Non Blondes "What's Up" in a rather packed bar!  Thank you beer for being a confidence booster! I was sad to be a lame old lady who headed home by 11 though so I could get to bed and get up for church with our music group the next day.  I should have stayed out, I got home and just laid awake for a very long time!  Coffee was good on Sunday morning.  Anyway, it was a good time and I can't wait to do it again.

Beautiful and lovely people - Lauren, Erin, Sara, Nora, Megan, Jesse, me and Rachel
And now as I said, it's Monday, and I'm stuck working, so I'd best get back to it!  Be sure to visit two birds over here for more Inspiration Monday looks!

Thursday Mishmash

So first a bit of housekeeping - the Thrift Style Thursday gals are taking December off, we decided it's too hectic with the holiday season and that sometimes it's enough to just keep up with blogging at all, let alone a weekly thrifted outfit post.  We'll be back fresh in January with some new ideas and new fun, so make sure to watch for that!  And now on to today's post!

Today's post is a bit of a mishmash of things - a recap of Ollie's birthday yesterday and an outfit of the day.  Cause it's my blog and I'll share a million pictures and multiple subjects if I want to!

Yesterday Nate and I were lucky enough to have the day off so we could spend the entire day as our little family of three for Ollie's first birthday.  We took him to Macy's 8th Floor in Downtown Minneapolis so he could see Santa (when I was growing up, that was THE Santa, so I just really wanted to bring him to this one) and the Day in the Life of an Elf display.  We went in the morning after Ollie's nap and it wasn't too busy which was nice.

He isn't tired in the above picture, the flash made him squinty.  Anyway, here we are in line for Santa. It was really hard to get good pictures, it was kind of dark lighting, so we did the best we could.

A nice lady offered to take a picture of all three of us which was really nice.  We only had to wait about three minutes for our turn with Santa.  I'll have to scan in the picture we got of Ollie with Santa, it turned out pretty good I have to say.  He wasn't afraid of him at all, he sat nice and only cried after the pictures were done because he wanted to get down.

I let him crawl around a little bit while Nate paid for the pictures and then we had to do my favorite part - stop and get a gingerbread cookie.  They used to make them fresh on this floor and you'd smell them the minute you got off the elevator, but now they make them downstairs and bring them up. They're still delicious though!  Ollie enjoyed it too!

We made a quick stop in the gift shop on our way out and picked out a book for Ollie to open up later so he could have one present on his actual birthday.  We'll give him his other presents at the party on Sunday.  While Nate was checking out we got a mommy/Ollie selfie.  I should see how many of those I have from the last year and make a collage of those, ha!

I realized I hadn't gotten many good Ollie/daddy pictures so we stopped before we got on the elevator in front of some pretty trees so I could get one.  Ollie's patience was wearing a bit as he was hungry for lunch, but he humored me for one more picture!

After we left Macy's we took Oliver to a restaurant we enjoy called India Palace.  They do a lunch buffet which is great, we could make a plate of food and share all of it with Ollie and it gave him a chance to try lots of different things.  He pretty much loved it all.

We finished that up and headed home to put him down for his afternoon nap which he thankfully took - fingers crossed the nap strike is over - and during that time I ran and got a quick haircut and then set out to put up and decorate my tree finally and I guess it was a good thing I did...I moved the tree box and saw water on the floor around our water heater.  Guess what else Ollie is now getting as a birthday present?  A new water heater!  Hope you enjoy it kid!  Seriously though, we knew this would be happening soon given the age of the heater we had.  So today I get to work from home for the afternoon while our plumber installs a new one!

We didn't let that little incident put a damper on our day though.  When Ollie got up from his nap we gave him his present.  He wasn't sure what to do with the wrapping paper but he tried!

We gave him a soft sided book about a lion who helps his friends.  It's pretty cute.  And then we pretty much just played with him, ate dinner and put him to bed.  It was a full and wonderful day.  I look forward to his party this weekend too, but I'm glad we took a day for just us.

Today as I said I'm at work for a half day, but I liked the outfit I put together so I wanted to share it since I haven't done an outfit post in a while!

 Sweater - Mossimo (Target), Pants and boots - Old Navy

Cami - Gap, Necklace - Zulily

As usual I'm following along with some Instagram fashion challenges and one of the ones for today was "Gingerbread Neutrals" - I thought that this look kind of fit that theme a little bit!  It's comfy and warm too which is also always nice!  That's all for today, kind of a long post, if you made it this far, well, thanks for reading!