Birthday to Birthday

Today is my sister’s birthday (Happy birthday, Andrea!), a week and a half ago it was Luke’s birthday, and eleven days before that was my birthday.  We’ve got a lot of birthdays happening around here.

So now that I’ve had about three weeks to think about it, how about we talk about my birthday?  It was awesome.  Luke’s birthday was on a Saturday, which should have been perfect, except that everyone we knew was either on vacation, or had other plans that night.  So sad.  My birthday was the opposite.  It started with my favorite monthly appointment which is breakfast with my favorite bunch of loud-talky girlfriends at Ruben’s in West Hartford.  The waitress heard that it was my birthday and brought me a cupcake on the house.  After breakfast I headed to Prossage on the 22nd floor of the Marriott in Downtown Hartford for an amazing birthday massage.   What a beautiful place, I highly recommend it.  Especially for the post-massage view.

After my appointment, I was welcomed and encouraged to bring my swimsuit and enjoy the pool and hot tub.  You don’t know how disappointed I was that I couldn’t spend the rest of my day here, but don’t feel bad for me.  I had to leave my rooftop paradise to head home to my honey who had presents waiting and then whisked me out for lunch and a margarita.  It was the perfect sunny day so after lunch we came home to lay on the hammock where I read the book I’m currently obsessed with and he took a little snooze.  After relaxing and doing a little mild gardening, we took off for a sushi dinner.  What more could a girl ask for?  It was a perfect day.

The following weekend we had another blissful day visiting our friends at their boat in Stonington.  The sun was out, the winds were calm, and I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day.  This picture, above, is Molly on the dock just moments before she mistook the algae in the water for a patch of grass that she could step onto and went for her first saltwater plunge.  This, below, would be the after.  Whoops!

Our sunny Stonington day kicked off a week off from work for both Luke and me.  The weather took a turn for the worse so we spent much of the time in the basement organizing the shop and other boring things.  We did manage to mess up the yard a whole lot by digging trenches so the chicken coop could have water and power and I can finally have water out at the vegetable garden.

We spent a good part of the day watching the chickens fall in and figure out how to get out of the trench.  Good times.  Just a side note here, Luke dug these trenches BY HAND.  With a pick axe.  Like an olde timey prisoner.  He’s crazy and I love him for that.  So to reward him for his back-breaking hard work, I made him take me out in the boat.  We had a gorgeous day of warm, sunny weather so we headed to quiet little Gardner Lake in Salem.  Man alive, was it beautiful.

We were practically alone on the lake.  I drove the boat around for bit while Luke fished, then he switched over to the trolling motor and I made myself a comfy spot to lay and continue reading my book.  It was heaven.  But that fishing was only practice for the next day when Luke went fluke fishing with our Stonington boat friends.  Now here is where I would include a photo of the beautiful day or the 68 pounds of fluke they caught and sold, but since that trip was boys-only and for some unknown reason no one thought to take any photos—FOR PROOF THAT THEY ACTUALLY CAUGHT ANYTHING—I present you with fishing boats at dusk, which I took that evening when I came to pick him up.

The four of us took the boat to the dockside restaurant around the corner—that was a fun, new experience of pretending to be a fancy boat-going person—and then we went back to our friends’ camp for a bonfire, some birthday cake…

…and some Sky Lanterns because the next day was Luke’s birthday!  (I’m still not sure how I feel about the Sky Lanterns.  They’re unquestionably beautiful and allegedly safe, but my painfully practical side keeps wondering about sending a paper bag with a lit candle loose in the wide open.)

We sent off two birthday lanterns and headed home after a wonderful day and a relaxing week of time off.  Luke’s birthday was mostly low-key because, as I mentioned, everyone and their grandma was out of town or busy, so there aren’t any photos, but a relaxing day was had by all.  So that’s it!  Birthday to birthday: it was a great couple of weeks!

