Tag Archives: birthday

Happy birthday, gem!

Happy birthday, gem! We celebrated by painting at Color Me Mine! The woman who worked there even recognized gem because we spent her last birthday there. How cool is that? She even made something based on gem’s design because she liked it so much.

Woo, painting party!

I painted this mug. I hope it looks good when it’s fired. It’s Jake. You knew that, right? I hope so.

Wait, look at the other side! It’s Jake! Woo!

Full disclosure time! I stole this idea from /u/Corrupt_Core on Reddit.

We went to the Anaheim Packing District dinner, and this tip jar at the Kroft made me laugh.

I had a sandwich and the pot pie poutine. So good!

For dessert, I got a PopBar.

Eating made me happy and sad at the same time.

In the end, I was quite sad.

Anyways, happy birthday, gem! Yay!

Niki’s birthday

Yesterday was Niki’s birthday! At first she didn’t want to drink, but we convinced her. Chocolate syrup and peppermint schnapps tastes a lot like Thin Mints, you know.

Niki performed the traditional birthday rites of her people by anointing her feet.

No, she was actually just washing her feet in the sink.

Oh, that’s not any less weird? No, no it is not.

But she made a delicious pound cake…

…and a carrot cake! This is just the trimmings; I didn’t photograph the actual cake.

Highlights of the night include all of us playing board games, me kissing Collin’s head, Angel biting (or at least pressing her teeth against) Niki’s face, me biting Angel’s ear in retaliation, and Collin trying to bite Angel’s face in retaliation before Angel did it right back to him.

Not a bad night.

Henley’s first birthday party

Henley’s first birthday party was a couple weeks ago! I’m sorry I didn’t post this earlier.

He was looking quite handsome in his tie with his dad.

Here he happily mangled his birthday cake with his family.

gem gave him a stuffed dog named Mr. Chibs.

Henley took to him immediately. He was so cute!

It almost hurts to see because he’s just too cute.

What’s the goal of life? It must be to make a child smile like this.

gem also gave Henley two hats. First there’s this suave hat.

And then there was this cute red one that even had ears!

I gave him a winter time Winnie the Pooh. Henley loved him so much he tried to eat him.

Chomp!

Here are just some of his gifts.

Henley wasn’t the only cute one there. Tegan got quite messy.

The adults had fun too. gem played with some decorations.

gem and I also rode the seesaw together. Some other kids came and joined us too.

The park is the perfect place in which to climb a tree and play ukulele.

Henley went right to sleep in Dev’s arms.

Here’s Henley and gem hanging out together.

High five? Dance time? I don’t remember for sure. I know I danced with him for a while!

I thought it was cute when he put his hand on gem’s uke.

Just hanging out.

He’s just too adorable.

There are more pictures in this album too.

Birthdays, plays, farmers markets, yoga, and more: a very full weekend

What a super full weekend. Friday was Halloween, also known as Jonathan’s birthday! After work, I rushed through some last minute Hallow’s End activities in World of Warcraft and Mad King Thorn in Guild Wars leaving for the long journey to Jonathan’s party. It was downstairs. I might have had about 3900 calories worth chips, wings, pizza, alcohol, and other food that day. Maybe. And that might have been way too many carbs yet still under my protein goal. Whoops. Anyways, it was fun hanging out and watching Jonathan play scary games. I got to give some candy to trick-or-treaters too!

On Saturday morning I headed to the farmer’s market and picked up some usual treats – hummus, feta, and dolmas. When I was about to leave, I saw this donut and had to get it too. I can happily report that it was tasty.

Saturday was also my mom’s birthday, and my brother had the idea that we could take her to a show. The Man from Earth was playing at Stages, so I picked up some flowers and met them at their house before we went to the play. It was really good! It’s basically the story of a man at his going-away party who explains to his friends that he’s a caveman who has survived for more than 14,000 years. It was very interesting even if the quick summary there sounded kind of dumb. After the show, we ate at Angelo’s & Vinci’s Ristorante, where I had eaten once previously. The service was kind of iffy, but I liked our waitress anyways, and the food was delicious.

gem found out about a free yoga class on Sunday at the Anaheim Packing District. I went with her and definitely enjoyed it. The instructor owns a nearby studio, and a woman in the class just got back from China because she works for Disney and was there for the new park. After the class, we went to that farmer’s market, because you can never go to enough farmer’s markets in a weekend. Oh man. So many good foods. I bought spicy feta, olives, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, pluots, persimmons, strawberry Greek yogurt, and cheese crisps.

Next we went in the Anaheim Packing House for lunch. I had an amazing grilled cheese with salami from the Black Sheep Grilled Cheese Bar. The salty flavor of the meat went so well with the grilled cheese. I’d definitely eat there again.

