My 30th Birthday – Part 5 (The People)

All right folks, this is the last post in this series on my 30th Birthday.

So, obviously any birthday party wouldn’t be fun without all the people that make it special. You saw some of them already in the photo booth pictures in my previous post, but here are some candids of the friends and family who came to celebrate with me. Thank you to everyone who came and contributed and made me feel loved – I am blessed to have so many great friends and family!! (Most pictures below were taken by my friend Byanka Holder – thanks again!)

My 30th Birthday – Part 4 (The Fun)

If you missed them, you can catch up with Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

For me, most of the fun of my party was just having so many friends and family show up and getting to mingle with them all. But I did plan one activity that I wanted, which was a car rally/scavenger hunt which I got my brother Derek to create for me! Whoever wanted to participate showed up earlier and I think there were about 6 teams who joined in. We were all given a set of directions that would lead us on a designated route. Sometimes these directions were something like “turn right at this sign” or “drive until you have to turn left”, etc. Along the way, there were blanks to fill in of street names or other pieces of information that we had to look for on signs. There were also bonus items for certain things to look for that we had to take pictures of or questions to answer like, “how many garage doors on the house at the second driveway on the left after you make this turn”. Also, a couple times during the rally we had to record our time and our mileage so that my brother could make sure we hadn’t taken a detour or that we weren’t speeding! It wasn’t a race, but it was more about being the most accurate and getting the most points. Joe and I went with our kids, with Joe driving and me navigating and calling out the bonus items we needed to be on the lookout for. Having my iPhone was definitely helpful, but I think we had an advantage since it was our home turf and we were very familiar with the area. In the end, we did win first place and my son Justice was pumped that we were the winners! Here is my brother announcing the placings – I was really proud that he did such a great job at creating the game!

Later in the evening, my husband surprised me with a fun poem that he wrote in my honor. He got some good laughs and I felt really loved and special!

The only other “activity” that I planned was having a photobooth set up outside where I demanded that everyone go get their picture taken, using the bin of silly props that I provided. This was a great thing for people to be creative and have fun with and the kids especially enjoyed it! Here are just a few of my favorites…

Daughter and Father enact a miraculous healing!

Hubby with the kids & me with my little girl

My parents smooching & my brother & sister-in-law

Crazy kids & my silly son

My goofy friends

Me & my friend, Me with my sister & the little guy

More silliness

A friend’s family & me and my hubby

All right folks, we’re almost to the end of this marathon. I think one more post and we’ll be done documenting this milestone in my life. Thanks for hanging in there!

My 30th Birthday – Part 3 (The Decorations)

Read Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them!

I’m probably going to make all of you sick and tired of hearing about my 30th Birthday by the time I’m done blogging about it, so I will apologize in advance. This post is about one of the things that was really a lot of fun for me though – the decorations! While I definitely don’t do a lot of crafty things, I think it is something that is in my bones, because I had a blast doing them. I think one of the things that intimidates me the most is the pressure to “be creative”, but with Pinterest, I felt like everyone else did the creative thinking for me and all I had to do was copy them, which is totally fine with me! It was a little scary at times, tedious, messy, and required me to do some problem-solving and pull some strings to find crafty equipment (I don’t have much of any) – but in the end, it was all worth it! The decorations is also where I got to take my rainbow theme to the max.

Where to start? I think one of the definite favorites was the yarn balloons. After finding my initial inspiration, I went hunting on the Internet for tutorials and found that all of the instructions were slightly different & super vague on the ratio of glue to other stuff that you dip the yarn in, so this one was scary, because I wasn’t really sure it was going to actually turn out! My wonderful friend Lanney also came over to help out & in one of the tutorials I read, it told you to first wrap your balloon with the dry yarn to get an idea of how much you’d need – this was a BAD IDEA!!! After cutting our lengths of yarn, we spent HOURS trying to untangle it all – it would definitely be better to just wing it & pull the yarn directly from the ball. This was also the messiest craft I did, since I first covered my balloons with Vaseline before wrapping them in the wet & gluey yarn. But I LOVED the final product – they were so cute!

