Celebrating my first Saint Patrick's Day, Ever!

During my undergraduate years at Kansas State, I never participated in any of the drunken St. Patrick's Day festivities. You see, in the Midwest, the holiday always falls during our spring break. However, my school didn't let the holiday pass uncelebrated. Instead, we celebrated a week early with "Fake" Paddy's Day.

But I never partook in the day until after I graduated, when we went for my bachelorette party in 2010. Unfortunately, the Friday night before the Saturday celebration, I partied a bit too hard and one gallant effort to make it out of the hotel room for some food, after one of the worst hangovers of my life, resulted in a spectacle of myself at one of my favorite restaurants and a car ride back to the hotel by the manager where I stayed for the next 18 hours. What can I say? I was lame, I guess. BUT THIS YEAR, living in Baton Rouge and south Louisiana where no holiday goes uncelebrated, particularly those that encourage drinking unprecedented amounts of alcohol more than the others (yah, hard to imagine I know) I was determined to put four years of pent up unfulfilled partying for such a great day to good use.

Kyle and I invited friends and family over and I woke up at 8 a.m. to the sounds of cars honking and people hollering and food cooking in preparation for the 10 o'clock parade start time. Since Kyle and I live off of the parade route, we were excited to have the conveniences that are never available in most situations such as these (like clean bathrooms not used by thousands of other people, a quiet place to escape the crowd or sit down and put your feet up after standing on them for hours while trying to catch more beads than the person next to you) while still fully indulging in the experience and not missing a moment of action.

We started by 9 a.m. with some delicious irish whiskey jello shots Kyle made and Abita's yummy seasonal Strawberry brew.

Several friends from my grad program made it over and we had a few mimosas and some homemade chocolate and vodka cake and vanilla pudding cupcake shots (thanks to master alcohol-infused pastry chef Shannon) that were DELICIOUS and inconspicuously strong, kinda like a long island iced tea that's made with like seven different liquors but you'd never know it strong.

We drank. We ate. We celebrated and 8 hours later we were exhausted and ready for bed at 5:30. We had a great time and it certainly was better than my rained out and disappointing Mardi Gras experience this year.