Shannon's cute baby (and shower)

My sweet friend Shannon and her Husband just added this handsome bundle of radness to their family and now they are Three.

They are just the cutest and this shower was lots of fun! I was originally going to go alone and when HeaBug saw me dressed up to go, she asks if it's a grown up party. I told her there would be mostly ladies but it was for Baby Mason and his mom. She says, "I LOVE lady parties! Wait for me! I'll put on a dress!" 

She is just too fun! 

All of the LoVELy and DEElicious desserts (including white cake with lemon filling, frosted Texas sheet cake, chocolate covered pretzels and adorable elephant sugar cookies that said "thanks a ton") were done by my amazingly talented friend and cake ninja, Cakestina.

Happy Birthday Cakestina

My gal Cakestina is having a birthday. Our school is having a fundraiser. We celebrated Cakestina at our school’s dinner night at STACKED. STACKED is so much fun. We love eating there (and it’s super close to our work so being the big fans that we are, we go often). 

You order your completely customizable food from an ipad. It’s good fun and they have an awesome menu of burgers, salads, pizzas, mac and cheese, sausages, shakes, and cookie ice cream sandwiches. YUM! The concierges that take care of your table all work together. At the end of you visit, you can easily split a check, chose if your method of payment and even chose if you want to tip (if you do, and you should people, just saying… you can chose a percentage, flat dollar amount or other). The menu has so many options, gluten free, curry ketchup, pretzel bun, siracha mayo… oh man I could go on for days. Love that place and LOVE my girl Cakestina… if you’d like to know how much, I wrote about that here. We made a reservation for 25, fancied things up with some balloons and all got together to celebrate. It really was a fun night. And of course we had to sing… LOUD. Considering that STACKED has not interior walls separating diners, our lovely voices really carried through the restaurant. Lucky folks.
Happy Birthday Cakestina. Hope you feel loved beyond measure.

Happy Birthday to ME!

I celebrated my birthday. Felt loved. Ate cake.

Mom delivered Guava caked to my office at work

Mr B took me to Tokyo Hibachi for lunch. Spicy Tuna Salad and Mussels with Ponzu. Yum.
I had a birthday dinner at Aura Thai, my favorite modern Thai restaurant. My hubs, kids, sisters, my brother in law and two of my nephews. We were out late for a school night and everything was so yum.

I opened birthday gifts from my kiddos. A Runners High gift card from HeaBug and a new glove from JT. Dad helped them out a little. JT even "wrapped" my gift.

Friday at the shop we celebrated Mr. Ray-Wray, Buster and me with birthday lunch and treats. Burritos, chips and salsa then pies, cream puffs and cupcakes (by Cakestina). Tasty birthday indeed.

I'm thankful every day for the rad-tastic people that are in my life. I had a ton of sweet messages from friends old and new. It was a lovely day.

Friends 4EVR

You know when you're young and you're worried about being able to make friends?

You know when you're an adult and the idea of making new and lasting friendships seems like something you should've taken care of when you were younger?

I didn't get to meet Cakestina when we were younger. I'm glad I met her as an adult. I'm glad that she is  my friend... that I made... as a grown up.

I have a lot of acquaintances and pals. I'm a friendly gal. I have a handful of close FRIENDS. People that I could call in a bind, be it needing a sitter, a tampon or bail.

 Cakestina is my friend. My forever friend. Love her to bits and pieces and crumbs and more. 

 We snag chick dates, lunches, goodie exchanges, school drop off chats, the occasional (ok just once so far) matinee, the "we have to see this since we loved the book" late night showing, family dates, book clubs, dressing room advice sessions, dance parties, zumba classes, and all around radness.

Pumpkin Patch 2012

Birthday Frosting.

The night Laser Tag was a fail but
Lucille's dessert menu was a win.

The Cake thing is a reoccurring theme in our relationship.

Once upon a time, a few years back... I came home to an empty house (besides Tutu who was watching J.A.G. or Walker). There on the counter was a ziploc bag of chocolate cake pieces. Cake scraps. Without even thinking I opened the bag and started sampling the treasure I'd stumbled on. I thought to myself, "I didn't make cake today. Neither did Maga, who was at work, or Breeze, who was at school, or Tutu, who was watching J.A.G. or Walker"

Crap. I don't even know where this came from!

It could be from a cake assassin.

I do not lie when I recall these thoughts. Cake assassin. I worried. For a second.

Then I remembered my pal Christina was making a wedding cake. After calling and confirming that she was indeed the Cake Ninja, I felt better. And enjoyed the rest of the cake pieces.

I would totally die by cake assassin. 

Thus: CAKEstina

First Fridays Art Show Spring 2012

 I sure do love this crazy gal. She is funny and kind and opinionated and not afraid to say what she thinks. She's a good mom friend, for those ranting about your kids moments and a good girlfriend for all the other moments! She took me to lunch for my birthday today. We went to Preveza, a Greek and Italian spot in Los Alamitos. It was yummy and we inadvertently matched. It's hilarious. And awesome. I was simply going to recap another rad birthday week experience and instead decided to recognize a rad life experience. Yay for friendship!

Trick or Treat, Halloween for the B's

Our first Halloween activity was the Trunk or Treat at the school. Last year we did this cramazing maze. ( BTW, Cramazing is my word mash of Crazy+Amazing. ) We did not have the man power to pull it off this year though. Bummer but for once it was nice to show up to an event that I did not assist in planning, help set up, organize, volunteer for or run. We just went, had a nice time and went to sushi after.

Costumes... HeaBug is Merida from Brave.










 JT is Westley from the Princess Bride.

 

Mr and Mrs B as Mary Poppins and Bert. We got a lot of wonderful comments on our costumes. A quick shout out to Breezer who sculpted Westley's fencing foil handle and created the awesome burn wound on his shoulder from liquid latex. She also customized Mary's hat, tie and Bert's chimney sweep broom!

It would not have bee successful without her!

 Trunk or Treat Fun!

The kids loved getting to see their pals and going round and round and round stockpiling the candy.

The lovely and talented CAKESTINA had a Creepy Cakery set up. It was fabulous. Lots of ghoulicious treats! It looked so awesome and professional that people kept getting in line to purchase items! Even though they were just for decoration. Unless you happen to be tight pals with Cakestina herself. Wink Wink.

The next night, we went to a Trunk or Treat at our church. It was awesome and we had a great time. The same night, Breezer and Joanna went to the Long Beach Zombie walk. That's her, with the liquid latex.

We got to carving our pumpkin while sipping sparkling pumpkin/apple cider and eating oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!

 HeaBug's preschool had a trunk or treat the morning of Halloween. It was so cute to see the little ones in their costumes.

We went trick or treating that night. Breezer and Joanna stayed at the house to pass out candy to the mountains of trick or treaters that we were expecting. They didn't come. We hardly got any. I guess there are fall backs to living on a nice, quiet and out of the way street. Not many passers by. She looked awesome with her Dia De Los Muertos makeup though!

(We donned moustaches for trick or treat and by the end of the night, Merida needed Daddy to hold her and wear her wig... because her feet hurt and she was sweaty)

 Kids had a blast trick or treating, we have more candy than we know what to do with....

If you find yourself in the same predicament, consider shipping some candy to our troops. 

Here's the address:

Operation Shoebox

8360 E Highway 25

Belleview, FL 34420