40...again

There is a reason I don't plan big events. I tried it once several years ago and learned that it completely stresses me out. I'm not even worth being around because I'm so worried that things will go wildly wrong. But this year, I put all those fears aside to organize a 40th birthday party for my sister...in San Diego. I figured her husband wasn't likely to do it and no one really deserves it more...besides, her birthday is the day after mine and they fell on a Friday and Saturday this year. What better excuse to go spend my birthday with my sister??

So, after months of planning, a friend took me out to breakfast and dropped me at the airport on my birthday. And I hopped a plane to San Diego.
Unfortunately, I hadn't uh, say, read the instruction manual for the new camera lens I've got. I didn't realize you could turn the image stabilization OFF. Who'd want to do that, after all?? Not me. Except it was...until Sunday. So I have a lot of blurry pictures. Whatever.

Leaving my nephews at home with their dad, Karen and I set out for a nice dinner...all.by.our.selves. We had such a good time catching up, drinking pomegranate martinis and ordering too much food. I should drive to San Diego just for dinner once in a while. Well, maybe not really, but it's fun to pretend.

Saturday was party day. On the recommendation from one of Karen's friends, I booked the "back room" at a wine bar in the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego. I'd corresponded with the manager via e-mail and talked to him on the phone a couple of times. But gosh, doing things long distance is always so sketchy. I'd ordered a cake the same way. I found a commercial kitchen that made wedding cakes and had a good online reputation. It was near Karen's house, so I ordered a cake from them. I thought I'd ordered a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and coffee mousse filling, but it didn't quite turn out that way.

O.K., so the frosting's the wrong color, but they wrote the right thing on top and it looks pretty...sorta. The gum paste flowers are lovely, but why are the roses so...uh...white. They're beautiful, but really, really chalky-looking. O.K., now I'm kind of freaking out about something totally ridiculous...and I'm thinking I could have made her a prettier cake (whether that's true or not), so I had Karen drive me to Michael's to buy some "lustre dust" and paintbrushes. I took the roses off the cake and brushed them with color so they weren't so darned pasty.

The first bunch was...well...experimental and reminded me of that children's book The Pinkish Purplish Bluish Egg. Ever read that? No? It's about a mourning dove who finds a funny-colored egg and it hatches into a griffin named Ezekiel. Oh, nevermind.

The second set of roses, I brushed with yellow, decided I liked them and left it at that. I carefully rearranged them all on the cake again and set about resuming my daytime job as a relatively normal person.

I left early to help a couple of Karen's teacher-friends decorate the room at Wine Steals. The room wasn't quite what I'd envisioned, but I think it was probably better that what I'd envisioned. It was a cozy little room in the back of the restaurant. We had our own little private wine bar, food and great company. Karen's friends are a blast.

Who knew elementary school teachers were such fun on the weekends? Well, other elementary school teachers, apparently.

Even our parents, who had also made the trip from the more northerly reaches of California, seemed to enjoy themselves.

If anyone finds this blog while looking for information on Wine Steals, I'd have to say the manager at Hillcrest, Nick, was super nice and easy to work with. I wish I'd caught the name of our wine pourer because she was fantastic. Once I figured out how to get my laptop all hooked up, the stereo system was great, the wine was good, the food was yummy. I don't have a single complaint. We had so much fun!

I'd brought some large truffles as party favors...and I had to take a picture of them because I was so proud of how cute they looked.

And that cake was pretty yummy too, despite the white frosting. I'm certain no one would have looked twice at the pasty white flowers, but at least I was secure in my knowledge that I'd done my part to make the party a little more colorful...well, by coloring the flowers, and drinking three glasses of wine.
Considering I was in a room full of strangers, the party was over far too soon. I'm so glad I put forth a little effort and it turned out so well. I've got an awesome sister. She deserved a great 40th birthday...and then some.

A Happy Birthday

With life largely revolving around school, soccer and other kid activities, it's sometimes hard to recognize any kind of milestones Daddy and I make ourselves. Then, of course, there's the fact that some milestones are better off ignored. That was Daddy's goal for his 40th birthday...pretend it never happened. As he likes to mention, however, turning 40 (or any milestone age) is better than the alternative.

In my typical fashion, I agonized over whether I should try and throw a party. See, I'm not the greatest party-thrower. I feel a strong need to have everything "just so". It's never "just so", so I get really stressed out and make other people miserable. I'm getting better though and I found that when I'm really motivated...and not out at Starbucks sipping lattes with my friends...I can get a heck of a lot done during the three hours Mam is at school on the weekdays. I chose to have most of the food catered at Whole Foods and managed to keep myself down to cakes, veggies, fruit and cheese...oh, and cheese sandwiches and those little cocktail weiners wrapped in crescent rolls for the kids.

I made Daddy's very favorite cake from a recipe I picked up from Epicurious.com last year. This Lemon Lattice White Chocolate Cake is awesome. I made three batches, with each one being good for a layer of sheet cake and one 9" round. That made for two cakes, but I figured that was O.K. Either we'd need more than just the sheet cake and we'd cut into the round one too, or I'd save it for his real birthday the next day (which happily turned out to be the case).The weather was supposed to be hot, so we had plenty of beer and soda. I picked up a couple big boxes of popsicles for the kids. It didn't turn out to be quite as horrible as advertised, so it was a lovely afternoon in the backyard...and the popsicles were entirely forgotten.That was especially important because I'd flogged Daddy and myself to make up for years of neglect out in the yard. He dug and overhauled while I planted flowers and ornamental cabbages. Many of the guests probably didn't know the difference, but the general lack of child-related garbage and plethora of living plants, with FLOWERS! was a huge improvement.

There was food. There was LOTS of food and I was pleased that I'd lied to the catering guy and told him I only expected 30. I didn't love all the things I'd ordered either, but there was so much, it really didn't matter. I'd spent an entire couple of weeks worrying about plates, utensils, food, guests, balloons, cakes and I managed not to get totally stressed out. I was pretty proud of myself for that alone.

Most importantly, of course, the guest of honor seemed pleased.Good cake, good company, beer. Friends from work came, friends from high school, his dad, my parents, old family friends, most of our neighbors. What more could a dad ask for from a family-themed birthday party? Happy birthday to my awesome husband who proves that some guys really do get better and better as they age.