Birthday Dinner #2

When I first met our friends the Cooks and learned that Christopher has the same birthday as I do, I won't lie...I was probably a little put out.  I mean, there was an understood rule that March 15 was supposed to be all about me! me! me!  And when it came to birthdays, I didn't really wanna share. But as it turns out, Chris's wife, Allison, is really creative and likes to go all out on birthdays.  And since we're pretty good friends and I share a birthday with her husband, I, by default, get to benefit from all the goodies and celebrations she plans for Chris.  We're a few years into this whole shared birthday thing now and guys?  I'm not complaining anymore.  Sharing a birthday with Christopher is AWESOME!  Maybe even one of the best things that ever happened to me.

For proof, you can read about how last year's birthday dinner turned into a Bowling Surprise Party for me (and Chris too, I guess...) and about this year's Birthday Dinner #1 that Allison cooked up for us at her house.  As if that weren't enough, this year's Birthday Dinner #2 was all planned by Allison too!  I guess technically Doc taking me out to dinner on my actual birthday was really birthday dinner #2, but I didn't take pictures at it.  So dinner last Saturday night (on St. Patrick's Day) officially gets the Birthday Dinner #2 title and for once, I'm actually beating Allison to the punch and writing about it first.  Blogging victory!

Since Chris turned the big 3-0 this year, this was supposed to be a big dinner celebration with all of our in-town friends.  But because of St. Patty's Day and the way Spring Break vacations fell, our group size dwindled down to just 8 of us.  But we still had a great time!

In attendance were the Earls,

the Solomons,

me and Doc,

and of course, the Birthday Boy and Party Planner Extraordinaire.

I didn't realize the party was on St. Patrick's Day until about an hour before we were supposed to be there.  I was feeling the luck of the Irish when I A) found a green shirt in my closet and B) the scoop of said green shirt mimicked my ridiculous tank top sunburn line from our beach vacay.  It's the little things, you know?

When we arrived at the restaurant, this fun little pack of M&Ms was waiting for me at my seat, and there were lots more scattered on the table.  They're customized Happy Birthday M&Ms and half of them said Chris is 30 and the other half that I am 29.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spied this display of push pop cupcakes.  I rushed through my meal since I knew those were on the horizon!

The ribbons on the push pops matched the wrapping paper and the flags on the age labels coordinated with the M&M packages.  These details were not lost on me!

And ooooh wee, were the cupcakes tasty!  They were all homemade chocolate cake and icing, but half had a layer of caramel in the middle and the other half had a layer of cherries.  Yummo!

For anyone confused, you just pushed the cupcake up like you would a push pop.

Doc took down a whole cupcake in one bite at our wedding, so it didn't surprise me at all when he did it again with this.  The boy's got mad skills.

He makes me so proud. :)

That's where my pictures from this birthday dinner stop.  Chris and I did get to open more birthday gifts before relocating.  Since the weather was so nice, we spent the rest of the night sitting out on a patio people-watching (one of my favorite pasttimes, and St. Patt's Day did not disappoint). 

I've got pictures to download from my last birthday party of the year.  Hopefully I'll get to do that tonight!

Birthday Dinner #1

Last Sunday night, my sweet friend Allison invited us over for a birthday dinner.  Her husband, Chris, and I share a birthday and our friend Charlie's is 2 days earlier.  It's a perfect excuse for us to all get together! Charlie and his wife Sarah live a couple hours away so we don't get to see them as often.  We were really excited to see them this time because they were bringing the newest addition to their family, Mr. Gus.

Doc LOVES babies when they're fresh out tha oven and still a little squishy.  And Gus was on his best behavior which made him even easier to love on.

Jenny took her turn with baby Gus.

I always love eating over at Allison's cause I know the grubs gonna be good!  For this dinner, she whipped up a Mexican meal and I think we did a decent job and knocking it all out.  The highlight for me, though, was definitely dessert (isn't it always?).

Here's Jenny and Darrin post present opening but pre-dessert.  See those mason jars in their hands?  We all got one with our name on it and inside was an ice cream cone.  (Also, see that orange box with 2 silver bowls in it?  I got one too, but we'll come back to that.)

Sarah and Charlie were also excited about birthday presents and dessert.

This one's blurry but Chris and Allison were there too.  Thank goodness since it was their house...

I've gotten really bad about forgetting to ask anyone to take a picture of me and Doc.  We were there too.  I was even wearing a cute new scarf.  Boo.

Anyway, while we wondered about the cone in our jar, Allison and Chris started scooping out homemade ice cream into bowls.

