Galentine's Day

If you're like me and haven't had a chance to knock Parks & Rec out of your Netflix queue yet, you might not have heard of the Leslie Knope girl-power alternative to Valentine's Day - Galentine's Day. As you can probably guess, it's a day about girls and celebrating your love for the women in your life. My best friend Ana (Parks & Rec lover) suggested we have a Galentine's Day this year and when I responded with a blank stare, she told me it's held on Feb. 13th  and is basically accompanied by a giant breakfast. As the 13th fell on a Friday this year and because our friends all had school/work in the morning, we decided to meet up at 8:00 pm so while we could have had breakfast for dinner, we decided to just have real dinner with loads of finger foods and chocolate everything. Since I couldn't really make this post until after the event, maybe this is something you can bookmark to get some ideas for next year, but the main point is that you get together with your bffs and celebrate how much love you have for each other while indulging in all the chocolate goodness that this time of year has to offer (any excuse for chocolate, amirite??) and, it doesn't have to be just girls because I saw another friend of mine partaking in Palentine's Day!

While food is a huge part of the celebration, you can definitely use the time to watch movies together, treat yourselves to a pamper night or play games, and we had every intention to do so until we took a break from talking and realized it was 1:00 am. My friend Alexia did bring a collection of some good rom-coms like 10 Things I Hate About You, Bridesmaid's and Valentine's Day (not my fave but obvi an appropriate choice).

Everyone brought something to the celebration, not because we told anybody they had to, but because we all felt like it. Ana laid out some Girl Scout cookies, ordered some pizzas and made pasta with Alfredo sauce (so hungry forgot to snap pics) and her older sister brought half of our wine/champagne. Ana's sister's friend brought a spread of meats, olives, bread sticks and cheeses - she made homemade mozzarella with pesto - I cried it was so perfect. My friend Alexia also brought a bottle of champagne and made these really cute cupcakes adorned with pink frosting and hearts. I brought chocolate-covered strawberries and two kinds of cookies: blueberry, lemon, and white chocolate chip and cranberry, macademia and white chocolate chip.

As well as taking advantage of chocolate and sweets, we indulged in a lot of wine and champagne. Like, A LOT of wine and champagne.

In addition to bringing things to consume at the party, a couple of us made goodie bags. Alexia went all out and bought cute paper candy bags with hearts on and filled them with sweets. I was also quite fancy (not) and got a plastic sandwich bag and filled it with a few cookies, a $5 Starbucks gift card, a box of conversation hearts and some heart-shaped chocolates. I had every intention of using cellophane, but in which isle of the store can you even find it??

For some reason, Galentine's Day seemed to be everywhere this year, or was that just me because it was the first time I'd heard about it so the first time I actually paid attention to it? Idk but let me know if you've heard of it before this year and whether or not you had a Galentine's of your own!

Xx Sab