BIRTHDAY STEEZ

Hi errrrybody!  I hope everyone had a great weekend and is having a great week so far.  This past weekend was a special one since I celebrated yet another birthday  :)   I have so much to be thankful for and as I get another year older, I realize more and more how blessed I am to have the people I have in my life and yet still meet amazing new ones!  The weekend was incredible as I got to see a lot of friends and celebrate in my favorite ways.  I'm going to go into more detail for those who care to know. If that's not you, just scroll through the pictures.  I'll never know.

Because I believe no one should have to work on their birthday, I took the day off.  Hahaha.  For those of you who don't know, my birthday is 2/22 which fell on Friday of last week.  I decided to take the day off and give myself a fun three day weekend.  But let's be real here, being me, my weekend started as soon as I took that first step out of my office building on Thursday.  I had planned a quiet intimate dinner with some of my favorite lady friends at a fairly new restaurant in Lincoln Park... Balena.  It was a little rough with the threat of a snowmageddon coming our way but there's no stopping my ladies from a night of gossip and female banter over mucho bottles of vino.  Thank you my loves for risking life and limb (even tho it ended up not being snowmageddon at all) to have dinner with moi.  I had an amazing time catching up and opening such thoughtful and sweet pressies.  I cherish these friendships so much and I believe if we didn't have girl friends and nights like that, women would go bat shit crazy.  These days I like having smaller gatherings because it's when I feel like I've really caught up with someone and given them the attention they deserve.  So thank you thank you thank you thank you my darlings!  You know who you are.

BALENA

The food at Balena was great.  Even though we didn't really try that much of the menu because all of the ladies just wanted the Uni Pasta.  So we ordered three orders.  Lol.  The actual name of the dish is "Tagliolini Nero, Crab, Sea Urchin, Chili".  And yes, I must say, it was amaaaaazeypants!  I think we all wished we had ordered one for each of us instead of having to share the three orders.  Hahaha.  We had a couple of the pizzas, the Cauliflower and the Brussel Sprout pizzas to be exact, but it was the pasta dishes that stole the show.  The other pasta dish we tried was the Orecchiette and everyone loved it.  Their Italian wine selection can be very daunting since it's pages and pages and pages and pages of wines but our lovely server helped me find some good ones for the table.  Overall I had a great experience.  We had the cutest table which was situated in a little alcove near the back of the restaurant.  It wasn't a separate room but we felt secluded and cozy.  I absolutely fell in love with the venue!  Not to mention the entire Balena team signed a little birthday card for me and it was sitting there on the table when we arrived.  So cute!  Thank you Balena for such a special dinner.  I will be back with the hubby since he felt totally cheated because it was no boys allowed.  Haha.

Friday was also amazeballs.  I kind of woke up early just due to my natural "work" internal clock.  As a surprise, The Hubster planned to work from home to be with me on my actual birthday.  Isn't he a sweet potato pie?!?!  Although an hour later I'm pretty sure he was regretting that decision because like a birthday brat I just started barking out orders as my lazy ass stayed in bed watching Korean dramas and cuddling with my dog.  Just little nuggets like "It's my birthday, I want water!"  "It's my birthday, make me lunch!"  "It's my birthday, bring me my computer!"  "It's my birthday, you're being too loud!"  "It's my birthday, where's my present!?"  Yea, I really know how to milk it.  And that's why I know I married the right guy because he let me be the biggest brattiest betch there ever lived.  =)  And as if right on cue, the UPS guy arrived with my present from The Hubster!  He got me a very nice new camera lens.  The Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM Lens to be exact.  Hooray for wide angle!  Funny how this present is for me but he's the one that has to really learn how to use it.  Hahaha.  Poor guy.

Around about 5pm, I finally peeled myself out of bed to get ready for the night we had planned.  Not sure if you were aware but my hubby was on TV on Friday.  Hahaha.  It was a local show on WTTW Chicago called Check Please!  You can watch him in all three video clips of EPISODE #1213 - HERE!  If you can't tell which one he is, he's the one with the voice that makes the ladies jump back and go "Mmmmmmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmmmm" and the fellas jump back and go "God? Is that you?"  Check Please! is a show that highlights restaurants all over Chicagoland and reviewed by normal peeps.  If you wanna watch The Hubster's episode and spice it up a notch, you can play the game that we played at my place.  I made some insanely strong and gross jello shots for our little viewing party.  And for every time The Hubster said "DELICIOUS", we would take a delicious jello shot.  We got pretty nice and toasty since it's only a 30 minute show.  LOL.  After some more pre-festivities, we all headed to a staple Korean bar  and met up with the rest of the crew.  It was soju shots and kimchi bokkumbap all around!  And to cap off the night, we went right next door and went balls out on Karaoke.  It got madd emo when we hit those Boys II Men songs.  LOL.  I loooooove Karaoke soooo much!  Thanks for everyone who came out that night to support my sexy man and celebrate with me!

