No cooking, no cleaning, no chores, no worries….that’s what our girlfriends enjoyed at our Party For the Girls weekend at the Irish Cottage Boutique Hotel in Galena, Illinois. Along with Siobhainn O’Connor Van Santen from The O’Connor Show Irish radio program, we descended on this historic resort town for a fabulous late-winter getaway and girl, did we have a great time! Read on for our report, complete with pictures!

Friday

After a scenic 3-hour drive to Galena, we arrived at our hotel. When you enter the Irish Cottage, you are instantly transported to a more relaxing place! The hotel overlooks “The Valley of Glendalough” —a hilly countryside reminiscent of Ireland. The hotel’s common areas feature a cozy library fully stocked with books, and an attached pub that is “the beating heart of the hotel”—complete with Irish dancers and live entertainment. It’s always bustling!

We quickly set up in the lounge for our opening reception and shamrock hunt. This allowed us to welcome everyone, let them mingle and get a little silly looking for hidden shamrocks around the lounge and library. The two girls who found the most shamrocks won a beaded makeup bag and matching wristlet. We also took some fun girlfriend pictures to open the weekend. Guests picked up their (jam-packed) goodie bags, the agenda for the weekend, and their instructions for a weekend-long scavenger hunt. Then, we headed out for a family-style Italian dinner at Vinny Vanucchi’s in downtown Galena. Thinking we’d rather not drink and drive, we called for cabs, not knowing there are only two cabs in the whole city. The Party Girls definitely got to know each other better as we piled into our cabs —literally! Luckily, downtown Galena is only a two-minute drive from the Irish Cottage. Our dinner was fabulous and we left there completely stuffed. We headed back to the hotel (this time in the hotel’s shuttle van— much more comfortable) in order to hang out in the pub, listen to the live music and chat until late into the evening.

Psst! Like pictures? Check out our Whrrl from the event!

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March is Women’s History Month! This month’s Girltalk…Taking it Deeper™ focuses on appreciating the journey of women throughout history. Christine Arylo, creator of Girltalk, felt so strongly about this issue that she changed the previously scheduled topic. Read on for her thoughts. To download this month’s printable guide, click here. For more information on Girltalk, click here.

A personal note from Christine Arylo, founder of Girltalk.

In honor of Women’s History Month, I have to out myself.  As an MBA from one of the best schools in the country, I have been ignorant to the truth of our history as women. Sure, I know the facts… but that is not the same as knowing, or feeling, the reality. What I learned in history class didn’t come close to telling me the truth of what women have endured just in the last century, let alone the last three hundred, or two thousand years. I got the same scrubbed-down version of history that you did — unless you were a feminine studies major — straight from the lips of a patriarchal society.  Oh, women couldn’t vote, so there was this suffrage movement and now they can. Oh, there was this thing called Roe vs Wade that made abortion legal. Oh, women were burned at the stake during this thing called the Inquisition. And yes, there was this other thing called the Feminist Movement that created equal rights. None of those were more than a few pages in any of my history books, how about yours?

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With winter in full force, don’t let the idea of six more weeks of snowy cold give you the blues! Warm some hearts today by planning a charitable card party for your girlfriends. Sharing fun times and memories with the ones closest to your heart is a great way to stir up one’s soul in the still of winter. Girlfriend Celebrations has planned a unique way for you to show appreciation to friends who are loved, provide inspiration for charitable giving, and celebrate the life you cherish with your girlfriends. In honor of February’s American Heart month or March’s American Red Cross month, why not host a unique charitable hearts party for your next girl’s night in and spread some love. Read the rest of this entry »

Girlfriends, looking for something different to do for your February Girls Night? Try a Lunar New Year Celebration to gather with your girlfriends in the spirit of new beginning, good fortune, and colorful festivity. This girls night is certain to liven up your winter routine!

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“There is nothing more beautiful, powerful or free than a woman who truly loves herself.”
So says our contributor and Girltalk…Taking it Deeper™ creator Christine Arylo. What do you think, girlfriends? Isn’t it true? Don’t you love to be around a girlfriend who is really comfortable in her own skin (few and far between though they may be)? How about hosting a Self – Love Soiree for your girlfriends, using a a free downloadable party kit as your guide?

Loving yourself is a radical idea to many – but we can help change that! Because she is so passionate about self-love, Christine has created a series of events, tools, and resources to help women learn to love themselves. And, she has declared Saturday, February 13 to be Madly In Love With Me Day – and it just might be the perfect antidote to the Valentine’s Day blues.

