Chris' 30th birthday

Let me tell you, I would have loved to have big plans for Chris' 30th birthday.  There would have been a beer donkey, Cirque du Soleil performers on the barbie, and a DIY cupcake bar.

But alas, the birthday boy is rending his clothes and gnashing his teeth over grad school, and the bride is all aglow (mostly with rage) over wedding plans.  So.  Instead, we had a quiet evening with a few of our friends and several cases of beer.  The highlight of the evening was the result of the only real planning I could do.  Several months ago, Chris was telling me (again) about one of his favorite childhood birthdays, which was Star Wars-themed and wherein the main memory was of Chris licking the frosting off of Han Solo's little plastic butt.  

I discovered on eBay that people were still circulating Star Wars cake pans that had been originally manufactured in 1980 -- R2-D2 and Darth Vader were the two biggies.  There might have been an X-Wing, but I may be dreaming.  I bought one of the R2-D2 pans and kept it in the closet (again, for months) waiting for Chris' birthday. The awesome part is that the original decorating instructions are still available on Wilton.com, so I was able to recreate R2-D2 in all of his retro glory.  I kept imagining myself as a befuddled mom in 1980, making this cake and going, "Well I don't know who this R2-D2 character is, but he's a real BITCH to get buttercream to stick to!"

Here are the results.  I could not be more pleased and proud, and I'm happy to say that Chris appreciated the 2 1/2 hours of work that went into this labor of love.  Happy birthday, dude.  Enjoy your wacky-ass robot cake.

Here's an in-progress picture.  I was so worried that it wasn't going to come out nice that I took pictures along the way so I could show Chris "what it looked like before the incident."  Also, here's a good idea of what R2-D2 would have looked like if he was Mexican.

He's done! I used maraschino cherries for his little lights.  Have I mentioned I'm so proud of this?

BOOP BEEP BEEP BOOOP!!! 

Meet Kristen.

 Kristen is special in many ways.  One of those ways is that she doesn't like slang words that are pronounced ending in "-a" when they are spelled ending in "-er."  For example, she won't say "holla," and certainly not "playa hata."  I mean, she won't even say them in jest, or to demonstrate her point. She doesn't even like saying "Splenda" (the sugar substitute that comes in a yellow package), even though that's its real, trademarked name.  She claims, rightfully so, that the word is a bastardized form of "splendor."  So are half the other brand names out there, but I digress.

This is the first time I went out drinking with Kristen.  Before the evening commenced, I learned that Kristen will, in fact, say "holla" when she's had enough to drink.  I had to capture video of this wondrous event.  Please ignore the drunk chick at the beginning.  She should have had her camera taken away.

Early St. Patrick's Day!

This year, St. Paddy's falls on a Monday, which is kind of lame. A friend of a friend came up with this excellent alternative, which is a paddy wagon pub crawl. They loaded us onto buses that took us around to four different pubs in town. Free t-shirt, free beer on the bus -- it was brilliant (the shirt was great, but the beer? warm Pabst.) Chris and I were joined by some of my friends from work, and a good time was had by all. I've been told I also enjoyed myself.



Not sure who this is.  But allow me to tell you how funny it was at the time.

Carly on the left there.  She was also sporting the PBR box at one point.  And no, we weren't talking to anybody.

Just past the crazed leprechaun on the left, you'll find Carly, me, and Kristen.

Ahem.