Birthdays

Yesterday's Surprise Birthday Gift!

Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to celebrate birthdays. My parents adhere to a religion that strictly forbids the celebrating of birthdays. My first experience with a birthday party was at my first job after technical school when there was a birthday party every month for anyone whose birthday fell in that month. Each month had a committee to plan the birthday party. It was great fun, and the beginning of my love of all things birthday. It’s where I learned that birthdays are fun.

Eleven years later a lot has changed; I’ve moved to a different state, gotten married (to a man who’s a Christmas Eve baby), and have a different job. However, I still love all things birthday, and have the fortune to be around people who really get into celebrating birthdays.

Yesterday at work I walked into a lovely early birthday surprise from some of my co-workers. They took the time to choose my favorite flowers and candy. One of the things I love about my job is the fact that we celebrate co-worker’s birthdays. I always bake a cake of the birthday person’s choosing, we all go out to lunch together, and sometimes small gifts are given. It’s really nice because, let’s face it, a lot of us spend more time with our co-workers on a daily basis than we do our families. It’s nice to know that the people you spend 40 plus hours per week with are glad you were born.

Of course, co-worker birthday celebrations don’t replace birthday celebrations with family and friends. I love the traditions and fun that go along with birthday celebrations for my friends and family by marriage.

Since Nick is a Christmas Eve baby I always make sure he has a birthday party that has nothing to do with Christmas. It’s usually chili and a cake that in no way resembles anything Christmas-related. The cake has been everything from Star Trek to frogs.

My best friend Crystal almost always chooses grilling out for her birthday celebration. Her birthday is in early May, so the weather is usually perfect for being outside and grilling. We usually try new marinades or grilling something new.

Because I dislike the cold weather so much and my birthday is in early April, we almost always drive down to South Carolina to go to Riverbanks Zoo. It’s always warm there by then, and the garden is in bloom. I love it.

There’s always cake, too. This year Nicks’ mom and step-dad, Alan, (whose birthday is late March) were in town close enough to celebrate our birthdays together with a chocolate cake with an antique truck for Alan and an adorable white cake with pastel flowers and butterflies for me. I don’t like chocolate at all, so it means a lot that they go out of their way to get white cake for me.

So what about you? Do you love birthday celebrations? What are your traditions for celebrating birthdays with family and friends?

Whirlwind Weeks & Holiday Planning

I can’t believe it has been almost two weeks since I posted anything.  As usual, the time has flown by, and I’m not quite sure where it all went. 

Did you all have a good Thanksgiving?  As I posted earlier, we had ours much earlier this month, due to Nick’s work schedule, so we didn’t have any kind of Thanksgiving at home on the actual holiday.  I think, if he’s working on Thanksgiving next year and we have the early celebration, I will still make us a small Thanksgiving-type meal on the actual day.  It’s a little weird not having the traditional meal that day. 

I did get to get together with two friends, Crystal and Alex, the night before Thanksgiving.  Crystal works in retail and had to go in at 11:00 pm Thanksgiving night, so was trying to stay up all night Wednesday.  Alex’s plans to go out of town to visit family changed at the last minute, so we had a girl’s night in at my house.  Nick doesn’t eat any seafood, so since he was at work that was a perfect opportunity was us to feast on shrimp pasta.  It’s delicious; shrimp sautéed in copious amounts of butter and garlic, with pepper, basil, parsley and diced tomatoes, served over angel hair pasta.  Yum!

We went to my parents the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  Their 38^th anniversary was the week before, and since anniversaries are the only thing they celebrate we usually make a big deal out of it.  We grilled steaks, and made mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green beans, and a berry crunch for dessert.  We somehow managed to pick out really good steaks and concocted a fabulous marinade.  It was garlic infused olive oil, lots of fresh minced garlic, balsamic vinegar, pepper, fresh cilantro, and a little bit of melted butter.  Unfortunately, we didn’t measure anything, so I really hope we’ll be able to duplicate it.  Nick and my dad grilled the steaks for a long time over very low heat.  They were delicious and so tender! 

My parents really liked their gifts, Emma was happy to run around in their back yard, and we had a good time visiting and playing board games.  We didn’t get home until almost 1:00 Sunday morning.

