Chels & the City Favorites

Happy Monday, friends! For the November Blogathon, today's prompt is to share your 3 favorite posts from your archives. (You'll notice that three is the theme of the week.) So here are three posts that I think are some of my best, and oddly enough, there is one from each year that my blog has been around, which was unplanned but a nice little surprise for myself.

2014 - Bad Things Happen When You Wear Sweatpants In Public
The story of an unfortunate event that I, of course, blamed on the fact that I was wearing sweatpants in public while it happened. My one and only fashion rule is to never wear sweats/pajama pants in public and I feel like the universe was getting back at me for shaming people who do. Lesson learned.

2013 - Hazard Yet Forward
A note to the Seton Hill University community after a serious tragedy. I graduated from SHU in 2011 and it will always have my heart, so this post was important for me to write and is one of my most-viewed of all time. It was one of those posts that you promote once by posting the link on Facebook and it was shared and passed on a countless number of times. I hope that means that the women involved and their families were among those views and that it helped them heal a little bit.

2012 - Cupid: as portrayed by Chelsea
I love this post. It was one of my first posts on this blog and I think I nailed it haha It's actually a really long post but I wanted it to be worth the read. I came up with date night ideas for people in the Pittsburgh area for Valentine's Day and based each idea on the Five Love Languages. Good, right? Like, you wish you were following my blog back then good. At the time, my readers were pretty much just my friends and family and I cannot tell you how many texts/calls I've received since then about people asking me to help them plan a night out or date night in the city, and they reference this post. Thanks, friends, I'm here for you!

Do you have favorite posts from your own blog?

Or a favorite from mine that's not mentioned?

Painting With A Twist: In Pittsburgh!

Around Halloween, I won a Twitter contest for two free tickets to an upcoming class at Painting With A Twist in Robinson. Just hearing this made me jump out of my skin with excitement because I have seen pictures on Facebook of friends who have gone to similar studios or this one in particular, and because my mother did not pass on her painting skills to me, I always thought that this would be more my speed, since they teach you as you go along. And of course because it's BYOB.

I unfortunately was unable to use the Halloween tickets because of work conflicts but the fabulous owners, Jamie and Nicole Orlando, allowed me to pick another class to join them. I, of course, choose the Smithfield Street bridge class, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, it's my favorite bridge in Pittsburgh. No, I don't think it's weird to have a favorite bridge, we have 446 to choose from after all! And of course, being that he lives near the location and he's one of my favorite humans, I took along MJ. I thought, what better way to celebrate our 4 year anniversary then to paint some pretty pictures and have dinner afterwards. MJ was not too thrilled at first, considering he doesn't have artist genes either, but that quickly changed when we got there.

After checking in and finding our awesome, and perfectly appropriate for us aprons, we settled in by snacking and meeting some new friends, and then the class started, and MJ began to feel right at home. Our awesome teacher/artist, Amie, was going through routine things, like how the class would go and such, then she came to naming the brushes we'd be using, so we would know which one she wanted us to use and when. So, there's this big brush that she named Big Daddy. She also decided to call MJ, Big Daddy, and being the natural people-person (aka flirt) that he is, by the end of the class, everyone there was calling him Big Daddy, and needless to say, we had the greatest time ever.

I highly suggest that you attend a class. There are locations all around the US (for those of you reading from somewhere that isn't Pittsburgh). Though I can only comment on how fabulous everyone is at this particular location, I'm sure you'll have a good time at any other Painting With A Twist as well.   I honestly, have never believed in Art Therapy until going to this class. (Sorry to my friends who majored in AT in college, but I do believe you now!) And although we still do not have painting skills, MJ and I did have a great night following along to an artist who is obviously very talented, but who could very easily teach and help everyone when needed. Thanks for your patience, Amie! Also, in other news, MJ won the November Tag & Brag that PWAT has on their Facebook each month, so we're very excited to be able to go to another class soon....you should join us!