Bridal Showers < Champagne Showers

Last weekend the TOTT family was very lucky to celebrate Marissa's bridal shower! As BFF's and bridesmaids, it was our duty to not let this shower be a boring dreaded gathering.  Since Marissa's sister Michelle is the Maid of Honor and the most organized of all of us, she took the reins on planning the soiree – an elegant brunch in the private Butterfly Room at the posh Cecconi’s in West Hollywood.  

Here is a timeline of events that occurred that glorious Saturday morning:

11:30am Marissa's family & guests arrive.

11:58am Hungover and late - Jackie, Kellie, Ashley and Marissa finally arrive.

12:15pm  Guests take their seats while drinks & appetizers are served.  Coincidentally, we were seated at one end of the table (the kid’s section) while all of Marissa’s aunts, grandmothers and cousins sat at the far end (the adult section).

12:30pm  While scoring the "He Said/She Said" game, the filled-out papers are accidentally placed atop a lit candle...

12:31pm After a minute of curious smoke smells, we realize the table is on fire. Shannon throws an entire glass of water on said fire which ultimately ends up in Michelle’s lap.  All of the game cards are burnt - including the answer key - and we will now never know who really knows Marissa & Jade best...

12:35pm  More mimosas, less food.

12:45pm  Marissa walks down to the other end of the table to mingle with her family.

12:46pm  The maids gather all of our placards, cups, & glasses from the table and stack them in front of Marissa’s seat at the table for funnies.

12:48pm  We sword fight with breakdsticks and hide 1 breadstick in Marissa’s clutch... as a present.

12:55pm  Marissa returns to her seat and is not amused.

1:10pm   Time for gifts! Michelle had assigned us "tasks" for the gift opening ceremony.  Kellie is in charge of the wrapping paper trash, Ashley in charge of photos, Jackie is in charge of putting gifts away, and Shanaynay in charge of handing gifts to Marissa to open.

1:14pm   We get distracted from our tasks by our own reflections and cute boys.  (Due to this distraction, there is a lack of photos of the gift opening ceremony - our apologies)

1:30pm   After all the boring gifts (dishware, cookbooks, anything that isn't a wine glass) are opened, she finally gets to ours!  The best part of our gift being the FEATHER HANDCUFFS from our favorite lingerie boutique Faire Frou Frou in Studio City, and the rest of our gift being too intimate to share with all of you, and probably too intimate to have been shared in front of Marissa's grandmothers... oops!

1:40pm Dessert time: Red Velvet Cupcakes.  Cute, but NO carbs for us, thanks though...

2pm   Bridal Shower End.  The (brides)maids pack up the SUV full of gifts, say their goodbyes & thank you's (as we finish off the mimosas left on the table), and ride off into the LA sunset. 

2:10pm  Said SUV pulls into a Ralph's parking lot where we change into our street clothes while Ashley buys 4 bottles of Rose champagne and a bag of Doritos.   All contents are consumed shortly after on a beach in the marina with 24 of our closest delinquent friends dressed in international beach volleyball costumes... (explanatory post to follow)

5:00pm Marissa finds the breadstick in her purse and enjoys the thoughtful snack

::: Fade to black :::

While this may not have been the "normal" way of assuring your BFF has a fabulous bridal shower, we say ... NORMAL IS FOR LOSERS! 

You're welcome Marissa, for making this day so special.  

PS I'm sorry we broke that picture frame of you & Jade at the table... Kellie did it.

XOXO

And now an interpretive piece from this week sponsor's:  LMFAO

The 4th of July is on a Wednesday… and it’s ruining my life!

This year the 4^th of July falls right smack in the middle of the work week leaving us full-time working patriots completely dumfounded asking questions like, “We really don't have a 3-day weekend?”  “I seriously have to come in to work on the 5^th?”  “How could America let this happen?!”

It’s as if the Grinch has stolen not only Christmas this year, but also the only holiday where it is socially acceptable to hang out all day in a kiddie pool in my glittered star spangled bikini while double fisting red & blue jello shots.  HOW RUDE!

As I wave goodbye to the annual trip to the lake and say farewell to the idea of blacking out before the fireworks go off… I find myself wondering what the hell I will do this year to survive the 4^th on a Wednesday and soberly drive myself to the office on Thursday morning.

Whatever it is YOU plan to do with your family & friends, here are a few tips to surviving the misplaced holiday this year:

              1.)    Pack a Fantastic Slumber Bag – No matter where you go, be prepared!   Pack the essentials + anything you might need to get you to work the next morning.  A cute little pantsuit tucked away next to your toothbrush, Excedrin, and mouth guard can fit perfectly in a stars & stripes backpack! (Eye mask optional)

              2.)    7 Sips to Success –The Golden Rule:  Remember to stay hydrated.   For every alcoholic drink you finish, take 7 sips of water (sparkling or flat!).  This can be turned into a fun group activity as well; whistles are encouraged.  A very lovely alcoholic Armenian once taught me this in the middle of a lake on a tin boat last summer under the blistering sun.  I’ll never forget her or this rule…

             3.)    Apply & RE-Apply Sunblock – There is nothing worse than being hung over AND sun burnt at the office on Thursday morning. 