By the time our ice cream made it to the table, it had been topped by some kind of awesome homemade caramel sauce.  Allison had a fancy name for it but I can't remember it.

Then we were told we could open our jars and found out the cones were full of pecans that we could pour on top.

And then we were instructed to crumble our cones on top too.  Yum!

Not gonna lie, it was a pretty awesome dessert.  So much so that I wanted it again for breakfast the next morning.

So remember that orange box in the picture with Jenny?  That's a custom food bowl holder that Chris made.  Back when Allison posted about the one he made their cat, I not-so-subtley hinted that Lolli kinda wished she had one of her own.  And it worked! Allison mentioned it to Chris and he made her one!  I'm so glad because she's been eating out of heart-shaped bowls for over a year. (It made sense at first since we got her around Valentine's day.  There's really no excuse for why they became her permanent food bowls.)

Since she's only ever eaten out of her heart bowls, she was a little confused at first and had to investigate.

Hmmm...kinda gotta paw it to make sure it's ok.

And face plant!  I think she approves.

Just so we're clear, Lolli wasn't the only winner from that birthday dinner.  I also got to bring home a really cute L mug and a snazzy new bracelet.

Thanks for hosting us, Allison!  I'll be back soon with more birthday celebrations!

Weekend In Review

Even though nothing spectacular happened, this has been a really great weekend!  The weather was nice, we got to sleep in, I got lots accomplished, and there was nothing we HAD to do.  I love a weekend like that. Friday night we party-hopped.  We started out the evening with a surprise party for my friend Kim.  (You may remember that I have helped with a few rooms in her house, seen here, here, and here.)  I actually remembered to bring my camera and guess how many pictures I took....one.  Whomp, whomp.  Me and the birthday girl?  Nah, just a picture of this balloon.

Happy birthday, Kim!  Don't worry, I won't tell anybody how old you are...

Doc and I ducked out of the surprise party early because we had 9:00 dinner reservations.  Yes, 9 PM.  Yes, I had to take a nap after work so I could stay awake long enough for dinner.

The meal was good, but the company is what made it so great.  We were joined by 16 of our favorite people.

  

  

  

 

Since our reservation was so late, we met up for pre-dinner drinks.  A few of the guys got things going with some Jameson and Butterscotch Schnapps shots followed by an orange juice chaser.

The bartender swore that the combination tasted like pancakes.  I think that sounds disgusting but those that gave it a try said it was pretty good.

I really have no comments about this next picture, but I do feel that it should be posted.

The weather was so nice Saturday that I got up and went for a long morning walk.  I spent the bulk of the day working in the shop and made good progress on a lot of my projects.  I even finished a couple that I'll show you this week.  (I promise I'll post more than once this week...)

That afternoon we stopped by my brother's house to check out something he'd been working on.  We had Lolli with us, which absolutely thrilled Bren.  She LOVES Lolli.  I'm not sure if the feelings are mutual.  Bren likes to hold Lolli and it's usually not in the most comfortable position for poor Lolli, so it looks a little something like this.

I know these picture are awful quality - I was using my phone - but bear with me because I think they're pretty funny.

So Bren likes to hold Lolli but Lolli doesn't really love it.  At one point, we walked in Bren's room to see her standing on her bed, holding a squirming Lolli, and smiling at herself in the mirror above her dresser.  I guess sometimes you just need to see how you look holding a puppy dog.

A few minutes later, Bren got so excited.  "I put her in my box!  Now she can't get away!"  The "box" she was referring to?  Her laundry hamper.

Poor Lolli.

We're dog-sitting my parents' dog, Henry, this weekend so we had him with us too.  Bren had Doc put Henry in the "box" with Lolli, but she decided he made the "box" too heavy so he had to get out.  You know what's coming next, don't you?

Bren got in the "box."

Oh man, that girl cracks me up.  (This morning at church, she had on a headband of feathers that she'd made in Sunday School.  "Hey Bren!  Are you a little Indian?"  She told me no so I asked her what she was.  "A chicken!")

Tonight, after getting out of the shower, I walked in our bedroom to see that Doc had taken a page out of Bren's book.  I saw this on the floor.

Doc had a smirk on his face and even Henry was sitting on the bed, looking a little smug.  I got closer and sure enough, poor Lolli was trapped underneath.

Before anyone runs off and reports us to PETA, let me assure you that Lolli was not harmed in any of these laundry hamper escapades.  She's perfectly fine and is as wild and crazy as ever.  I just won't be surprised if she runs under the bed the next time I start doing laundry.

I'm pleased to say I have officially started my Christmas shopping AND our Christmas cards have been ordered.  I don't know why, but having those ordered makes me feel so much less stressed!  I'm excited for the next few days: 3-day work week, Thanksgiving food, and getting to see all of our family.  Should be a good week!

