Family Birthday Dinner

Tonight was the grand finale to an amazing week of birthday celebrations. We got together at Mom and Dad's for a pizza party! Mmm, four different kinds of pizza!



Mom made an amazing texas sheet cake. Kate helped me blow out the candles!



Mer cut the cake!



Why hello there, chocolate cake.



Kate loves blowing candles out so much that Dad brought out a piece of cake just for her with a special candle in it. Good thing her birthday's up next!



I got this awesome bunny night light for my birthday. He is helping Kate eat her cake. Aw.



Thanks everybody, for all of the birthday wishes. It was a good one!!

Birthday Dinner at Purple Chopstix

Today is my actual birthday! First, I got to have lunch with all my coworkers and TWO kinds of pumpkin cupcakes!! Then tonight was the traditional birthday dinner with the ladies! We went to Purple Chopstix. Yum, champagne!



Summer got me this dress for my birthday. She gave it to me as an early birthday present, so I've already gotten to wear it several times. I LOVE IT. As you can see, she also got one for herself! She was happy to join me in wearing them tonight, so I got to be TWINS for my birthday. My favorite! TWINS!!! And look, she made a little BABY rendition of the dress to include with my card, to remind me of my birthday gift (as if I could forget!). So really, TRIPLETS!!!



So many polka dots!! PRESENTS!



Spilling champagne. Whee!



Tonight was a SUPER SPECIAL birthday treat, because Rose was in the United States!! Special guest star!! And Leslie was there, all the way from North Carolina! The whole table tried putting on some of my lipstick and then we all had matching lips. OCTUPLETS!!!!!!!



The waitress TRICKED US and told us there was no more cake left. But it was a sneaky joke and LOOK! There was cake after all!! WHEW.



Wishes!



Matching lips!



Beauty pageant shots!






Summer and Emily battled over the last bite of cake.












After dinner, we headed to Casa for a nightcap. Here is Rose with Yumi's hair! Lovely!



Photo shoot!

Happy Birthday, Moss! (and me!)

Today is Moss's birthday!! And since my birthday is tomorrow, Vana and Joe threw a joint birthday party for us at their new place! It was an Italian Feast. Mmm, garlic bread:






That garlic bread was PERFECT!! So garlicky!



Cheryl made two lasagnas!!



Time to dish up!



One of the best plates of food of my whole lifetime.



And for dessert, they picked up an ice cream cake from Larry's Dawg House!!!!!! These cakes have a reputation for being the best, so I was thrilled to get to taste one!!



Look at all those candles!



Singing "Happy Birthday!"






Time to blow out the candles. This is what it looks like when wishes come true!



The ice cream cake was SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



It was like a bowl of heaven with rainbows on top.

Birthday Kickoff

Even though my birthday isn't until Friday, Ben was sweet enough to surprise me tonight with an early birthday picnic!! The rest of the week is so packed with birthday celebrations that this was a good opportunity for us to celebrate alone. When I got home from work, he had it all ready to go. YAYYYYY!!! We had a blueberry stilton, a sage derby cheese, and a brie. With baguette and champagne! It was so fun. Possibly the best thing about it was that we ate so early that we got hungry again later in the evening and got to eat it all AGAIN!

Cooking Club: Sandwiches!

Nancy hosted the September cooking club, and the theme was "Sandwiches!" Nancy made little MINI versions of her favorite sandwich, which contains pesto, basil, tomato and provolone. And she made little tiny english muffins for them!!!!!!! LOOK AT HOW CUTE THEY ARE. We added a quarter to the platter to give you a sense of proportion.



Valerie made tofu sandwiches with snap peas and shitake mushrooms inside. These were incredible, and it was so fun to have sandwiches on tofu instead of bread!



Nancy made us a round of apple thyme martinis. Cheers!



Yumi did an appetizer version of a Banh Mi sandwich, featuring homemade pâté!



Fresh and delicious!



Then it was time to get serious and move the party to the TABLE!



Summer made mini versions of a South African dish called Bunny Chow, in which a loaf or hunk of bread is hollowed out and filled with curry. YUM! She did two curries, one with local lamb and the other with chick peas. Spicy and comforting!



My favorite sandwich growing up was always a good ol' fish sandwich. I did a grown up version on a lettuce wrap instead of a bun. I made some beer-battered fish and some fancy tarter sauce. I had quite the assembly line going on in the kitchen!






Kramer really wanted to get his paws on some of that fish.



Fish wraps! It was my first experience making beer-battered fish, and the batter didn't stick very well. It still tasted good though and the tarter sauce was amazing.



For the grand finale, Emily made ice cream sandwiches!! Oh, hi!



Homemade chocolate chip ice cream with homemade marshmallows on homemade graham crackers.



LOOK HOW CUTE AND DELICIOUS!!! They were scrumptious! The little bites of ice creamy marshmallows were the BEST.



After dinner, we played some Taboo.



And told some jokes!



And fawned over handsome Sal.



He is so fluffy and handsome!



That wraps up another amazingly delicious cooking club!