I keep hearing so much about Popbar’s gelato, sorbet, and yogurt bars, so I had to stop there. Somehow I thought gem was raving about, but she’d never been there. I think all the great things I’ve heard have actually just been from Anela. But she was right, because it was pretty fantastic. I had a pumpkin gelato bar dipped in white chocolate, drizzled in dark chocolate, and covered in waffle cone crumbles. Man. I want another one right now.

Sunday was later filled with chores around the house, video games, Netflix, and of course, more eating. This time it was just eating a bunch of the foods I purchased at the farmer’s markets. And then I needed to sleep it off!

Beach party and a surprise birthday party

This weekend I got together with some friends in Balboa to celebrate my friend Lorena returning home. I was late, but I managed to get there in time and have a lot of fun.

I got to hang out with Henley, who’s a great little guy. He was all smiles most of the day.

He even tried to help me take his photo! I wanted to photograph the single tear that seemed to be falling.

Andy also planned a surprise birthday party for Kaylin! It was a lot of fun. I’ve been to their place once before but only for a few minutes. It was nice to spend some time there. Kaylin’s blowing out the candles on her cake in this photo (obviously). Hopefully her wish comes true.

She also took this photo, which I stole from her Facebook. Thanks!

Birthdays, Restaurant Week, and more

There were lots of things happening last week! Saturday the 22nd was gem’s birthday. I baked her a turtle cake, which I talked about previously. She and Edward came to my place for cake before we went out to celebrate. gem wasn’t sure what she wanted to do ahead of time, but she decided to go to Color Me Mine.

I painted a Horde (from World of Warcraft) plate to go with my Horde stein. I had actually painted the stein years ago, but it broke during the firing process and I never got around to fixing it. Luckily the people at Color Me Mine this time told me that if I brought it, they’d glue it together for me, which they did!

After painting, we wen to Gen Korean BBQ. We got there just before last call, so we were trying to order a bunch of food. The waiter was nice enough to just pick stuff for us, and he placed a big order. We were all stuffed, but we managed to get through it.

Sunday morning Collin and I went to Newport to eat at Zimzala. It was fairly empty, but that just meant that we got to hear some rocking tunes from Danny Maika and make a lot of requests.

Later that night, I went to Zenko Sushi with Anela and gem for the weekend’s second all-you-can-eat meal. We had a nice time!

By Monday I had gained 4.70 lbs since Friday. That was expected. Unfortunately, I felt a little sick, but I didn’t think much of it. Monday night Duncan treated Collin and me to Chipotle. It was fun eating with them. We brought it back to the house and watched… uh… Twitch Plays Pokemon on the living room TV.

I guess Chipotle was the last straw for my stomach. Something made me pretty sick, and I was up most of the night. I ended up calling out sick Tuesday and Wednesday. On the plus side, I lost all that weight I gained and much more! Tuesday morning I still tried to eat normally, but my stomach rejected everything. Even my mouth rejected normal foods! I chipped a tooth eating a protein bar. I should note that the protein bar isn’t crunchy in any way.

gem recommended I make soup, so I did just that. My stomach didn’t seem to hate it, so I ate it Tuesday night, all day Wednesday, and early on Thursday.

I was still incredibly bummed about Harold Ramis dying as well, so I decided to spend some of my limited waking time watching Ghostbusters. Let’s not dwell on this, because I’ll get depressed.

I was feeling a lot better although not perfect by Thursday. I finished the soup for my lunch that day. Late that night, gem came over because it was my birthday and she had a gift for me. She bought a cast iron skillet! I had been wanting one for a while, so that was pretty cool. We also decided to order pizza. It was a terrible idea since I was getting over food poisoning, but it was also my birthday and I love pizza. Luckily my stomach accepted it without complaint.

Friday I celebrated OC Restaurant Week by going to Marrakesh for Moroccan food with Collin, Duncan, and Mimi. The food was delicious, just like I remembered it. I had a tasty salad, lamb, baklava, and tea. I also had a Lebanese beer and some mixed drink called a Belly Dancer. It was tasty, but I can’t remember what was in it.

After dinner, we all headed back to our place to hang out, watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and have some wine. There might have been an extraordinary amount of Snapchatting as well.

On Saturday I went to The Melting Pot with gem and Edward to celebrate my birthday. I’d been there a couple years earlier for my birthday and really liked it. It didn’t let me down! First there was a tasty salad. Next there was a Wisconsin cheese trio with bread, veggies, and apples. For the main course there was a nice broth with chicken, steak, mushroom ravioli, shrimp, and lobster tail. There might have been a glass of wine and dirty martini in there too!

