Today’s bar post is our first ever two part post!

Last Saturday we celebrated my friend Amber’s birthday, which has become a yearly fun tradition here at MBIP! We reserved a room at Troy Ummel’s Connected restaurant for the party, but we also had to go to the bar there to keep up the daily 365 bar crawl duties.

So I went there on Friday evening and then we had the birthday party on Saturday and now you can see both evenings from our fun time at Connected restaurant here in Peoria.

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Bar Number 216: Troy Ummel’s Connected, Friday, September 18, 2026

And here we are at Connected Restaurant on Dries Lane just off of University Street here in Peoria. Let’s go in and. see what’s happening in there.

The front room here has a nice rock garden and tables to enjoy a fine dinner in here.

Here’s the bar in here, which is a fine and impressive watering hole.

Ezra was the friendly bartender on duty this evening and here he is serving me up a bottle of Budweiser with a nice smile. Cheers!

As I noted the other day, my car is in the shop, being fixed, so my brother Tom gave me a ride over to Connected and here he is enjoying a drink at the bar.

As you can see, there’s a large selection of wine behind the bar in here.

I love the chandelier hanging overhead and there’s even more wine selections over in this Connected cooler in the corner opposite the bar.

Okay, there’s the bar here at Connected and now it’s time for Amber’s birthday party!

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The Birthday Poster By Chelsie Tamms

My friend, Chelsie Tamms created and designed a poster celebrating Amber’s birthday, as she does every year.

Since this is the 13th birthday celebration, we decided to go with an “Amber The 13th” theme and Chelsie designed a fantastic poster for the party!

Check out Chelsie’s website and artwork by clicking here.

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Printing and Framing By Technicraft

Technicraft printed up the posters and framed one for this year’s party and they do such a wonderful job every year.

Here’s Hannah with the printed posters for this year’s pary.

Check out Technicraft’s website by clicking right here.

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The Birthday Cake From Trefzger’s

We got the birthday cake from Trefzger’s Bakery and they used Chelsie’s design and added their own spin to it.

There’s Ethan holding this year’s Amber birthday cake!

And now, it’s time for the party!

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The 13th Annual Amber Birthday Extravaganza! Saturday, September 19, 2026

Here’s the dining room at Connected, if you’ve never been here, you should definitely check it out. It is one of Peoria’s most unique and wonderful restaurants.

We reserved a private room for the party and here it is just off of the dining room.

Connected has several rooms you can reserve for private parties and meetings and you can read about them by clicking here.

This is a wonderful room and perfect for tonight’s birthday party!

Here’s the birthday girl herself, Amber and her husband Joe! They’re both looking fabulous and great to see both of them for this yearly birthday celebration!

Here’s the room decorated with Chelsie’s posters and some Amber The 13th movie posters that Technicraft printed up for this evening’s celebration!