WASABI

Saturday was spent with my fam bam.  We ate and this amazing Japanese restaurant Wasabi in Logan Square.  I have finally found THE ramen spot for me.  It used to be Slurping Turtle and Takashi on Sundays but I am sorry to say, they just got knocked down to #2.  The broths in the 4 ramen bowls we had were insanely good.  I had the tonkotsu and it was amazing.  The broth did not seem too greasy but still it was packed with flavor.  The whole dish just warmed me up from the inside and it was like heaven in my mouth.  I absolutely am obsessed with ramen.  I don't get to have it that much since it's not that easy to find and it's usually not anywhere close to me.  I guess now, I will be venturing out to Logan Square more often!  We had some other dishes that were good too but I'm not going to kid myself.  I only cared about the ramen.  Next time I will not be ordering that many apps and I will make sure there is enough room in me to fully finish my ramen bowl.

Being in somewhat of a food coma, we decided to watch a movie.  Ended up watching Beautiful Creatures which was pretty good as I went in with no expectations.  Well that's not true.  I went in to watch it because I love Emmy Rossum.  Sadly she wasn't really in the movie that much.  =(  It did make me curious about the books.  Maybe that will be on my summer read list.

FROG N SNAIL

After the movie it was back to eating again.  Omg I swear that's all I did on Saturday was eat eat eat.  But whatever!  I was determined to try the dinner menu at Frog N Snail.  If you follow my instagram or tweets, you will know just how OBESESSED I am with this place and their brunch menu.  So it was only fitting that I give their dinner menu a whirl.  Dinner was a different experience as it was poppin' and busy.  A lot more lively than the brunch crowd.  And as I expected, I was not disappointed with any of my dishes.  I only wish that there was a larger selection on their dinner menu.  Probably because some of the dishes are also available for brunch and I've had most of their brunch menu.  LOL.  But here are my recommendations.  The frog legs were so good!  I've never had frog legs before but omg it's so soft and moist and kinda tastes like chicken but the texture is better than chicken.  They also throw in some breaded and fried green tomatoes.  GAH!  I could live off of those!  The steamed mussels.. wowee zowee!  It has a spicy kick which I loved!  The BLD Burger.  OMFG... they hollow out the top part of the bun and stuff it with magic, and love, and pixie dust, and things that ooze which make you think impure thoughts.  Genius, just genius!  Everything a burger should be.  Did I mention you can see all of these dishes on my Instagram?  Follow me y'all!  @drunkonshoes.  DUH.  We all each kind of had our own dessert dishes.  I had their classic profiteroles.  How do I describe these nuggets of love?  You know when you take a bite out of something soooooooooo amazingly good, you just want to hit someone or pound the table and go "MMM!!!"  That's what it was like.  So decadent, so chocolate-y, so what every girl who is PMS-ing needs in her life.  I had a few other dishes but these were the ones that really WOWed me.  xoxo.

Sunday was a special date day with just The Hubster and also the day we took these photos.  He got me an additional birthday present bonus and got tickets to watch The Book of Mormon.  I had no idea what it would really be about but I just heard it was hilarious.  And yes... yes it was!  Something about men dancing and singing and bopping around stage is so damn entertaining.  And woweeeeeeee, they can SING!  An amazing musical and a must watch while it's running here in Chicago!

After The Book of Mormon, it was off to Nellcote for their first annual Oscar Party also holsted by Chicago Blogger Network.  I have photos from that so I will save my words for that post.  And damn I wrote a ton already.  I'm sure you all dozed off by now.  If you read it all, THANKS!

Dress - Three Floor  |  Vest - Boundary & Co  (thanks Gracey) |  Coat - ASOS (It actually has a hood but I took my seam ripper to it and hacked that baby off)  |  Shoes - Sergio Rossi  |  Bag - Louis Vuitton

xoxo,

DOS