Baby Shower Paint Night

I'm a little behind on this post, and if you follow Allison's blog, she's already beaten me to the punch, but late is better than never, right?  (That was a lot of commas.  Someone should probably take a red pen to that sentence.) One of my besties from college, Sarah, is less than two months away (!) from having her first baby and, naturally, we wanted to shower her with gifts.  Here's the thing, though: Sarah doesn't really like to be the center of attention.  So the typical sit-in-a-circle-and-watch-while-I-open-gifts type of shower just didn't seem like the right thing to do.  Plus, the baby's room has been undergoing renovations in preparation on his/her arrival, and it needed some good art for the walls.  Enter Baby Shower Paint Night. 

I managed to rope Allison and Jenny into hosting with me (just kidding, they volunteered...I think).  A while back we had all attended a guided paint class (seen here, and I even went back again for another class) and while we were there, we saw a big canvas that had just been painted by a group for a wedding shower.  Well, if you can have a wedding shower painting party, then surely you can have a baby shower painting party, amIright?  We set the plan in motion and got to work.

Sarah has not spilled the beans yet about whether she's carrying a boy or girl (I think it's a girl.  No, it's a boy.  Wait.  Girl, final answer.)  so we needed our invitation to be gender neutral.  I ordered the cute template from this etsy site.

I chose the yellow giraffe because I knew it would match the table cloth I planned on using. 

I have to give props to Allison because she came up with the menu and really carried the weight when it came to food prep.  All pictures from this point forward were taken by her...I stupidly forgot to take my camera with me to the shower.  D'oh!  Anyway, here's our food setup.  See the giraffes on the table cloth?  You better believe I displayed one of the invitations so noone would miss their matchiness. :)  Allison made rice krispie treats with cake batter, complete with sprinkles to make them colorful and festive.  She also whipped up a batch of lemony cupcakes topped with a carmelized (I think?) lemon.  Fancy!  In the middle is a homemade (again, by Allison)  onion dip with chips and veggies.  On the end are two different skewers - that's where Jenny and I come in!  Oh yea, we assembled those skewers like it's nobody's business. 

Here's a better shot of the skewers.  Allison came up with the ingenius idea to make everything easy to eat so we wouldn't have to bother with plates and utensils while trying to paint.  She's a smart one, that girl.  In the foreground are pasta skewers.  They had cherry tomatoes, snap peas, and tortellinis, and then they were marinated in a mustard sauce.  Yummo!  In the back are the fruit skewers arranged in the colors of the rainbow.  You can't have a painting class without a little Roy G. Biv. 

Also on the food table were cookie favors that I ordered.  I don't have a great pic of them, but they were shaped and painted like little artist palettes.  Cute!

Our party group was small, just some of our old friends from college.  Here's the mom-to-be, Sarah, with her old college roomie Dana.  Can't believe we've all known each other for over 10 years!  I remember meeting Sarah and Dana early in my college career when we all pledged the same sorority, and now they're both mamas!  Love these girls!

Kendra showed up with all smiles and ready to get her paint on.

As everyone arrived, the professional artist, Maria, encouraged us to write notes to the baby on the back of the canvas. 

Maria and Sarah had already done lots of emailing back and forth to design the canvas for the nursery.  Sarah sent her a picture of the baby's bedding and Maria based her design off of it.  After she explained how we'd do the painting and gave us the go-ahead, everyone just stood there.  Who would go first?  So we played Rock, Paper, Scissors to figure out who our first three painters would be.

Sarah, Dana, and Roxy were the lucky winners!  They grabbed a brush and got to work.

You can see in the picture below how Maria had already drawn out the main design of the painting.  It had a big tree with lots and lots of leaves drawn in with a texture medium.  We were instructed to start with the background and work our way forward, so the sky and ground got painted first.

Every few minutes or so, we rotated out painters.  Emily jumped in after the first three to do some blending in the sky.

Here's an upclose view of the canvas at that point.  See the little bird in the tree?

While waiting to paint, we all did a pretty good job of stuffing our faces with all that delicious food!

Kendra and I finally decided to tap in and went to work on the ground.  We kept switching sides to evenly mix her bright green with my dull green.

After the background was done, it was time for leaves, leaves, and more leaves.  We passed out colors and everyone was responsible for making sure their colors were evenly spaced out.  Sometimes it got a little crowded while painting.

Wasn't long before we were almost done!  We saved the bird for last and debated over what color to paint it.  Should it stand out or blend in?  We voted blend in.  Kendra was charged with painting it a solid creamy white.

