Katie and Elaine TAKE CLEVELAND!

This year for St. Patrick's Day Katie and Elaine decided to TAKE CLEVELAND. Luckily our bosses were in a great mood Friday and let both of us go early (Luck of the Irish - we think so), so we packed our bags and hit the road.

Friday night we made plans to meet up with some UD girfriends, Lauren Hauptman, Molly Feller, and Clair Labutta, at Barley House on West 6th in downtown Cleveland. The atmosphere was fitting for the day before St. Patrick's day - very calm but full of irish food and music. Also, being mid-march, March Madness was going on so we watched OU kick Michigan right out of the tournament!

The food at Barley House was phenomenal. Katie and I split Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese Pizza and it was TO.DIE.FOR. One of the coolest aspects of this restaurant was that in certain tables there were beer taps built right in. It charged you per ounce so if you wanted 3 ounces great.. or if you wanted 33 ounces awesome - you picked how much you poured. The Hubbard Grill in Columbus has beer taps built into some of their tables, and the one time I've been there the people sitting at that table were drinking wine. It made me mad that they wasted that table on non-beer drinking people therefore we decided we were obligated to drink out of our been table tap. We lucked out because the beer was Yuengling!

We woke up early St. Patrick's Day morning to mimosas, green eggs and green pancakes. Nothing like food coloring to coat the stomach and prepare you for your day! After getting our pretty on, we ventured the streets of Cleveland to the land of West 6th where we met up with more friends. The weather was BEAUTIFUL - we definitely could not have asked for a better day. When 1 o'clock rolled around we attempted to make it to the parade route, but with what seemed like millions of people  filling downtown we could barely keep our group from being separated. We headed back to West 6th to Panini's and ate yummy yummy pizza.

Because we started our day so early, we called it a pretty early night. Sunday we had lunch with the Kandrach family. Mr. and Mrs. K welcomed us into their home, made a delicious Italian meal, and sent us all home with left overs. We were exhausted heading back to Columbus, but we had a blast! Thanks Cleveland - YOU ROCK.

The LAB Open House

As most of our loyal followers know, Katie and Elaine work at Victoria's Secret home office. Being part of such a large company we have to work with many outside vendors - last week one of them had an open house for their new space in Columbus. Many of our co-workers joined in the festivities, including Melyssa Kirn, Erin Masur, Sara Kreinberg, Jackie Wessel and Emmie Graham.

The Lab is one of the numerous retouching companies we work with on a daily basis. The people are great and they do fantastic work! Their new space is super cool, kind of like an old airplane hanger that they spruced up to look very modern chic.

We ate mini-sandwiches of all kinds, had wayyyyyy too much spicy shrimp, and devoured our mini-cheesecakes. The party was one of the first weeks of March, but because of how beautiful the weather in Ohio has been lately (THANK YOU GLOBAL WARMING) we were able to sit on their patio. We drank wine, did some mingling, and had DELICIOUS food. Next time we need a caterer we are calling our LAB contacts to see who they had because it was fantastic.

Hey LAB let's have another party - this one was super fun!

An Extra Day for Sushi & Wine

For Leap Day this year Katie and Elaine took Columbus at Sushi Rock. After eating at both Haiku and Sushi Rock, we were torn as to which restaurant we like better. Haiku definitely has a more laid back atmosphere, where Sushi Rock plays loud music and has the lights turned down to set the mood. While both have delicious sushi, so far Katie and Elaine have both craved sushi from Sushi Rock but not from Haiku.

When we arrived there was a 35 minute wait for a table, but we could sit down immediately at the sushi bar - so obviously we sat at the sushi bar. It was really cool because you could see the sushi chefs making their creations right in front of you. When we commented on how sweet it was to watch them make the sushi, the chef closest shot us a really strange look - therefore we decided to not talk about him again until he walked away.

Although it was only Wednesday it had already been a long week at work, so we ordered wine. The usual Malbec for Elaine and Reisling for Katie. Being creatures of habit, we also got our usual order of sushi. The Spider roll for Elaine: soft shell crab, crabstick, cucumber, broccoli & spicy mayo sauce, and the Crazy Roll for Katie: deep fried unagi, avocado, masago, cream cheese. One thing to point out about Sushi Rock's menu is that they divide the sushi by raw, cooked or tempura rolls. Katie is very adventurous when it comes to her sushi, but I prefer only cooked therefore it was really nice to know exactly what I was eating.

This was our first outing just the two of us, and it was the perfect night. Just a couple gals after a hard days work getting some sushi and drinks. Katie and Elaine won't be taking Columbus next week because Katie will be on vacation in DISNEY WORLD! It's sad we won't be able to blog, but she is going to a magical place. See you in 2 weeks!