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Happy Valentine’s Week! Here at GirlfriendCelebrations, we love Valentine’s Day, and we encourage celebrating it with your girlfriends. Even if there’s no romance in your life right now, you still have plenty to appreciate and celebrate – you have friends! We know one woman who sends Valentine cards to all her friends instead of Christmas cards. It’s her way of showing appreciation from the heart. In that spirit, here’s a short roundup of ideas to get YOU thinking of ways to brighten your February with Valentine-themed girls nights. Watch for new posts this week with even more creative ideas for February festivities.

“I Enjoy Being a Girl” Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Party – Our girlfriend Jen Luby at Second City Soiree has done it again! This time she’s got some great entertaining tips centered around Chinese New Year, which falls on February 14 this year, and usually occurs somewhere around Valentine’s Day. Here’s how she came up with the theme:

“I Enjoy Being a Girl” is a song from Flower Drum Song, a Rogers & Hammerstein musical which relates the tale of Chinese immigrants in San Francisco during the 1950s.  The are various opinions on the musical, and it’s not among R&H’s better-known works.  It did enjoy a brief spike of renewed interest when Sarah Jessica Parker performed “I Enjoy Being a Girl” in a 2004 Gap commercial.

See the rest of her post HERE. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes you just need to get away from it all and enjoy some GIRL TIME—especially in the middle of winter—and that’s why we’re so excited to tell you about this very special girlfriend getaway weekend, February 26-28, 2010 at the charming Irish Cottage Boutique Hotel in Galena, Illinois. We’re proud to be hosting this event along with Siobhainn O’Connor VanSanten from the O’Connor Show Irish Radio Program. The time to book your room is NOW – so read on for ALL the girlfriendly details!

Girlfriends, you deserve a mid-winter getaway that offers EVERYTHING a girl needs to feel rejuvenated – cozy surroundings, gourmet food, fancy drinks, spa treatments, shopping, pampering, relaxation, and of course, girlfriends! Bring your mom, your sister, your daughter, your best friends. Read the rest of this entry »

Loneliness may be the most dangerous epidemic women face, according to this guest post by Shasta Nelson, founder of GirlFriendCircles.com, a web-based service that matches its members with potential girlfriends offline, in real life. Lucky for us, she has some concrete ideas on how to beat loneliness and make new friends in this new year. Shasta also puts her money where her mouth is: She’s giving away a six-month GirlFriendCircles membership to one lucky GirlfriendCelebrations reader! In addition, she is offering YOU discounts on membership and other GirlFriendCircles events. See below for all the details.

By Shasta Nelson
While many of us have stood in line for the flu shot, bought abundant amounts of antibacterial hand soap and increased our daily intake of immune boosting vitamins, research published last month suggests there’s something besides Swine Flu and the common cold that we need to protect ourselves from  – loneliness. And it’s apparently equally, if not more, contagious as run-of-the-mill germs.

The Impact of Loneliness

With the holidays over and social calendars cleared, January becomes one of the loneliest months of the year. A study published in December’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that loneliness not only affects our personal health and well-being and the way we treat others, but it also increases the sense of loneliness in our friends, family and neighbors. It can spread from person to person, up to three degrees of separation.

Protect Yourself

Here are three ways to help build your relational immune system this New Year:
Get a Check-Up: Determine your current relational health by evaluating your circle of friends. What friends do you have and what friends are you still hoping to find? Do you have enough local friends? Do you have the women surrounding you that help you feel rooted and supported right where you are?
Is your circle broad enough to accommodate different areas of your life? What interests or types of friends would enhance your life? Are you someone who connects with everyone but needs to pull a few people closer to you in more meaningful ways? Or do you tend to only have a few in your life so that when one of them moves or life changes that you find yourself not knowing who else to call?

Identify Long-Term Health: Write out what it looks and feels like to have a close circle of friends in your life. This step is crucial, but often skipped. While we all know you can’t go to the gym once and all of a sudden reach your health goals, the same is true for our relationships. Hold that truth with a willingness to not give up after a few scheduled events or attempts to reach out. This is one of the most significant health goals of your life and it very well may take three to six months before you can create a sense of belonging and connectedness.

