This week’s mani is inspired by the Cardinals home opener last Thursday. I used Holo Taco “Sacrificial Lacquer” (which is practically Cardinal red!) and “Circuit Breaker” as the main colors, with “Red Flake Taco” as a topper on two nails for a little extra glitter. And my Baublebar Fredbird bag charm is the perfect accessory to show them off!
This week was the St. Louis Cardinals home opener, and I had the perfect new accessories for it…and one of them I’ve been wishing for for a very long time!
Loungefly finally added a Cardinals mini backpack to their MLB collection, and I was especially happy to purchase it a local store, First Capitol Trading, Inc. in St. Charles, MO. I know that some fans weren’t impressed with the floral pattern on the bag, but I actually love it…I think it’s really unique and pretty, and adds some great pops of color!
And to make it even better, Baublebar released a Fredbird bag charm, which I was only too happy to add to the bag! He has just the right amount of sparkle on his head feathers and shoes!
They make the perfect pair, and it’s such a fun way to show my team spirit! The only problem is, ironically enough, I wouldn’t be able to carry the bag into Busch Stadium if I went to a game, because it’s too big!
Today was the St. Louis Cardinals home opener…and they won! We had our annual Opening Day feast, and it was a little bit familiar and a little bit different. We decided that this year, we would skip our usual Chicago style dogs and brats and instead try recipes featuring “Sonic’s Signature Chili” from Sonic the Hedgehog: The Official Cookbook. We had “The Perfect Chili Dog,” which was topped with chili (of course), shredded cheddar, chopped onions, and mustard. Next was “A Rival’s Chili Dog,” topped with chili (again), and a simple slaw. Both were delicious!
We also tried a (red) drink from the Sonic cookbook: “Knuckles’s Fruit Punch” which was light and refreshing (and yes, I chose blue swizzle sticks so we could pretend they were Sonic’s quills!).
I let Schnucks take care of dessert, with a giant cookie cake from their bakery and Cherry Cardinals Crunch ice cream!
We didn’t have nachos or pretzels this year…we really didn’t have time to enjoy eating them with how busy today was. But we really enjoyed trying some new recipes, and even if the menu was slightly different, the vibe was the same!
Yesterday was Major League Baseball’s Opening Day, and the Cardinals opened the season at Busch Stadium. It was an exciting day…Jordan Walker, the 20-year-old rookie who just got the call to the Big Leagues, not only started the game but got a hit in his first at-bat. Tyler O’Neill hit a home run for the fourth consecutive Opening Day, which tied a Major League record. We got our first look at our new catcher, Willson Contreras. Adam Freaking Wainwright sung the National Anthem before the game! But it was also bittersweet…how strange was it so see an Opening Day without Yadier Molina behind the plate? Wainwright, who should have been our starting pitcher, instead started the season on the injured list. Speaking of injuries, our brand new catcher took a 103 mph wild pitch to the knee. And in the end, despite scoring nine runs, we still lost (I think our pitching needs some work!). So it was a fun day, as always, but it didn’t quite go the way we had expected. That didn’t stop us from enjoying our traditional Opening Day feast, starting with a new addition of Cardinals sugar cookies that turned out surprisingly well, even though decorating cookies is not the thing I’m best at (I blame my poor handwriting skills for that!):
We had ballpark-style nachos as an appetizer…no matter how good they are, though, they’re just not the same as eating nachos at Busch Stadium!
For dinner, we had Chicago-style hot dogs and brats. They stopped selling neon relish in our area (the nerve!), but Ryan stopped at a new Chicago-style restaurant nearby, and they kindly gave him a cup of relish. Too bad I forgot all about the onions I chopped, though!
For dessert, we had ice cream sundaes, and I even got out the dish we got at Busch Stadium last summer:
I love Opening Day…it’s like baseball Christmas, and something I look forward to every year!
Yesterday, for the first time in I’m not even sure how long (at least five years!), the whole family went to a Cardinals game at Busch Stadium! We took a walk around Ballpark Village when we arrived downtown:
It’s changed a lot in the last few years!
We stopped to say “hi” to Stan, of course:
And then got in line almost an hour before the gates opened:
The reason we got in line so early was to make sure we were there in time for the giveaway…Molina and Wainwright Mystery Championship Replica Rings. This is my favorite type of giveaway, and they’re really nice!
