Thanksgiving Dinner in St.Armand's Columbia Restaurant + Floral Look of the Night

We had a very very long day on Thanksgiving as you can see. It is somewhat of our own tradition to either cook our own dinner for Thanksgiving later on in the day or go to dinner. Sometimes, I cook my full dinner a day earlier or a day later depending on the schedule. Making Thanksgiving work between about 10+ people can get tricky and I have found as the babies of the family, my wishes are rarely taken into consideration or treated as high of a priority ie; my traditions that I have started.

While I love cooking and hosting people, I have moved away from that aspect since the pandemic. I think many of us have, but my first solo dinner out Thanksgiving happened over 8 years ago and it was forced on us not by choice. That awakened something in us that we both liked and so not every year, but when we want to we do our Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. More people do that now so it is actually more fun than it was the first time we did it years ago. One of our favorite places to go is the Columbia Restaurant which is a local historic restaurant that opened in Tampa more than 100 years ago.

They do a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but it is full of gluten so I can't have it; the menu looks good though! I just order my favorite dishes off the regular menu and I am happy with that. So, this year we chose the Sarasota location again because I love the vibes there. I had this dress saved to wear on my next trip, but I decided to wear it tonight. It looks a little wonky in the chest area because I forgot to zip the very top of it and it does appear that it is a little large on me. A lot of the earlier clothes that Farm Rio made like this dress run big on me.I have literally had this dress that long, it was probably from their first line I saw before everyone was even knowing the brand Farm Rio like they do now.

The fabric is thick and heavy. It looks like lace, but it is eyelet and the print on top is floral. Its a very romantic dress which is why I was saving it for vacation. I wanted to wear my Manolo Blanik's with this dress, that is my obvious choice, but the weather has been weird this week and I did not want to risk ruining those expensive heels to complete the look. If you are not familiar with st. Armand's it is all outdoors and it has been raining and there could be walking etc so it isn't ideal for wearing Monolo's.

You may see this dress again because the lighting and all that was not optimal to show off how pretty it was tonight.