For dessert we had dark chocolate fondue with marshmallow cream and crumbled Oreos. We dipped Rice Krispy treats, brownies, pound cake, bananas, strawberries, cherries, and cheesecake. The cheesecake dipped in the chocolate was so amazing! Because it was my birthday, they also brought me a chocolate covered strawberry with a candle. The waiter told Edward to sing for me because he wasn’t going to do it. He mentioned something about how it’s too bad nobody had a ukulele. Unfortunately, we didn’t have gem’s ukulele with us.

So that was my week! Being sick was pretty miserable, but I had a nice birthday and enjoyed celebrating gem’s as well.

Turtle cake for gem’s birthday

gem mentioned to me that she’d like me to bake a cake for her birthday a few weeks ago. I’m not sure if she was expecting me to really do it or not, but I’d been wanting to bake a cake so I went for it. She likes turtle cookies, so I decided to make her a turtle cake, which is chocolate with caramel and pecans. I based it off the recipe Turtle Cake II from AllRecipes.com. I took the recommendations from the comments and used 1/4 cup butter and 2/3 cup evaporated milk instead of 3/4 cup butter and 1/2 cup evaporated milk. I also used a German chocolate cake mix that included pudding rather than one without as specified for the recipe. I don’t really even know the difference, but I couldn’t find one without. However, I actually felt bad about using a mix anyways. It seems like cheating. Oh well.

Here’s a shot of the middle layer of caramel, toasted pecans, and caramel. It’s spread atop the first layer of cake. Thanks to my friend, Hal, for recommending I toast the pecans first! It smelled great as they toasted.

It looked pretty tasty to me before I even frosted it.

Nevertheless, I frosted it and added some caramel decoration to the top.

I wrote a birthday message on it, but in retrospect, I chose a bad color.

I should have chosen something with a higher contrast against the dark chocolate.

I also added a few pecans to the top to give a better indication of what’s in the cake.

Of course, it needed some star candles too!

It turned out delicious. More importantly, gem liked it too. Success!

A birthday celebration at the Dinner Detective

To celebrate gem’s birthday, I got us tickets to the Dinner Detective, a murder mystery dinner show. I’d been wanting to do this for her for some time now because I know she likes mysteries. This was the perfect time!

The show was fantastic. It was incredibly funny and more of a show than I expected. I thought there’d be more mingling (and I wasn’t sure how that was going to be), and there was a little, but there was only 10 minutes or so of it total besides talking to the people at our own table.

Having actors mixed into the crowd meant that you weren’t sure if someone was part of the show or not, which really added to the fun. Everyone wore name tags with aliases. gem chose Charlotte Charles (“Chuck”), so I chose Ned to match her. (It’s a reference to Pushing Daisies.) Roleplaying was encouraged, which was really exciting yet odd. It made the evening feel kind of surreal. Usually when you socialize, you’re getting to know people, and you might make new friends. At the show, I socialized with people without knowing if they were choosing to tell me about the real them or a make believe them. I think it’d be fascinating and fun to throw a party at which each person was supposed to roleplay as a made up person. In fact, it’d be fun to attend a normal party and just make up a personality.

Unfortunately, gem and I didn’t figure out who the killer was. Despite having figured out very few of the clues, Pete actually won!

We didn’t get a chance to take any pictures at the show, but we took one after the show with our name tags still on our shirts. gem is holding her birthday gift from my parents. You can tell that Labbit is smart and distinguished from his magnificent mustache.

My 27th birthday

Yesterday was my 27th birthday, and it was a fine one at that. It had been cold lately, but the 27th was nice and warm. It was nice to really feel the sun’s warmth sink into my skin when I went for a walk. It was the first time in a while that I didn’t need a jacket.

My birth-minute is 1:27 on 2/27, so I spoke to gem on the phone at that time. After work we went to Polly’s Pies. Because we’ve been watching Pushing Daisies, which often takes place at a pie restaurant called the Pie Hole, I had been craving pie. We split a slice of apple pie with ice cream and cherry pie. Both were delicious! We brought a slice of peach pie home too for another night.

At home I took a shower, and that’s when festivities took a slight detour. The shower was clogged. Once that was settled, it was time for part two of the amazing pie night – pizza pie! We headed to Gina’s Pizza, my favorite pizza joint, for a chicken, meatball, roasted pepper, jalepeño, and pineapple pizza! It was delicious.

gem got me a gift too. She bought me a box of peanut butter chocolate protein bars and a box of assorted protein bars! It’s kind of sad that this excited me, but it did. There are even a couple flavors in there that I haven’t tried yet, chocolate chip and peanut butter crunch.

It was a very nice birthday.