Happy Birthday/Holiday Weekend

Was this an early birthday celebration for me? Sadly, no. It was a retirement party we had last weekend for my mother-in-law (DIY Compliment Bunting courtesy of How About Orange) but it’s a perfect picture for the start to this beautiful, long, holiday/birthday weekend.  I hope you all have a great weekend and I hope that you shipped my gifts already since the mail isn’t being delivered on Sunday. Enjoy your weekend!

For Shame!

I know, I know.  There’s no reason to point it out.  We’re all aware that I’m a deadbeat blogger and frankly, I don’t see it getting much better over the next month.  I’m starting a fractured two-week Cape Cod-at home-Maine vacation this coming Sunday, much of which will be spent without access to the Internet (gasp! I know). My best chance of catching up will be at the very end of July.  So to tide you over until then, here, look at what I did this weekend!

First it was Cameron’s 8th birthday party (EIGHT! How did this happen?)  It was hot.  So very hot, and we spent the day outside playing water games, like this duck-duck-goose-type game whose I can’t remember because my mom and I kept calling it splish-splish-splash.

I spent forever and a gallon of frosting trying to recreate Blackout in frosting, per Cameron’s very specific instructions.

And Andrea and I tried to get all nine kids to jump in the air at the same time for a cool photo.  Heh… not so much.

Then the sprinkler running all day finally overwhelmed the well pump and my sister completely lost water in the house.  That part was not fun.  We tried to keep a brave face and continue to party and open presents, then Luke and I left for another party and my sister and her family had to call a plumber.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY I bought you a new well pump!

Our next party was a birthday party for our friend Marc, but the only pictures I took were of him blowing out his birthday candles – and no, his party was not also Transformers-themed.

His sister-in-law’s sister (is there a name for that) makes amazing cakes and she made this one that was, believe it or not, just perfect for Marc.

The next day we geared up for the next two parties.  The first was at Amanda ad Greg’s house where we were able to meet the two newest babies in the group: Ava and Ginger.  Here’s Ava and her cheeks:

and here’s Ginger and her mom, Audrey:

Too much cute for one party.  Luke and I were telling the story of –ha ha– how awful it was about my sister and losing water in the middle of the party –ha, ha— and Greg said, “knock-on-wood, we’ve never had that problem” and not ten minutes later I hear someone ask “hey, why isn’t the sprinkler working?” and then “hey, did you know you don’t have any water in your kitchen?”  No, I’m not kidding.  We brought the doom to the party.  They lost water, too.  A quick run to the store for jugs of water and a few klassy handwritten signs, and we were all learning the valuable survival skill of flushing a toilet with a jug of water.

Luckily, by the time we left, their water was coming back and so far they’ve avoided needing a plumber, thank goodness. It was getting late and we had to leave Amanda and Greg’s and head to our last party out in  beautiful South Glastonbury.  We weren’t sure if we should bring our well-stopping storytelling skills to this party, but we did tell a couple of people and our friends miraculously avoided the curse.

We chatted with friends, sipped strawberry daiquiris, and marveled at how big everyone’s babies are getting.  This is me and Ryder who is almost one–holy smokes.

The sun went down, the sparklers came out, and–is it me, or did they last longer when we were kids?  They burn out so quickly.  I had to practice lighting, focusing, and swirling several times without the sparkler burning out before I could get a cool shot like this one.

We dragged our exhausted selves home and looked forward to a relaxing day down by the river the following day.  It was just what we needed.  We swam, we sat, we snacked, we laughed.  The perfect ending to a long and wonderful weekend.

Now if you happen to get antsy waiting for my next, post-vacation report, I would encourage you to visit my cousin’s new site, Letters from Arfara where she is documenting her summer spent living with her extended family in Greece. I’m very jealous of this trip.  Go check it out!

Weekend Wrap-up, Late Edition

You guys, I am overwhelmed.  Work stuff that I can’t talk about is MELTING MY BRAIN.  So much going on! I open up the internet, planning to come here and tell you about what’s been going on and… nothing. My brain is frozen. I had such a fantastic birthday weekend and I’d love to tell you about it, but trying to remember what happened and in what order and then actually sit down and type it all out — it makes me all hyperventilate-y just thinking about it.