             4.)    Set Alarms – Go ahead and set your iPhones NOW with these helpful reminders.  

a.     Noon – Apply SUNBLOCK

b.    2pm –  FUEL UP! There’s nothing worse than a sloppy drunk, don’t forget your 7 sips & a snack!

c.    7pm – BUDDY CHECK!  Do you know where your friends are and what they’re doing?

d.    10pm – NO MORE SHOTS!  Put yourself on beer probation… it is a weeknight!

e.    Midnight – SERIOUSLY no more shots… that was the last one.

f.      2am – Find your slumber bag and hold on tight.  Time to brush your teeth & get your jammies on… no matter where you are!

g.    8am - ** Arguably The Most Important Alarm **  Set a reminder to email your boss that you have suddenly come down with food poisoning… yes, the hot dogs must not have been cooked thoroughly.  You are the most upset about this as you really had every intention of bringing the blue & red bagels to the production mtg this morning…

       5.)  Go big or go home! - If you don't make it to work on Thursday, might as well take Friday off too... so pack up the car and go meet your friends at the lake cuz afterall you deserve a 5-day weekend!  And if you have a hard time convincing yourself of that, just call me - I can rationalize anything.

And now a word from our sponsor,  SmithAgentSmith:

YOLO

May the 4th be with you all! 

xoxo

The Day Mindy Kaling and I Me(e)t

Sometimes I imagine being friends with certain “cool” people and I play out in my mind what it would be like to meet them & how exactly we’d fall in friend-love.  Don't worry, I'm not a freak or anything!  I usually only do this when I'm bored & sitting in traffic or spaced out on a date with a guy I'm totally not interested in.  

Aside from the obvious ones like Britney or Sam Rockwell, I HONESTLY cannot wait for the day the stars will align for me & Mindy Kaling.  You see, the entire TOTT group would be sitting at our usual Sunday mimosa brunch spot and about 10 minutes into our gabfest, Mindy would walk thru door and get a table for 2 conveniently located right next to ours.  Mindy's friend would be running late so she'd order a water & unintentionally start eavesdropping on our convos about our previous night of debauchery.  The next part is still up in the air, but I'm almost certain Mindy would lean over and compliment my feather earring or my perfect eyelashes and we’d start chatting about fashion and hangovers.  Once her friend shows up, Mindy would introduce us all and tell her how funny & pretty we are.  We'd then flag down a waitress and ask if we can just combine our tables together because it would be easier to chat that way.  Somewhere between bottomless and mimosa, we'd add each other on facebook so we could check into Henry’s Hat together and be best friends forever.  I haven't worked out the kinks yet, but that's how I see it vaguely happening. 

I mean, wouldn’t it just make perfect sense for these babes to be besties?

I leave you now with an excerpt from Mindy’s hilariously wonderful book  “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and Other Concerns)” 

Obviously Mindy’s book is our #1 pick in the TOTT book club this month.   *We were recently forced into starting a TOTT book club because Kellie refused to leave her kindle at home on our TOTT vacay’s.

Mindy Kaling’s Best Friend Rights and Responsibilities

I CAN BORROW ALL YOUR CLOTHES
Anything in your closet, no matter how fancy, is co-owned by me, your best friend. I can borrow it for as long as I want. If I get something on it or lose it, I should make all good faith attempts to get it cleaned or buy you a new one, but I don’t need to do that, and you still have to love me. If I ruin something of yours and don’t replace it, you’re allowed to talk shit about me to our other friends for a calendar year. That’s it. Then you have to get over it. One stipulation to borrowing your clothes is that you have to have worn the item at least once before I borrow it. I’m not a monster.

WE SLEEP IN THE SAME BED
If we’re on a trip or if our boyfriends are away, and there’s a bed bigger than a twin, we’re partnering up. It is super weird for us to not share a bed. How else will we talk until we fall asleep?

I CAN DITCH YOU, WITHIN REASON
I can ditch you to hang out with a guy, but only if that possibility has been discussed and getting-ride-home practicalities have been worked out prior to the event. In return, I need to talk about you a lot with that guy so he knows how much I love you.

I WILL TAKE CARE OF YOUR KID IF YOU DIE
I can’t even write about this, it’s too sad. But yes, I will do that. And you will have one awesome little kid who hears endless stories about how amazing and beautiful and perfect you were. Incidentally, your kid will grow up loving Indian food.