Somehow, in the midst of everything else, we didn’t get the Christmas tree put up.  We’re hoping to find time to put it up this weekend.  We usually put it up the weekend of Thanksgiving, so it’s a little odd not having it up right now.  We have plans to see The Nutcracker on Saturday afternoon, but hopefully we can get the tree put up Saturday night.  I am so excited about The Nutcracker.  I’ve never seen it, and now that it’s so close, it feels like Saturday will never come. 

I’m also in the midst of planning Nick’s 30^th birthday party.  He’s a Christmas Eve baby, so his birthday is easily overlooked.  I usually have a chili lunch (and a non-Christmas themed birthday cake) at our house that day and family and close friends come over.  Since this is his 30^th, and we’ve agreed to no more birthday parties for either of us except for milestone birthdays, we’ve decided to do something a little bigger.  We’re having it the following Saturday at a local pizza restaurant.  I have found a cake (not at all Christmas themed) that I love, and that has been approved by my friend Crystal.  She has great taste, and is honest enough to tell me when my great ideas aren’t so great.  Nick reads my blog, so I can’t go into much detail, but it’s going to be good. 

How many of you are the people who are already finished with your Christmas shopping?  I wish I could say I am, but I’m not.  I’m in awe of my friend Lorie who was finished by September.  I can only dream of being that organized!  We don’t have very many people to shop for, so it’s not a terribly daunting task.  The only downside is that most of the people I shop for are very, very difficult to shop for.  I really appreciate Amazon and eBay this time of year. 

It’s also about time for my annual bake-a-thon.  We like to take Christmas goodies (usually cakes, because I don’t make very good cookies) to people we see a lot through out the year like all of the different departments at work, our chiropractor, my acupuncturist, etc.  We also exchange baked goods with our neighbors.  It’s a lot of fun, and every year I vow that I will do little bits at a time, but so far it hasn’t happened.  Usually a few days before Christmas I’m up until 2:00 in the morning baking lots of cakes, and then we have a carload of cakes to deliver the next day.  I keep telling myself that this year I will do better.  We’ll see.  The past few weeks have felt like an endless session of running around trying to catch everything up and still falling further behind with everything.  Any suggestions about how to organize your holiday baking?

So how about all of you?  How was your Thanksgiving?  And how are your Christmas, or other holiday, plans coming along?  Feel free to share any organization tips you have with the rest of us!  

Unusual Gifts

My Mother-In-Law gave me a brick for my birthday this year.   I was also given quite a bit of dog and cat food for my birthday. 

Now let me explain why these very unusual gifts were a good thing and made me happy.  I asked for donations to the local no-kill shelter for my birthday instead of gifts for me.   This was the first year, ever, that we’ve done any kind of event for my birthday, but thirty seemed to merit doing something.  I wanted something low-key, and I wanted to do something “grown-up”, so we went with a small cookout and asked for donations in lieu of gifts. 

I wasn’t sure how friends and family would respond to this.  Would they think I was serious?  Would they participate?  I was overwhelmed by their generosity in giving to a cause that means so much to me.  They donated over 40 pounds of pet food/treats, a food dish, and nearly $200.00.  The brick was part of a donation made in my honor to the building fund; it included choosing something to engrave on the brick, which will be incorporated into the building.

So my birthday gifts this year were very unusual, but they meant so much to me.  And how many people can start off with “my Mother-In-Law gave me a brick for my birthday this year”?    

Of course in writing this I started thinking about some of the other unusual (but great) gifts I have received and here are some that came to mind:

Squeaky dog toys – these were from a co-worker for last year’s Secret Santa.  My dog LOVES squeaky toys, and I LOVE my dog, so they were great.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking and a Dutch Oven – these may not seem that unusual, but they were from my husband on our first anniversary.   This usually leads to gasps of horror, but I really wanted them, and now whenever I use them I think of our first anniversary.

A self defense key chain spiky thing – How’s that for a technical name?  My dad gave me this (with orders to carry it around) just before I started driving, along with lessons in how to use it.  Unusual, yes, but it was just my dad’s way of trying to keep me safe.  That’s a pretty amazing gift if you think about it.

I’d love to hear about your unusual gifts in the comments.