Schedule your Steps: Based upon the awareness from your check-up in step one, you should be able to identify action steps that will foster more meaningful friendships in your life. For example, if you already know plenty of people but need to transition a few of them into something more meaningful, there are two primary ways of deepening friendships: more consistency (most of us will need to connect with someone at least twice a month over three months before we feel close) or more topics of sharing, which means broadening the conversations beyond the area that we currently have in common whether it’s work, our kids or a specific project. What can you commit to trying? Or, if you need to meet new potential friends, be open to trying lots of things such as joining sites like GirlFriendCircles.com, participating in a local choir, inviting your neighbors over for drinks or attending more events where your current network can help introduce you to more people.

This January, drag yourself to the gym and try to eat better, but for all the New Year’s Resolutions you may set, few of them will impact your health, physically, emotionally and relationally, more than surrounding yourself with good friends.

Shasta Nelson is a relationship and transition life coach and CEO of GirlfriendCircles.com, an online community that matches women with offline friends.

Exclusive Discounts

GirlfriendCelebrations readers, use this special discount code: “GFCELEB” to save 20% on any of GirlFriendCircles.com upcoming events:

21 Days of Friendship Journey, starts this Sunday, Jan 10 (workbook and coaching calls— participants can be from anywhere) http://newyearjourney.eventbrite.com/

Portland Speed Friending, Tuesday, Jan 12 (http://portlandspeedfriending.eventbrite.com/)

Seattle Speed Friending, Wednesday, Jan 13 (http://seattlespeedfriending.eventbrite.com/)

Or, receive 20% off membership in GirlFriendCircles.com, the only online community to match new friends offline by connecting circles of women in local areas, to expand your circle of friends!

And Now For the Giveaway

GirlFriendCircles has generously offered to give one of our our readers a 6-month membership free! GirlFriend Circles matches members up with a small “Connecting Circle” of local women first, then after that initial meeting, you are free to use its resources to find other friends in your area as well. Please note the cities in which memberships are currently available: San Francisco and Bay Area, Portland, Seattle, Chicago and New York City. You must be able to use the membership in one of these cities to be eligible.

To enter:

1. Simply leave a comment on this post that says why you would like to try the GirlFriend Circles membership.

2. Tweet this contest for an extra entry.

3. Blog about it, linking back to this post, for an extra two entries.

Contest will remain open until 11:59 PM CST on Friday, January 22, 2010. Winner will be chosen at random from all eligible entries. Good luck, girlfriends! Read the rest of this entry »

Happy New Year, Girlfriends! It’s time to reflect on the year that’s been and claim the year to come. Instead of running into your year, stop, reflect, give some real and wise thought to 2010 and move forward with focus, intention and heart. Get your Girltalk…Taking it Deeper™ group together and use this January discussion guide by Christine Arylo to take your year in the best possible direction. To download a printable PDF of this month’s discussion guide, click here. To learn more about starting your own Girltalk group (it’s totally free and you’ll receive the discussion guide each month), click here.

Be Real. Every year, it’s the same old drill, isn’t it? We start off with the best intentions, with gusto, resolved to reach our goals and make this ‘the’ year. But by February that gusto has been drained down by the overwhelm, pressure and realities of day-to-day life. Come October, we’re wondering where the year went, and not feeling quite as successful as we had hoped we would when the year started. And then without warning, it’s Thanksgiving, then December and a flurry of presents and parties. Before we know it, January 1 has arrived, and with it the immense pressure to make this ‘the’ year.

If you are a Type A person, you likely go into New-Year’s-resolution and goal-setting mode. If you are the Type B variety, you’re likely more relaxed and avoid serious goal-setting, stepping into the new year with faith that it will all work out. The truth is that neither of these strategies work. Type A or Type B, these approaches are insane. They keep you doing the same thing year after year expecting different results, which by definition is insanity.

Be Wise. This year, instead of running from the holidays into the New Year without really stopping to decide where you want to go before you take off full force to get there, dare to take a pause! Dare to avoid the three biggest mistakes people make when approaching their new year, and instead take the wiser path. Which ones have you fallen into? And what is the deeper wisdom?

Mistake #1: Not stopping to reflect on the year that has passed. Going from one year into the next, without stopping to recognize all that has happened, is like living your life like a mountain climber, arriving at the mountain top of each year, but not stopping to take in the view that you worked so hard to achieve. Instead, you just take a quick breath, and keep pushing up the next mountain, the next year, without celebrating my successes or learning from your failures. No wonder you are exhausted. No surprise that you don’t feel like you really accomplished what you wanted; all you could see was the next mountain.

Wise Truth: In order to grow, we must stop, celebrate, reflect and learn at the end of every cycle.

Mistake #2:   Pressuring yourself to have your entire year mapped out by the first week of January. Read the rest of this entry »