Hey Hey It's My Birthday!

OK, so this post is a few days late, but how could I post about what I did On my Birthday, Before my birthday? I guess I could invent a time machine and somehow fit posting into my schedule...but instead I think I'll just post about what I did last weekend.

My birthday celebration started off with a work-day-lunch-break Manicure. I went with a friend and got a fancy design painted on my nails to see if I liked it as a possible Wedding-Day Beauty item.

Then my coworkers sang happy birthday and made me eat brownies...and they were good!
Friday evening my lovely fiance invited some friends over for dinner, and I cooked up a yummy concoction, without a recipe, that was enjoyed by all. Though, to be honest, I think I enjoyed all the wine a little bit more ;)

Saturday was low-key until joining other friends in celebrating. His was the big 3-0 birthday, so he got party priority over my 2-6.


Then Sunday, was wedding day. Mr. man and I got up early and drove to our cake tasting at 10am, at Konditor Meister Bakery where we chose our cake flavors for the wedding.

Now, I don't recommend having cake for breakfast, since I don't want the healthy police to come after me... but if you are already, by your own choice, planning on having cake for breakfast... do it at Konditor Meister!!


Then came a meeting at our wedding venue. We sat down with them for 2 hours and discussed how supremely Awesome our Wedding day is going to be! There was only one "Oh...My...God" moment about plans, but we quickly worked around it and I'm So excited to put it all into play in June.

Mr. Man and I, along with my parents, had a few hours to kill before our dinner reservation, so we hit up the mall. My mom and I went on a little shopping spree for my Birthday, picking up some fun new clothing items, and my Man & my Dad played in the arcade. So cute ;)

Then...Let me tell you they saved the best for last. When we arrived at our dinner reservation, I discovered that it was made for 8 people, not just our immediate 4. Not only did my brother drive up from Providence, RI to be with us, but our friends were there before us waiting at the table to join us for dinner! What a wonderful Surprise!


We hadn't spent time with them in a while, and it was fun to swap house-buying and wedding planning stories, as their wedding will be June of 2013.
[And while friends and family getting together for my Birthday is Awesome! You'd think at least one of them would have told me & Mr. Man to wear black or grey!]

All in all, I want to thank my friends and family for making this one, my last birthday checking off that "single" box, a memorable one.

Piles

Anyone who has planned a wedding knows...there's a lot of Stuff involved. Over the past few weeks especially, I've been making small purchases each week so I don't get hit with a huge credit card bill all at once when the wedding is closer.

The side effect of that is that I have to store all of these purchases until the wedding day. Most of the items building in my piles are gifts of one sort or another, envelopes and stamps for invitations, and paper for wedding programs. Which I guess means, that I'll be giving most of these items away when the time comes.

Is there such thing as post-wedding depression? If there is, I'm pretty sure I'll have it when I get home from the honeymoon and find these piles gone...

I certainly enjoy amassing these items for the time being. I get that little pitter-patter in my heart every time a package comes to the door. So, for now, I will enjoy the piles and purchasing each and every one of them.

Weekend Tasks

So I don't know what you all do with your weekends, but for us it tends to be a time to get things done that we just don't have the energy to do during the week. Usually we're pretty good with keeping up with things like laundry and the dishes, but the bigger stuff waits until those days that start with "S."

This week, our big issue was the Fridge! We've been having trouble for the past 3-4 weeks with it not staying cold, and all the yummy food that I plan to cook/have for leftover-lunches, is going bad before we get a chance to eat/cook them. And you know how much I love to cook, so that was not acceptable.

This weekend we decided it was finally time to dig in deep.

We started the morning by taking everything out of the freezer, putting it into a cooler, removing the ice maker from the wall, and pulling off the back panel. It wasn't easy in such an awkward space, but Mr. Man made it happen.

Through trial and error we discovered that it wasn't a leak in the ice maker, it wasn't a problem with the cooling coils...we discovered a fan that wasn't turning! That created a serious circulation issue, so cold air wasn't making it out from behind that back panel.

With the problem discovered, we pulled a part number, and ordered a new one online. Hopefully our awesome powers of deduction came to the right conclusion and when the new fan motor arrives in a few days we will once again have frozen eggos and cold milk!

Hopefully your weekends were successful in your own ways.

Cooking Extravaganza

A couple months ago, I went home to visit with the folks and ended up making dinner for us all. This is definitely my favorite go-to meal that always comes out well, so I figured it couldn't go wrong as a crowd pleaser either.

The next time I went home to visit, my vegetarian aunt was also visiting (making a table out of a window frame of course) so mom had to show up my cooking :) lol, just kidding mom.

We heard about an Apple-Cucumber soup at a restaurant and decided to emulate and get a recipe for it for dinner the following night. The soup was so different, but it came out really really yummy.

The most recent cooking coup took place here in our very own kitchen in Boston. I stumbled upon 6 recipe cards for $0.50 at Job Lot, and one of them was a Chinese steak dish. I followed the recipe to make the orange sauce with ginger, and the spinach wilted very nicely into the bed of white rice. Using the leftover orange to decorate the beautiful platter that a friend gave me for Christmas, this meal was full of flavors that I couldn't believe I put together.


Thank you to the Folks for letting me cook, and to Mom & Aunt from being adventurous and to my Man for trying all of the random recipes I put on the table in front of him. :)