And Dana got the honors of adding the accents to it.

Pretty bird.  Yes, can you say pretty bird?  Pretty bird, yeah, pretty bird.  (Name that movie!)

Our finished masterpiece!  I can't wait to see it hanging in the nursery!  The awesome thing about this painting is that it's not a baby painting at all.  Yes, it will look great in there with the bedding, but if Sarah ever wants to move it to the living room, it could totally work there too.

We're a pretty good group of artists!

I tell you what, this was my kind of shower...painting, eating, and just hanging out with good friends.  It beats a stuffy shower any day!  I highly recommend having a party like this if you have someone you need to shower.  It was lots of fun!

Pinkalicious

Aaaand I'm back with pictures from the Pinkalicious Party.  To give you some background, the daughter of one of my besties turned a year old last week and because they are between houses right now, I offered up our house for the big par-tay.  You know I love to host a party. Emily came over the weekend before so we could discuss the theme.  Pinkalicious is one of little Alice's favorite books, so it felt right to use as a theme.  Emily brought the book with her to my house and I carved out a little time one night during the week to read it.  I had no idea what it was about and, in case you don't either, here's the shortened version:  a little girl makes pink cupcakes with her mom one day and then eats so many of them she turns pink.  The doctor tells her she has to start eating all green foods but she eats more cupcakes and turns red.  She gets sad when her friends don't recognize her so she eats green foods so she can return to normal colors.  Then her brother ends up eating the rest of the cupcakes and turns pink too.  The end.

We didn't stick completely to the book.  Mostly the theme was pink, pink, and more pink.  I spent Saturday doing some decorating.  In addition to the pink table runner, I also jazzed up my chandelier with some pink boas.

In the living room, I hung some tissue poofs that my sister-in-law had left over from Bren's tea party.

I added a big poof to the front door, too.  There were also balloons on each side of the door - they weren't really cooperating for this picture.  (Yes, I know my ferns look pitiful.  I'm trying to revive them.)

Back in the living room, I made these pinkalicious letters to hang on the mantel (not mantle).  I was originally just going to hang them on the pink ribbon, but they kept flopping over so I taped them onto the mantel too. I already had the scrapbook paper and I cut the letters using my Silhouette machine.

Atop the mantel were my white test tube vases.  I tied some ribbon around them to pinkify them for the party.  I know carnations aren't the fanciest flowers ever, but when I was at Kroger the morning of the party, carnations were all that were available in the pink category.

I threw the leftover carnations in a small vase and had them sitting in the kitchen.

The table was full of pink goodies.  Since the party was at 3:00, we were able to get away with just having some snacks instead of a full meal.

Emily dipped strawberries in bright pink chocolate.

We tag-teamed the pink-on-pink cupcakes.

Emily also brought bagels with strawberry cream cheese and pink wafer cookies.

I made a salsa and cream cheese dip that, after adding pink food coloring, sorta resembled a mystery dish in a cafeteria line.  Luckily, it still tasted good!

To wash down all that pink food, we had a big pitcher of pink lemonade.

Every first birthday party needs a smash cake.  I used my giant cupcake pan to make one for Alice, and I did my best to make it resemble the cupcakes from the Pinkalicious book.

I think the only pink decor I've left off are these pink buckets full of {mostly} pink candy.

The invitation to the party encouraged guests to wear pink, and they all did!  Here is the birthday girl with, from left to right, her maternal grandmother, her mom, and one of her aunts.

Even the guys wore pink.  (Those stripes on Matt's shirt are pale pink, even though they look white-ish here.)

For party entertainment, Emily drew out the girl from the Pinkalicious book for a game of Pin the Pigtail on Pinkalicious.

We had to use a pink scarf as the blindfold.  At least it went with the theme!

Little Alice only lasted helping open presents through a couple of them.  She was more interested in all the paper on the floor.

While the rest of the gifts were opened, guests were encouraged to submit guesses for the number of pink whoppers in the jar.

The total was 264.  I didn't win.  :(

One gift that did get Alice's attention was this cool pink car that her grandparents brought.  She doesn't quite have the steering down yet, but she knows how to work the horn!

When it came time to sing to the birthday girl, we switched out the "cherry" (a red gumball) for a 1 candle.

Sweet Alice wasn't sure what to think of all that sweet icing at first.  She was very dainty in her eating.

After getting reassurance from her mama that it was ok, she started really going for it.

That smash cake was finger-lickin' good.

Even after all that pink icing, I'm pleased to say that Alice did not turn pink!

Though I'm sure she won't remember it, I'd count this party a success.  Happy first birthday, Alice!

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