for the fifteens

Tonight, 2011 will turn into 2012, which means one very special thing: The Chi Omega 15's will become official members of our sorority. Initiation week begins January 17th. Oh my gosh! I can't wait :)

As I look back on the past few months, I can't help but feel thankful. Thankful for the experiences I've shared with my fellow 15's, thankful for the opportunity to be a part of Chi Omega, and thankful for my new sisters. Together, we've had a blast: eating apple cider donuts at the Curtis Apple Orchard, dressing up in hilarious costumes, making pounds of spaghetti for the Spookghetti dinner, covering ourselves with shaving cream at Tugfest, meeting our pledge mommies...

This is only the beginning. We have 3 1/2 years to create

everlasting memories. And it's going to be absolutely amazing.

p.s. This blog + our Twitter page got a makeover! Become a follower of both :) @ChiOmega_UIUC

a fashion-filled night

Last week at the Chi Omega house, we hosted a trunk show/sisterhood event featuring Bella Mia’s newest edition THE ATTIC (affordable, trendy styles for younger, college aged students), organized by our rediculously fashionable sister Jessie Whitman, who is also an intern at Bella. The trunk show included:

-BELLA MIA’S ATTIC trunk show (20% off all items!)

-dessert party - sparkling cider and cheesecake bites

-screening of The Devil Wears Prada

Once Bella Mia arrived at 907, they unloaded the racks into the living room, barely able to set them down before the girls swarmed like a scene from Mean Girls. The attendance was just insane! Girls were literally jumping over each other to get to these clothes... It was as if we had hid a half-naked Justin Bieber holding a willy wonka golden ticket in the clothing racks. We are strangely okay with this. Thank you, Jessie, for that lovely image ;)

The girls were running to the bathroom, kitchen, storage closets or any hidden area they could to try on the clothes. They absolutely loved them! We had girls trailing into the other room because the line was so long, the event was becoming a success!

After overdosing on mini-cheesecake bites, sipping on faux-wine and sitting down to bond over The Devil Wears Prada, it became clear that this was the perfect ending to the fashion filled night.

Overall, it was an amazing event and it could not have turned out better. In the end, Bella profited over $1,000, we were terrified by Miranda Priestly, and to this day, we are still looking for that half-naked Justin Bieber.

Big thanks to Jessie Whitman, Anna Anderson, Melinda Engle and Kori Mcgraw. This event wouldn’t have happened without you!

Check out Jessie's blog for the full description of the event!

tugfest: benefiting the make-a-wish foundation

Last Sunday we had one of our favorite philanthropy events of the year... TUGFEST! To describe how amazingly fun Tugfest is, would be about as hard as single-handedly trying to win a tug-of-war contest against 10 VERY strong fraternity members. To put it simply, this event completely rocked our world.
We arrived at Frat Park at about 11:30 to set up. The girls handed out shirts, set up the ropes, started blasting the music, and organized the brackets that list who would compete against who. The competition consists of 12 or so fraternity teams and 2 or 3 Chi O "coaches" per team. The coaches basically jump and scream and encourage our team to pull as HARD as they can, while the frat boys actually participated in the tug-of-war contest.

Oh, and did I mention that the boys play over two giant tarps filled with shaving cream?? To say things got messy is an understatement... By the end of the competition everyone (Chi O's and fratstars alike) were head-to-toe, COMPLETELY covered in shaving cream. Everyone had a blast dancing around, playing tug-of-war, and especially chasing one another down armed with a bottle of shaving cream.

However, after several rounds of fraternities competing, things got real.... The Chi Omega seniors took over! The jersey and neon-clad seniors, sponsored by ReadyU, divided in two teams and took opposite ends of the rope. After everyone gathered around the girls, the referee blew the whistle. GAME ON.The competition was fierce, but the girls did not disappoint! After they played against each other, the winning team competed against boys!

Although the event was silly and fun, it meant a lot more to the ladies of Chi Omega. We ended up raising about five to six hundred dollars for the Make-A-Wish foundation! Although this isn't our biggest earning event of the year, we are extremely proud of the men and women who volunteered their time to support our philanthropy, and our philanthropy chair for putting on an awesome event!
WE CAN'T WAIT FOR NEXT YEAR!!! :)

chi omega's first post: ooh, ahh

Hello all! Welcome to our chapter's blog! It's our newest venture and hopefully you will have as much fun reading it, as we have writing it. If you ARE reading this, then hopefully you have also seen our facebook fan page, alumnae page, website, and twitter. Or maybe I'm just dreaming big... Anyways, however it was that you came across this blog, Chi Omega welcomes you.
Now to explain WHY we made this blog in the first place! For the past year we have been busy re-vamping our website, and establishing ourselves as top-notch social media gurus (well, that's what I like to call myself... it's fun to pretend). However we came to the realization that our statuses and tweets just don't fully express our true personalities as much as we would like them to (let's be honest, 140 characters is not nearly long enough). So after much contemplation, the lightbulb went off. And voila, our little blog was created!
We plan to post whenever we have a big event, or just when we feel like sharing our lives with the virtual Chi Omega world. So be sure to check in when you can, or sign up to follow us if you want to receive emails about our new posts! We are so excited to get started on this project!
Stay classy Champaign...
The ladies of Chi Omega.