Combined with the yarn balloons was my circular paper garland. The tutorial mentioned that they used old second-hand books for some of their circles, so in addition to the solid colored rainbow circles I used, I cut up a colorfully illustrated kids book that my son had conveniently ripped to pieces – at least it wasn’t going completely to waste! I think I cut out around 300 circles – thanks to being able to borrow a special cutter from one of my mom’s friends & then using my mom’s sewing machine, sewed them all together to create the garland. I really liked how they turned out!

 

My next crafty decoration was some paper strip lanterns, which I sadly had to hang inside, because they didn’t like the wind so much. But they still looked cute hanging in our large front bay window and were quite easy to make.

Next, I made some paper strip mobiles, which were similar to the garland, just paper strips sewn together and hung up!

Lastly, I made some paper fan star/flower thingiesand these were probably the most tedious to make because of all the folding! I spent hours folding forty 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of paper and my pec and armpit muscles were sore the next day – lol. Also, I couldn’t actually find a tutorial anywhere on the Internet for how to make these, so I had to do some problem solving and figure it out on my own. I then had to finagle a heavy-duty stapler from my mom’s work place to put these things together, but the end result was quite fun and dramatic!

 

One more crafty item was a photo guest book which my mom and sister Nicole put together for me! There was about one photo for each of the 30 years of my life coupled with a pretty piece of scrap paper that guests could pull out and sign. It was fun for them to see old pictures of me and definitely a really fun keepsake for me to have afterwards!

 
 

All right – I think that about covers it! Stay tuned for Part 4…

My 30th Birthday – Part 2 (The Food)

I have never been a big party planner, as I have usually lacked the time, energy and creativity to do anything out of the ordinary. However, as fate would have it, I joined the site Pinterest a couple months before my birthday and it became almost entirely responsible for everything that I consequently planned to include in my birthday bash. It was wonderful, because I didn’t have to come up with any amazing ideas all on my own – Pinterest just fed them to me & made it so easy for me to put together the fun party I was dreaming of.

First of all, there was the food. Now – I’ll be the first to admit that I have no problem asking people to help out & since there ended up being around 60 people who attended my party, I had no shame in asking people to contribute a little something. So several people brought chips, pop, and other appetizers such as veggie & dip trays, bread & spinach dip, egg rolls, a meat & cheese & pickles tray, etc. etc. The spread was absolutely fabulous! And since I didn’t have plates for the appetizers, I bought a bag of small plastic bathroom cups that worked perfect for people to put their various dips in – I would definitely recommend this little tip, because I thought it worked out really well.

But there were a few specialty items that I wanted that I made special requests from my dear friends.

A big shout out to my friend Stephanie who took on the challenge of creating this adorable watermelon hedgehog that I found on Pinterest! I sent her the website with the tutorial on how to make it and she totally made it happen! He was so cute and everyone loved him! As you can see, he was half devoured before we could even get a picture of him. (Another special shout out to my friend Byanka who took most of the pictures at my party for me, so that I could focus on being the hostess and birthday girl)

Another item I found was rainbow fruit skewers, which my lovely friends Rebecca, Paige & Melinda created for me. They were another hit and disappeared so fast! I also made a quick and easy fruit dip out of whipped cream and yogurt – yum!

Another big hit was the rhubarb slushie punch that I made. This idea I actually did not get from Pinterest and I sadly don’t have a good picture of the finished product, but it is soooo good! Here’s the recipe:

8 cups sugar
4 cups water
32 cups (8 L. or quarts) rhubarb juice
3 cans frozen pink lemonade concentrate
4 cups pineapple juice

My mom gathered a butt load of rhubarb from both a friend’s garden and her own garden and then we cut it all up into 3-4 inch lengths and put it in her largest canning pot. I can’t remember now exactly how much rhubarb we used, but I think it may have been around 24 cups? We then covered it with water, which was probably around the same amount as the rhubarb and cooked it until the rhubarb was really mushy – about 30 minutes. It’s amazing what happens to that rhubarb! All the juice and color cooks out and all you’re left with is this gross green globby mush. So you strain out all that and we ended up with almost exactly the 32 cups of rhubarb juice that we needed!

