I don’t know where the month of May went, but I was planning on hosting this giveaway a few weeks ago – whoops! So let’s get down to business..
With the unofficial start of summer just a few days away, who doesn’t want to do what Americans do best? Eat!
This year’s event highlights include:
-Sizzling entertainment from Mega 80’s, Rick Springfield, Buddy Guy and Bret Michaels along with dozens of regional bands performing on two stages throughout the weekend
-Ten professional grilling teams from across the country will engage in a fierce culinary battle for “Greatest Ribs in America,” “Butch Lupinetti Greatest Sauce in America” and “People’s Choice”
-Five rookie barbecue chefs will participate in the annual Marc’s Amateur Grilling Competition
-New Riverside Terrace and Dining Area offering scenic views of Lake Erie
-Kids’ activities and more!
You can enter to win two general admission tickets by completing one, two or all three of the options listed below (please leave a seperate comment for each entry):
1. Leave a comment telling me your favorite dish to enjoy over the summer.
3. Tweet the following: I want to eat ribs & rock out at the @MarcsStores #GreatAmericanRibCookOff from @dawgpndgirl: http://bit.ly/12q0jn2
You can tweet once per day but remember to leave a separate comment each time you tweet. The winner will be randomly selected & notified the morning of Thursday, May 23, 2013.
Disclosure: I was asked to help promote the event & was provided with two tickets of my own.
Congrats to Melinda from 30 Something Therapy for winning $100 to Provenance at CMA with her (randomly selected) 35th comment! Thanks to all who entered. Check out Provenance on your next trip to the art museum!
Drop me an email with your address & I’ll send the gift card your way!
Cinco de Mayo may have started a new tradition for my cousin, Brandi, & I: a Stella & Dot fiesta! Our gracious stylist, Jenna, came over and set up quite the shiny spread for our friends & family!
The goods!!!
With a taco bar, a plethora of tortilla chips & salsa, margaritas, Coronas & sunshine we had a blast shopping for bling. However, mixing alcohol and jewelry parties is fairly dangerous…
Jenna & Julie..what to get?!
Deep thoughts: what piece of jewls to buy!?
Everyone seemed to score something, including myself! In what was the world’s worst kept secret, I bought my bridesmaids some sparkles for the upcoming nuptials!
After our wallets were empty, most of the girls stuck around to enjoy what was a beautiful & sunny Sunday afternoon in our back yard.
The hosts!
Fun with my cousins.
There were SIX men that came before, during or after this fiesta! They just can’t seem to stay away from their lady friends.
They weren’t very interested in the jewelry…
My dad even showed up post-jewelry fun to see some of his favorite gals:
Having never been to a jewelry party, I have to admit I was impressed with how easy it was to host, how pretty the pieces were & how much fun a Sunday with a bunch of hens can be! This, my friends is as girly as it’s going to get around these parts…I think.
This past Friday night, I had a much-needed girls night out that kicked off at the Cleveland Museum of Art‘s, Provenance. I’m glad I braved it east of the Cuyahoga to check out what I think will be one of the hottest spots due to it’s spectacular layout, location & lure of Doug Katz. Chef Douglas Katz (of fire food and drink) is the creative culinary force behind the menus and serves as chef partner.
Adjacent to Provenance is Provenance Café, which offers grab-and-go lunch & dinner options and hors d’oeuvres with an open kitchen concept which is convenient for any museum-goer.
Chef Katz with what was my favorite appetizer, the seared scallop.
The food & drink we sampled was divine but the ambiance of Provenance is what really won me over. If I wasn’t a mere two months away from my wedding day, this would absolutely be a place we’d be checking out! The 76-person dining room wouldn’t hold our wedding guests but there are two private rooms for parties, weddings & events.
Wouldn’t this be a great wedding party table?
The group shot (photo borrowed from whyCLE).
After the group of bloggers (& our lovely dates) sipped on some chilled white wine, refreshing thyme & ginger vodkas and of course a few manhattans, we all ventured into MIX. I’ve heard good things about MIX but we wanted to get closer to our neck of the woods (us westsiders don’t do well being so far away for long periods of time!) so we left when things were just getting started.
Four of us ended up at Market Ave Wine Bar in Ohio City where the fun continued as we inadvertently crashed a huge psycle party. Good thing we all love each other!
Or can at least pretend to…
Now that you’re all planning your night out at Provenance, I have $100 to give to one lucky reader! All you have to do to enter is do one, two or all three of the following (leave individual comments for each entry!):
1. Leave a comment telling me your current go-to place in CLE to grab a bite to eat.
The internet is a powerful thing. Duh. It’s helped land me jobs, been a way to keep in touch with family & introduced me to what have become some wonderful friends.
Before I had this blog, I had met people like Alexa & Seanski through work. Then I became an official internet nerd with The Dawg’s Dish and was fortunate to make more friends with people like Allison, Heather & Kimi…just to name a few.
Last year, I invited all these friends over to join Dean & I to do what we love to do best: eat, drink, play with fire & daaaance! The first #BVbonfire was such a hit, we had to do it all over again this year. And boy did we outdo ourselves.
I’m glad some of my friends got their paws on my camera because I have them to thank for most of these photos.
Dean & I with 2 of the 3 Plagens hotties, Tabitha’s WORLD famous pudding shots, bonfire fun & daaaaaance party!
Apparently Seanski isn’t just a cat guy…a bunch of ridiculousness.
And you’re all welcome for not posting the good stuff!
Then, we have Vine. Vine captured so many awesome, yet horribly embarrassing moments throughout the night. Thanks to The Plum, we have quite the compilation of said Vine clips:
I can‘t wait to see what #BVbonfire 2014 has in store!!
