26/26: A Golden Birthday!

A little while ago, I celebrated my 26th birthday. Yay, me! I don't post too much about personal stuff on this blog though, so you may be wondering, why is she telling me that she had a birthday recently? Because, it was my Golden Birthday. The birthday I have been waiting for my whole life, the day I turned 26 on the 26th. Um, awesomeness! I have been excited about this birthday from the moment I realized that someday my age and my birth date would match!

Because I have the blessing of being born later in the month, I got to be old enough to celebrate in style. Unlike Lover, who a) does not care at all about birthdays, and b) had his Golden Birthday at the tender age of 10.

As you can imagine, especially because I am posting about this, I decided to celebrate this once in a lifetime event in style. I pestered Lover for months for ideas about what I should do for my birthday bash. He indulged me with his typical patience, all the while hiding a smile at the fact that his wife was acting more like an excited 6 yr old than an almost 26 yr old. After tossing around a bunch of ideas, like taking a trip together, riding in a hot air balloon and a shopping spree, I decided on something relatively simple, a fun evening with a bunch of my girlfriends. I wanted to all go out to dinner, then come back to my house for an enjoyable evening and dessert. Lover's idea, which totally made this party ROCK, was to have 26 desserts. It was amazing. :-)

So, I wrote out a list of the girls I wanted to be there, and whipped up some invites. I have been having a lot of fun this year with little graphic design projects,  so I gave myself the challenge of designing my invites. I browsed for inspiration on the WWW, and came up with these.



They're just a simple design on kraft paper cardstock. I wanted the invites to set the tone for the evening - casual, but fun and girly. And I loved the texture of the cardstock. I lined the envelopes with some flowery wrapping paper, and embossed a flower stamp on the front of the envelopes. They looked great and I loved them. The RSVP's came rolling in, and before I knew it, it was time to partay!



We all met at the Castle, then went out to hibachi, which was so much fun. In hindsight, I should have chosen a restaurant that doesn't stuff you to the rafters with food, right before we went home to a literal table full of desserts. It was worth it though. :-)





I wanted to keep the decorations simple, so I made the infamous tissue paper puffs out of a varied pack of paper, and hit up the dollar store for party decorations. Sticking with my kraft paper theme, I taped kraft paper wrapping paper directly onto the dining room table as a table runner, and then brightened it up with flamingo plates and hot pink decorations. I have never, ever liked pink in my whole life, but apparently I am turning over a new leaf because I LOVED these! And, I can keep them for the year we do pink for our color party. :-)



Each dessert had a number marker. We tried a version of musical chairs where we switched chairs every five minutes in order to be closer to a new set of desserts. That was a lot of fun. I also tried to eat one of every dessert, from 1-26. I made it to 12. :-)  In case you are curious, here are the desserts I came up with:

1. Gummies; peach rings, gummy worms, gummy letters, etc.


2. Cupcakes; chocolate with chocolate frosting. Delicious!


3. E.L Fudge Cookies


4. Banana Pudding Cups


5. Watermelon


6. Peanut Butter M & M's


7. Grapes


8. Mango


9. Layered Jell-o in shot glasses


10. Oreo Truffles


11. Andies Candies


12. Three Musketeer Bars


13. Runts


14. Cookies and Cream Ice Cream


15. Peanut Butter Cups


16. Yogurt Rasisins


17. Ultimate Chocolate Cake


18. Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies


19. Sixlets!


20. Chocolate Covered Strawberries


21. Junior Mints


22. Cream Puffs


23. Cookie Dough Ice Cream


24. Razberry Dip with Pretzels


25. Lindt Truffle Balls


26. York Peppermint Patties

Amazing, right? Everything was my favorite. :-) We had a wonderful time gorging ourselves on the treats and I even made little Thank You boxes for the girls to take a bunch of the treats home. They were generously sized so that I was left with as little leftovers as possible. I am well aware of my lack of willpower. :)





Of course the girls were super generous with gifts, but my favorite gift was actually a tradition that my friend Andrea lent me. The girls all went around the table and shared their favorite thing about being my friend. It was so sweet and heartfelt, and really made my evening even better than it already was.



I had found these little thank you notes just a few weeks before my party, and they ended up going perfectly with the theme. And we all know how much I like thank you notes. Aren't they adorable?



So all in all, it was a wonderful night, shared with some of the most important girls in my life. Even Jen was able to make it, which made the night super special. :-)