what a weekend!

We are winding down from a really busy weekend! It's really busy around here this month, but we're having fun.

I started Saturday off by attending the CSR Fashion Show. CSR is one of the departments within the College that I work for and one of the majors within CSR is Apparel Design. These guys are so talented! Upon graduation, they also have an Associate's degree from the Fashion Institute in NYC and they end up doing amazing things in the fashion industry, so it's fun to see their first real "collections." This year, the show was held up in the suites of Ross Ade and it was really fun. It had been forever since I had attended one of the shows...the last time was when Shell was one of the models and that must have been 6 years ago or more! Here are a couple of my favorite of the senior collections. There were about 15 seniors who had entire collections with specific themes. I loved this one:

Lots of ruffles, great skirts and heels...nothing says "Christina" more than that!This line made me smile. It was inspired when the designer was in London last year and saw everyone on the Vespas, which is why everyone has the helmets on. So cute! My favorite line was called Glacia and I would buy the jackets TODAY if I could! Unfortunately my pics didn't turn out, but they all had really tall collars and great folds and detailing. So amazing!!So that was one department and later Saturday night, we were able to celebrate one of the other departments, HTM, by attending the annual Black Tie Dinner! This was Josh's favorite event of the entire year last year and we were so excited to attend again. (Don't judge us for wearing the same thing 2 years in a row!) Here's a quick pic before we headed out for a great evening:I didn't take many pictures of the meal, but I did snap one of dessert. It was delicious! BTD includes a fabulous meal with an abundance of wine and the entire evening showcases the department, which happens to be ranked as the #1 department in the nation! Our students did a fantastic job!

Here is the menu (we wished we'd saved it last year so we were sure to pick it up this year):

I
House-cured gravlax~Roasted pineapple~Pickled jicama~Celery leaf vinaigrette~Wine: Vinho Verde from Twin Vines, Portugal 2007

II
Fennel cream with lavender~Wine: Viognier, Concannon, California 2007
We both **LOVED** this course!

III
Olive-oil poached tenderloin of bison~Pomegranate-Port reduction~White polenta~Swiss chard~Spaghetti Squash~Wine: Syrah/Petite Sirah, Concannon, California 2006
**This was our absolute favorite!! The bison was outstanding!**

IV
Maytag-blue & fig flan~Apricot compote~Wine: Zinfandel, Kunde, California 2005

V
Three-chocolate gateau~Champagne mango and rhubarb coulis~Wine: Moscato d'Oro, Mondavi Family Vineyards, California 2006
*This is fun side note: we went right by (if not TO) the Mondavi vineyard when we were in Napa last year. Pretty neat!)

Here we are after the dinner was over:Each year, there is a special gift. This year, because the speaker owns a restaurant in Seattle called the Skillet, we got a skillet as our gift!! Of course, we had to have a little fun with it...the students do a great job of keeping the wine flowing, so we were feeling a little feisty after the dinner!

Here are J and I playing around. I don't know that I would trust a tipsy girl with a big heavy skillet as much as he did, but no one was hurt thank goodness.Here is Mark giving Wendi a beating! :)
Wendi and I:

And this is a funny pic of Mark and Wendi making fun of my "famous" head tilt. Everyone I know pokes fun of my tilt and I think Josh has even started to do the tilt! I don't even realize that I do it. Last year, during one outing, all of the girls at the table got their own picture trying to perfect the tilt. Pretty funny. Well....Mark is a photographer. You can imagine that he notices the tilt and so does his finely trained wife, so they had to try their hand at a shot with the famous head tilt!What a great evening!! Can't wait till next year!

So that brings us to Sunday morning. I met an alum at work really quickly before heading to the Tippy Connect event, Kicks For Kids. TC is the Young Professionals group in the area and I am on two committees for it. One of them is the Community Involvement Committee and we helped to plan a Kids Soccer tournament which turned out to be pretty fun. We had some of the Entomology students from Purdue come with a tarantula, a millipede, hissing cockroaches and some other fun creatures. (And by fun, I mean CREEPY. I held a millipede and petted the spider and I still kind of feel dirty.) We also had the professional female soccer team there to meet the kids and sign their shirts. The event benefited Big Brothers Big Sisters and we had a great turnout, especially since it was the 1st Annual K4K event. Josh had 5 of his employees there for the Kohl's Cares for Kids program, too. It was fun to be able to do something like this together!

We ended the weekend with dinner at Shell and Dan's along with Abby, Billy and their kids. We hadn't seen the boys since before they went on vacation and I missed them so much. They look so cute all tanned and sunkissed!

Overall, we had a fantastic weekend, though it was tiring! We're looking forward to the warm weather deciding to show up and STAY! We have some projects that we want to do outside so we're hoping that true spring arrives soon!