San Francisco is one of those alluring American cities I’ve always wanted to visit. From the Golden Gate Bridge to Fisherman’s Wharf, the city’s charm piqued my curiosity and I added it to my travelling bucket list.
Thanks to work, I had the opportunity to attend the Marketo Summit in San Fran last week. I also had the chance to catch-up and be a tourist with one of my best friends from high school who has relocated to the bay area. She planned a jam-packed day consisting of: a ferry ride across the bay, visiting the stinky seals, checking out the Wharf, Haight Ashbury bar hopping, lunch at Magnolia’s, lots of cable car rides and some of the best people watching I’ve ever experienced!
My tour guide, Alexis!
A gloomy view of the Bay Bridge.
Fisherman’s Wharf!
A chilly ferry ride
I was told that funny smell was marijuana.
I had such a great time bouncing around the city – we got all of my touristy things done (minus seeing the Full House house), caught up and reminisced about the good ol’ days. It was a wonderful Sunday Funday!
Come Monday night, the marketing maniacs all met for the first of three Marketo happy hours. I thought ad folks were the best drinkers but marketing automation gurus might take the cake!
All fun stuff aside, my Marketo Summit highlights include the keynote by Patty Azzarello, Jay Baer talking about his cool friends & the power of social media and the Revvie awards where my friend & co-worker, Kimi, was named Marketo’s Champion of the Year!
Kimi, the Marketo rock star
I, for one, learned a lot and can’t wait to implement some of the social media tactics and tricks I picked up at the conference!
Next time I fly out to the left coast, I WILL NOT be taking the red-eye. That was rough!
Did you know the Tri-C JazzFest is one of the largest jazz festivals in the region? In it’s 34th year, the festival brings world class jazz to Cleveland over two blockbuster weekends April 19 thru May 4, 2013. This year’s performances are spread out over two weekends to draw in more tourism (and give those travelling into town the opportunity to check out all the other great things taking place in Cleveland).
Not only will local and national artists teach, compose, arrange, and perform, Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland features clinics master classes, lectures, broadcasts, and a breadth of other concert and community outreach activities. Concerts will take place at PlayhouseSquare, the Metropolitan Campus of Cuyahoga Community College, and the new MOCA Cleveland.
In addition to the show, there is an Opening Night Party on April 19 to kick things off in style. The party will be held at Playhouse Square in the State Theatre Lobby from 5-7pm and is sponsored by Great Lakes Brewing Company. The event is free and there is live music by Detroit’s Nadir & Distorted Soul. There will be happy hour drink prices, food, and drawings for festival tickets and merchandise. After the party, the fest will kick off with performances by Aaron Neville and Dr. John at 8pm.
And lucky for you, I have a quite the JazzFestgiveway! Two lucky winners will be sitting pretty at the highly acclaimed Natalie Cole show on April 27, 2013!
source: cleveland.com
How can you win?
Post a comment telling me the favorite concert you’ve ever attended (jazz or not!).
Tweet the following: I want to win #TriCJazzFest tix to see Natalie Cole from @dawgpndgirl: http://bit.ly/XbVuOj (you can tweet once per day; leave a comment for each tweet!)
Like the JazzFest on Facebook (leave a comment saying you did!)
Follow the JazzFest on Twitter (leave a comment saying you did!)
You can enter until Friday, April 12, 2013 at 11:59 p.m. The winner will be announced sometime on Thursday, April 10, 2013 & will have 24 hours to claim their tickets before I pick another winner. Good luck and don’t forget to buy your Tri-C JazzFest tickets if you don’t win!
Disclosure: I was provided two tickets to the Natalie Cole show in exchange for hosting this giveaway.
You’d have to be living under a rock if you didn’t realize it’s a pretty exciting time in Cleveland. From the Global Center for Health Innovation to the Flats East Bank to the cranes at every turn, I truly believe Cleveland is finally heading in the right direction. I even learned at TEDxCLE that there is $2 billion in tourism-related development and $3.7 billion in overall downtown Cleveland development taking place right now. Help Cleveland get another win by voting in the battle to host the 2013 Social Media Tourism Symposium.
There has been an outpouring of social media support thus far to get Cleveland into the final four. Today, we go head-to-head against Huntsville, Alabama from 10am-10pm on Facebook. Huntsville, Alabama has brought their A-game in the previous rounds so I’m spreading the word with the confident hope that Cleveland’s powerful social media community will unite to pull off a victory!
If you want to rally with fellow Clevelanders, Positively Cleveland is hosting a happy hour/vote party Thursday, March 28 from 5:30-7:30pm at Prosperity Social Club in Tremont.
I may not be blogging much but that doesn’t mean the fun has come to a halt. Over the past few weeks we’ve thoroughly enjoyed ourselves even though Mother Nature has been so spastic.
We rang in my mom’s birthday in style with cocktails at Pier W, steaks & lobsters at our place and a bonfire to round out the night:
Is this spring?
The girls at Pier W
We also hosted St. Patty’s Day brunch to avoid the ruckus of downtown Cleveland – plus, it was warm inside the house & of course freezing on March 17, 2013 when it was a balmy 75 degrees last year!
Jay & Cora
The dudes
After last year’s TEDxCLE, I was beyond excited when I had the chance to attend this year’s event at CMA. If you haven’t heard of these inspring talks, do yourself a favor and listen to this pep talk that was played at this year’s event.
Major props to my friends Eric & Hallie for putting together yet another inspiring afternoon!
I also have been lucky enough to be helping my best friend pick out her wedding dress! It’s been fun & it’s absolutely terrifying thrilling that we’re both getting married within 3 months of each other!
Hayley Paige trunk show at The Bridal Suite at Nordstrom.
GNO in Little Italy.
So much fun, so little time. Rough times, people!
Someone send some sunshine to Cleveland; I’m ready for sandals, trench coats, bright colors & outdoor happy hours!