Our seats were excellent…we were in the last row, so we had a nice breeze, and we were in the shade for pretty much the entire game! Plus, we could see the Arch, which is always nice.
When we were walking around, we found this cool life-size bobblehead of Ladybug’s favorite player who isn’t named Albert Pujols:
And Bunny, Chickadee, and I went in search of Fredbird:
Ballpark food is the best!
It was the perfect day. We got to see everyone’s favorite battery (Wainwright and Molina) start their 316th game together, putting them in a tie for second place on the all-time battery list! And we got to see Tommy Edman get his first walk-off, which was a total thrill! We couldn’t have asked for a better ending!
It was so good to be back at my favorite place!
The only thing that could have made today better is if we had gotten to see Pujols bat, but we did see him in the dugout, so we’ll call that good enough, and the perfect day at Busch!
Yesterday was one of the funnest days of the year…Major League Baseball’s Opening Day! And the Cardinals got to start their season at home with a win in Baseball Heaven. Chickadee and I were very excited!
As usual, we had a special Opening Day dinner. We started with the traditional ballpark appetizer of nachos:
Hot dogs and brats were the star of the meal…with root beer, of course!
For dessert, I decided to put in a little extra effort…I made baseball cake pops!
This is going to be such a special season for the Cards, with Yadi, Waino, and Albert riding off into the sunset together. It’s just the beginning of our fairytale ending…I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds!
With apologies to Clark Gable as Rhett Butler…
Back at the end of the 2011, when Albert Pujols left the Cardinals, I wasn’t very charitable. As a matter of fact, I was convinced I was going to hate him forever. In retrospect, it’s kind of embarrassing just how angry I was and just how personally I took it. I think that goes to show how much our local athletes mean to us, when that sense of betrayal cuts so deep. At the time, I didn’t want him to be happy or successful without the Cardinals, and I certainly didn’t want to see his team win.
But as the years went by, I realized how ridiculous that was. I mean, I wasn’t going to cheer for him, but I realized I didn’t hate him, and never actually had. Time heals all wounds, I guess, and time did indeed march on, and my resentment faded, to the point that when he returned to Busch Stadium in an opposing uniform, I was actually happy to see him back in “Baseball Heaven.” It made me smile to see the ovation he got from the people of St. Louis, because he deserved it.
And then more recently, the rumors started swirling that he and the Cardinals were talking…we are going to need a DH this season after all (not thrilled about the DH development, but at least now there’s a silver lining to it!). At first it started out as a near-impossibility, as he was also in talks with other teams. But then the rumors started to ramp up, and it sounded like maybe, against all odds, he was going to come home to finish his career. A fairytale ending that baseball and the city of St. Louis needed.
The words that Bernie Miklasz wrote over a decade ago about Albert’s departure suddenly flipped the narrative:
“…but I still suffer from the disease of naiveté. Baseball does this to a lot of people, me included. Makes us all sappy and romantic. You want the hero to stay and complete the storybook. But it doesn’t work that way in modern sports. Not very often, anyway.”
I guess just this once, in the end, it did work out exactly that way. The hero may not have spent his entire career here, but he was here when it counted, and he returned to complete the storybook. A fairytale ending.
If you had told me at the beginning of the year that we would be celebrating baseball’s Opening Day at the end of July, I wouldn’t have believed you, but here we are. Like so many other things this year, our Opening Day dinner was a bit scaled back, but we still enjoyed some favorites like nachos, Chicago-style hot dogs, and brats, and Chickadee is, as always, ready to cheer on the Cardinals!
It’s that time of year again…today, the Cardinals returned to Busch Stadium for their home opener! I made sure we had the ingredients for all of our baseball favorites on hand for tonight’s dinner…pretzels with cheese sauce, stuff for hot dogs (including the chili and Chicago-style variety), brats, nacho fixin’s (I finally bought a container of Matt Carpenter’s Mojo Salsa at Schnucks!), and “Baseball Cakes” for dessert, in both the day game and night game flavors:
It’s always a fun meal to put together, and everybody’s dinner ends up being a little bit different:
It’s too early to say whether or not the Cards will have their first Busch Stadium win of the 2019 season today or not, but it’s been a fun day, and it’s #TimetoFly!