Let’s just say this: sunshine, visiting with friends, presents, family, a delicious birthday dinner from my mom, red velvet cake!, motorcycle rides, more sunshine, walks in the woods, swinging in the hammock, eating more hot dogs than I am willing to admit, relaxing, enjoying, and three whole days of being outside in the glorious weather.  It was awesome.

Also, I got my nose pierced.  That was fun. You can just about make it out in this picture.  (Didn’t hurt at all. Georgina from Black Diamond Body Piercing is a rock star.)

Don’t ask.  I always seem to stick the bows off of my presents onto my chest or my head for some reason, and my sister had taken the time to cut the entire “Happy Birthday” out of a sheet of wrapping paper and stick it onto my gift, so I thought that deserved to be worn, not thrown away.  (The necklace was a gift from Andrea, it’s from Sparkle in Evergreen Walk — don’t you love it?)

That’s about it, in a nutshell.  Thank you to everyone for all of the birthday wishes.  You all helped to make is the best birthday in a long time.  A year, at least.

Everlasting Aquarium

Do you have a friend who just can’t keep her fish alive, no matter how hard she tries?  A friend who probably has a WANTED poster tacked up at the back of the aquatic area of every pet store in Connecticut?  A friend who wants to have fish but keeps mysteriously losing the ones she buys?  If you have a friend like this, have I got the perfect solution!  The everlasting, impossible to kill, no tank-cleaning required tropical aquarium.

A while back I had seen this post on Purl Bee about making magnetic, felt fish and it caught my eye.  I bookmarked it and went back a few times to look at it, then one day while trying to decide what to make a certain friend (cough!Paula) for her birthday, it hit me!  Fish that won’t die!

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Some people have bad luck with houseplants, others have bad luck with fish.  This friend is one of these people.  No matter what she does for them, her fish keep croaking and I didn’t want her to get discouraged about losing so many fish so I thought I’d just give her a few that would never go belly up.

Each fish is made with layers of felt sewn together with a magnet sandwiched inside.  My handy-dandy husband cut out a piece of steel in the shape of a tank and I spray-painted it a nice shade of tropical blue.  I added some plants and a few rocks and, ta-da!  An everlasting aquarium!  Never again feel the pain of flushing a dead fish or feel shame when entering the fish store.  My friend (cough!Paula) can move the fish around and rearrange the tank and – even better – never worry about leaving these fish alone when she goes on vacation.  Pretty neat, huh?

Happy Birthday, Paula.  I hope you don’t mind that I told the Internet that you’re a fish-killer.  Oops, did I say that?

Fit For a Princess

This weekend we had a combination Father’s Day/Andrea’s Birthday celebration at my mom’s house.  My sister (who was turning 35, I might add) requested a princess cake.  What, might you ask, is a princess cake.  Good question.  After making Alex’s birthday cake in the shape of a dinosaur, I thought that maybe I should make Andrea’s cake in the shape of a princess, just for fun, but in the end I opted on this design, fit for a princess.

The cake is Dunkin Hines chocolate fudge (Shocker, I know! But they were on sale and they turn out so well when you really beat the batter and get it all fluffy!) and the frosting is this creamy chocolate recipe.  The center is this amazingly delicious fluffy peanut butter frosting recipe.  The sparkly stars matched the princess’s tiara and it was so good I had to leave the leftovers behind at my mom’s otherwise I would have eaten it for breakfast.  And lunch.  Yum.

Happy birthday Andrea! I hope that your princess cake was everything you wished for.

Happy Birthday Honey

I just realized that next year I’ll be able to say I’ve known you for twenty years.  We really are getting old, aren’t we?

Growing Older But Not Up

I really wish that everyone would declare a three-day weekend on their birthday.  I took Friday off to celebrate my turning 33 and spent the weekend celebrating and enjoying and smiling.  It was the best birthday weekend ever.  It kicked off Thursday evening with the repainting of my kitchen.

I call this color “33rd Birthday Blue”.  After the change of cabinet hardware and the painting of my washer and dryer, the only next logical step was painting the kitchen walls the most amazing shade of electric turquoise you’ve ever seen.  It makes me happy just looking at it.

