Ringing in the New Year

My New Years Eves have notoriously been pretty awful.  I think the reason for this is that everyone spends so much time planning things out to a T weeks in advance, and the nights never really live up to what we've all imagined.  So this year I flew by the seat of my pants and went sans plans.

Well, I guess that's not entirely true.  My original plan was to head down to Houston with some girls from work and spend the weekend there.  However, plans fell through and I was left in Dallas with no concrete plan whatsoever.  So NYE 2011 started as just me, some of my best friends, a free night, and a bottle of champagne.  And this is how it went down....

We split a hotel near downtown Fort Worth for the night so we didn't have to make the trek back to Dallas with all the crazies on the road.  We got to FW early in the evening and spent a few hours eating dinner in the room, getting ready, and finally opening this little gem:

For the background on this treasure, check out this.

I have been saving my bottle of Dom for a special occasion with my best friends.  But I've also been eager to pop it open and see what it tasted like.  So I figured what better time than New Years Eve with three of my favorite people.  I'm absolutely terrified of opening champagne bottles so I made Stephen do the honor:

We poured four glasses and toasted to a great 2012.  In hindsight I should have given a better toast (something to include a prosperous and healthy new year, full of friendship and love, and yada yada) but I get nervous whenever I have to do this sorta thing so my toast was literally "here's to a great 2012!"  Oh well, the champagne spoke for itself:

The champagne was great, as champagne always is!  Did it taste like $150 worth?  Not really.  Did I think about it every time I took a $5 sip?  Absolutely.  You could definitely tell it was a step up (or several staircases up) from a bottle of Andre, but let's just say I won't be splurging on any personal bottles of Dom anytime soon.  Or ever.  But it was a great one-time experience living the lavish life:

After our bottle of champagne was gone and our sweatpants traded for dresses, we took a cab downtown to meet up with these fantastic people at Pete's Piano Bar:

It felt great to have some of my best friends from college all together again.  The last time I got to spend some serious time with Lauren and Matt was in October for her birthday.  However, she'll ::hopefully:: be getting a job in Dallas soon so nights like this will become the norm again.  Here's to hoping:

I absolutely love piano bars because I adore live music.  Pete's really does a great job of mixing up genres and playing the crowd favorites, so a trip to Pete's has never been a disappointment.  The above photos are sincerely the only normal pictures we were able to take throughout the whole night.  As is typical with our group, one or more of us decides to spice things up a bit.  Like this:

Or this:

Or this:

We left shortly after midnight (which I believe was a responsible decision made by the boys) and ran into these friends right outside:

Seriously?  Aggies are everywhere...

So the night was filled with great friends, good drinks, and ringing in the New Year at one of my very favorite venues.  Sounds like things are already on track for this to be a fantastic 2012!!  Cheers to a new year and new beginnings!