I WILL NURSE YOU BACK TO HEALTH
If you are crippled with pain because of a UTI, I need to haul ass to CVS to get you some medicine, fast. I should also try to pick up a fashion magazine and candy that you like, because distracting you from your pain is part of nursing you back to health as well.

WE WILL TRADE OFF BEING SOCIAL ACTIVITIES CHAIR FOR OUR OUTINGS
On trips together, I promise to man up and be the person who drives the rental car sometimes, or uses my credit card and have people pay me back later. Someone needs to check on Yelp to see what the good brunch place is. Neither of us gets to be the princess all the time, I get that.

I WILL KEEP YOUR FAVORITE FEMININE HYGEINE PRODUCT AT MY HOUSE
Even though no one uses maxi-pads anymore, like you do, weirdo, I will keep a box at my house for when you come over.

SAME WITH YOUR CONTACT LENS SOLUTION
I can’t believe you won’t get Lasik already. I know you read someone went blind from it, but that was like twenty years ago. Not getting Lasik at this point is like being that girl in 2006 who didn’t have a cell phone.

I WILL TRY TO LIKE YOUR BOYFRIEND FIVE TIMES
This is a fair number of times to hang out with your boyfriend and withhold judgment.

IF YOU’RE DEPRESSED, I WILL BE THERE FOR YOU
As everyone knows, depressed people are some of the most boring people in the world. I know this because when I was depressed, people fled. Except my best friends. I will be there for you during your horrible breakup, and you can tell me a hundred times the same sad stories about how you thought he was going to be the one. I will be there for you to tell your long revenge fantasies to, and also to Facebook stalk whoever you want. I know I will hate it and find you really tedious, but I promise I won’t abandon you.

I WILL HATE AND RE-LIKE PEOPLE FOR YOU
But don’t get mad if I can’t keep track. Robby? Don’t we hate him? No, we love him. Okay, okay. Sorry.

IT IS OKAY TO TAKE ME FOR GRANTED
I know when you fall in love with someone you will completely forget about me. That hurts my feelings, but it is okay. Please try to remember to text me, if you can, if you know I have something going on in my life, like a work promotion or something.

NO TWO PEOPLE ARE BETTER THAN US
We fucking rock. No one can beat us.

-------

The All-American Rejects "The BeeKeeper's Daughter"

You can say you knew us before we were stars.

Back in mid-January, Jackie invited us all over to the Universal Studios backlot to spend our Sunday as extras on set of The All-American Rejects music video for “Beekeeper’s Daughter.”

We started the day with some takes of us walking down the street…and let’s just say we broke new ground. (As hired professionals, we really explored our characters….What was our motivation? Where were we going?) 

We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around Courthouse Square, just chillin' in front of the clock tower from Back to the Future waiting for Doc Brown to jimmy up the flux capacitor.  It is disorienting to spend hours in a "fake" town, kind of like being in the Matrix and not knowing what was real anymore (…can I put my trash in that trash can…or is it a prop?)

After all that walking and standing... we were famished, so onward we went to craft services - the best part of filming anything!  Craft services is a hungover and/or menstruating woman's very own Disneyland of food.  There is BurritoLand, FajitaPalace, GreaseTown, FriedCity, and of course, the bar.  After we properly refueled from our taxing performances, it was time to explore.  We changed into our black catsuits and did our best choreographed Pink Panther tip-toe to sneak onto the set next door. There, everyone's  favorite syzzurp-drinking asian's Far East Movement were also shooting a video on the wild wild west(ern) set (where Kellie worried aloud “…is this the bad part of town?”)

Everyone knows the sound advice “don’t take rides from strangers” doesn’t apply to golf carts. So when a nice Greg Kinnear-doppleganger invited us onto his for a tour of the backlot, we held tight to our water bottles full of vodka soda and jumped right in!  He was especially passionate about us being able to view the Jaws “scene” from the Studio Tour from the street above.

We also drove by Norman Bate’s house from Psycho and popped by Wisteria Lane, but as the picture shows, we could only see it from the vantage of an obstructed dumpster before peeling out in our golf cart to make way for tram full of theme park go-ers.  Now that we were stars, we covered our faces and yelled "no photos, PLEASE." 

We returned to town square just in time to shoot the video’s finale – a big parade scene a la Ferris Bueller complete with a float, copious amounts of confetti, bands (mariachi and marching), scantily clad devils, showgirls, and Wayne Newton (yes Mr. Las Vegas in the flesh.)

 

Shhh...Do you hear that? It's our rocket to stardom. 

Behold: 

Well, off to a press junket now...

xoxo

TOTT

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xoxox

It's her birthday and she'll party if she wants to!

Yesterday was our fellow Toasted of the Town blogger's birthday! Marissa Festa has been our best friend since grade school and we can't imagine not having this wonderful human being in our lives.  

She is beyond brilliant, beautiful, kind, talented, and the list goes on. 