My birthday was as perfect as could be, starting with breakfast cupcakes, then sushi for lunch, Mexican for dinner, presents, family, laughs, but guess what?  No pictures.  I didn’t take a single picture on my birthday.  Neither did my usually camera-toting sister.  That’s OK, you can just take my word for it, it was a perfectly beautiful day.

Check out some of my loot!  I’m going to be very busy.  On top there is the extremely sharp (trust me) pair of left-handed dressmaker’s shears I mentioned on here a few weeks ago.  My mom, she can take a hint.

The rest of the weekend was spent, as usual, in the garden.  Also in the hammock, enjoying the view of the garden.

I managed to finally plant the veggie garden.  Two kinds of Swiss chard, three kinds of cucumbers, yellow and green summer squash, basil, sunflowers, zinnia, cosmos, and this coming weekend the tomatoes will go in (after I buy the plants at the Farmer’s Market).

It’s all very neat and orderly and makes me happy just looking at it.  Of course in a few weeks when the weeds take over, it will make me feel overwhelmed looking at it, but for now I’m loving it.

It truly was a perfect weekend.  Thank you to everyone who helped me celebrate and a big shout out to Mother Nature for sending the amazing weather.

Young at Heart

Although the calendar tells me that I’ll be a whole year older in less than two weeks, lately I’ve been wondering if I’ve grown up at all.

I’ve been lazily hunting for Vera Wang scents after following a woman around the TJ Maxx to ask her what perfume she was wearing because she smelled so nice.  She didn’t know the exact scent, but knew it was Vera Wang.  I haven’t actually gone to a perfume counter – that would be too easy -  but anytime I see a Vera Wang perfume ad in a magazine, I sniff it, hoping to find the right scent.  I was at the TJ Maxx again last week and happened upon a Vera Wang Princess body lotion, and based on the box’s description, thought this might be the right scent.  I bought it, tried it out and, although I don’t think it’s the right one, I think I’m close.  I think maybe it’s Rock Princess I want.

So I trot on over to Amazon to look for both of them and find that what Amazon recommends to purchase along with Princess and Rock Princess is the Jonas Borthers’ CD and High School Musical 3. Hmm…  Then I find that there’s a Princess website which is pink and animated and way too teeny-bopper for me to be poking about on.  Rock Princess isn’t any better with the hearts and stars and the “You Rock” slogan everywhere.  And now I’m thinking that I picked out a teen fragrance as my new favorite.  And also I’m thinking what teenager has $45 for an ounce of perfume?

Then Luke and I went out to get new cell phones. (Can you call them “cell” phones anymore?  That’s sounds very old-fashioned.  Saying “mobile” phone makes more sense but also makes it seem like I’ve been reading too may British novels lately.  Maybe only if I pronounce it MO-bile instead of mo-bul.)  Anyhow… I wanted to downsize from my brick of a Treo to something small and flippy but still with a QWERTY keyboard because I don’t think I can go back to texting on a number keypad.  The phone I found that I fell in love with was the LG Lotus, which – hey guess what – is a teenage girl’s phone.

So what does this say about me?  33 is the age at which I turn into a teenage girl?  Will I now start texting at the dinner table and hanging out at Abercrombie?  God, I hope not.  At least I got the black phone, and maybe it’s the more grown up Truly Pink fragrance I’m looking for.  That one comes with an Amazon recommendation to also buy the Benjamin Button DVD and a Steve Winwood CD.  Now that’s more like it.

Happy Earth Day/Birthday

There are two reasons to celebrate today.  It is not only Earth Day, it is also the day, four years ago, that this happened:

FOUR YEARS!?  I can’t get over that.  He was a just little nugget, and now look at him, he’s a superhero:

Happy Birthday Alex! And Happy Earth Day to everyone.  Do something good for the earth today.  It’s not hard. I, for instance, planted a dwarf lime tree so I will never run out of limes for my gin and tonics.  See?  Plant a tree and celebrate Earth Day.  I’ll drink to that.