You then combine your 4 cups water and 8 cups sugar and boil it hard for about 10 minutes or until the sugar is fully dissolved. Add this to your rhubarb juice, along with the pineapple juice and frozen pink lemonade. Then you freeze it all – I filled up one ice cream pail, a 4 L. milk jug, and probably half a dozen or more margarine containers (several of which are still in my freezer)! When you’re ready to serve it, thaw it partially and combine with your clear bubbly pop of choice (we used 7-UP) at about a 1:1 ratio, or more or less to your own taste. Yum, yum, yum!

For supper, I got the idea to do a taco bar, which I really loved! This was also an easy thing for people to contribute to, as I had several of my friends bring the various items – tortillas, cheese, lettuce, Spanish rice, sour cream, guacamole, etc. I supplied most of the meat (taco seasoned beef), refried beans and salsa. The meat, refried beans and Spanish rice we kept warm in several slow cookers and then had a buffet for people to help themselves and create their own tacos – so much fun!

Last, but certainly not least was the idea for a rainbow colored candy bar for dessert! This was another hit, especially with all the kids and with my dear fellow pregnant momma. I hit up the bulk store and blew most of my party budget on candy – lol. But it was worth it! I also used a template for some fun rainbow paper cones for people to dish their candy into, which worked out really well. And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I sort of had the rainbow theme going on throughout the whole party.

And we absolutely cannot forget to mention the Timbits from our beloved Canadian Tim Horton’s, especially since I just found out they cost my dear mommy a very pretty penny, as she got nailed by a speed trap on her way to get them. Thanks mom!!!

As I was planning all the food out, I did get a little stressed out about having enough, but everything turned out absolutely perfectly and we had such a great time filling our bellies with all the goodies! Thank you to everyone who came and contributed and helped make it such a success!!

More yet to come…

My 30th Birthday – Part 1

So, as my big 3-0 began to approach, I was determined not to be depressed or melancholy about it, but I was going to celebrate and make a big deal out of it and have lots of fun! As a result, it’s going to take several blog posts to tell you all about it. Several months before my 30th birthday, I told my husband that I wanted to feel special for my birthday – giving him lots of warning to think about exactly how he was going to accomplish that – lol.

So, my birthday celebration actually goes all the way back to the month of June when my husband surprised me with an early birthday present. Since it was a couple months before my actual birthday, he definitely caught me off guard when he showed up at my door with flowers in the mid-afternoon when I was totally not expecting it! I was completely flustered as he whisked me away for a weekend getaway to a romantic couples-only retreat centre out in the country, not too far from where we live. We had a wonderful time simply relaxing, eating yummy food, watching movies, paddle-boating, cycling, a little badminton and horse-shoe throwing (we were both pretty bad) and basically just enjoying each other’s company!

 

Then, on my actual birthday last week, August 26th, I took the day off and went with my kids to my parents’ house out in the country. The kids had some fun with Grandma and Grandpa and we also visited a good friend of mine and her kids for a playdate. I was treated royally with Kraft Dinner for my birthday lunch and a chocolate chip banana muffin with a candle for dessert – it was perfect!  

That night, Joe and I went out on a date and tried a new restaurant that I’d been wanting to check out after hearing rave reviews – Smoke’s Poutinerie - which totally lived up to my hopes and expectations! I love me some good Canadian poutine and it did not disappoint! But Smoke’s Poutinerie takes poutine up several notches from your average poutine with a wide array of toppings, from chipotle pulled pork (my choice), to spicy curry chicken, to Nacho Grande Supreme (Joe’s choice with chili, salsa, guacamole, sour cream & jalapeno peppers). Or you can go with the classic traditional poutine of hand-cut & seasoned fries topped with their signature rich gravy and Quebec cheese curds – soooo good!!! (Is this sounding like a promotional ad yet??)

 
 

After stuffing ourselves to the max (I saw someone else’s large order that looked like it had a whole pound of bacon on it & I can’t imagine how they managed to eat all that!), we proceeded to Starbucks for a lovely time of chatting over Joe’s coffee (I couldn’t manage to find any room left in my stomach for a drink). However, I had received a postcard in the mail for a free Starbucks drink for my birthday, so the next morning, after going grocery shopping with my son Justice, the two of us went for a mommy-date and we shared my free Starbucks.

We couldn’t savor it too long however, since that day was the day for my big 30th birthday party at our house and we had a lot of preparations to still get done!

To be continued…