Happy birthday! 

WE LOVE YOU!

Detoxing the demons!

Dear Readers,

I’m joining Jackie in Toasted’s 2012 Better Yourself Challenge!  I’ve convinced her that we should start with a 3-day detox juice cleanse from The Pressed Juicery and I’ll be keeping a close eye on the levels of Kettle One in her kitchen like my parents used to do when I was in high school & they’d go out of town for the weekend. We’ll be updating our Facebook each step of the way on the journey... the good, the bad, & the ugly.

Wish us luck!

xoxo

Ashley

My Appendage Needs a Restraining Order

A 2012 Game Plan

So I awoke this morning in the tundra known as Chicago and noticed something was off.  I'm not paranoid, but I could swear someone was following me.  As I made breakfast in the kitchen and walked the dog, it felt like I was being followed.  It took me awhile but I finally figured out what that looming figure behind me was.... my ass.  If you're like me you may have overindulged a bit (or a ton, let's get real) this holiday season, and your own hiney is now stalking your every move.  Throw away the tired New Years Resolutions (seriously I'm not going to be Gisele by March even if for the next two months I live in a sauna eating nothing but tree bark doing hourly P90X videos.)  Let's start fresh.  Here are some of my pointers, as a tried and true yo-yo dieter/excessive holiday eater/true fat kid who is thrilled you can now call it "being a foodie" instead of "last pick for dodgeball."

Start with something manageable

As I had previously mentioned, Gisele can wait, but those extra pounds that have now taken residence on my tush cannot.  Crash diets will not work!  I once tried a "cleanse" that nearly landed my insanely motivated boyfriend in the hospital and just left me uber-grumpy and not a pound thinner.  I would suggest cutting something out that is doable, for example, no alcohol for a month (I can feel the other Jackie yelling at her computer in disgust at this suggestion and feel she's probably stopped reading at this point) or no refined sugar.  The latter is a great start as I have found in the past that when I cut out refined sugar but allow myself fruits or small sweets made with honey or agave, I eventually stop craving sugar. This is a huge help for people who have an enormous sweet tooth like this "foodie."

Get moving and get a friend involved

Whether it's Zumba with the girls, yoga with your man or hiking with your roomie, it is always easier to engage in exercise when you have a partner to do it with you.  It is always easier to commit to something that you actually enjoy.  If you once ran to third instead of first due to your lack of knowledge about softball (I saw my brother do this once, but I digress…) and now the thought of a baseball diamond gives you the sweats - then opt out of joining your local softball league.  There are a ton of fun exercise options out there so keep trying different things until you find your stroke, Michael Phelps.

Keep track of what you are eating

It is so easy to suddenly "forget" to write down that hunk of truffle cheese you just popped in your mouth, but if you are honest with yourself about what you are eating and can see it at the end of the day, you will be able to tell what your pitfalls are.  Having done this in the past, I can see that I eat the most mid-afternoon (what, you haven't heard of happy hour?) and I can now plan accordingly, such as bringing snacks or making sure I'm busiest during the time when I do mindless snacking.

Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate (also known as “7 sips to success”)

And no, vodka does not count!  I have read in the past that drinking a full glass of water before you begin a meal will help you eat less, and I have found this to be true.  Often when I find myself inexplicably hungry in between meals, it is truly because I am thirsty, so make sure you drink up!  I find having a bottle of water with me at all times helps me ensure that I will continue to stay hydrated, and therefore I am apt to eat less.

Treat Yo Self (those not familiar with this rewards program, I direct you here.)

When you are doing well, treat yo self, when you are having a rough day, treat yo self, when it's 2pm, treat yo self.... you catch my drift.  If you're like me and you can get down on yourself for the poor choices of yesteryear, be sure you are balancing out your inner monologue of "negative nancy's" with treats.  If you've lost five pounds, bam, go get a manicure.  Resisted the birthday cake at your niece's party (even though it has that incredibly delicious sugary frosting... but again I digress) - boom, time for a massage.  As long as you're not rewarding yourself with food (you know you thought about it for a hot second), take some time for number one.  It doesn't have to be expensive or extravagant but find a way to be your own cheerleader as you continue towards your goal.

Lastly, DON'T GET DISCOURAGED!

There is always going to be that incredibly annoying coworker that bakes insane treats every week (trust me, I am her, no fatty likes to eat alone) or that restaurant that you've been dying to try and finally got a reservation to.  If you have a brief lapse in judgment (which is what I will now refer to as “December”), you can always have a better tomorrow.  Try and stay motivated and focus on the strides you have made as opposed to the deficits left to overcome.

And if all else fails, you can visualize the thirteen layers I had to put on just to walk to the gym today when it was 18° today (no I'm not dyslexic, it can't be 81° everyday you spoiled Californians ) and be grateful.

Happy New Year, New You

Woz