birthday party

So: this is mostly for my future reference. Or just to get this out of my head.

It’s ridiculous how many links I follow to find crazy things on the web… and I can never remember how I find things!

Like, I almost went through 16 pages of chocolate cake recipes on Bon Appetit because I thought that’s where I found the recipe for my chocolate birthday cake back in February…. and then I realized where the recipe actually was. On the recipe blog of this cool girl who lives in NYC and shoots all her food photos WITH FILM. So impressive. They’re beautiful photos. But, that’s where the chocolate cake recipe was from. The enormous, three layer, batter too big for the bowl cake. Right here. And the tinier vanilla three layer cake I made that for that party also was from that blog. My cake was small because I think I 2/3rds the recipe or something. (I am aware that the above sentence is not proper grammar.)

It was a great party, by the way. My 18th birthday, it had to be good. Go stalk my celebrations here.

And since I’m talking recipes: these are the best brownies ever, and this pie is amazing. And my Mom made a granola recipe from the Bon Appetit magazine today, and it made me so happy. Surfers Granola, accompanied by Surfin’ USA by the Beach Boys.

My goodness this post is quilted with links. Did you know that all of the fireworks in San Diego went off at once? HAH

Happy July, enjoy your summer, and don’t forget to wear your sunscreen! (Today was Safety Day at the pool… I’m a swim instructor. It’s great.)

my 18th birthday was on february 21st… and i had a very fun birthday party. some photos!

i had two cakes – a vanilla pound cake (3-layer, but small) with vanilla icing, and a chocolate cake with chocolate icing.

that one was big. so big, in fact, that the batter did not fit in the mixing bowl.

I made a fabric backdrop to hang on the bookshelf in our dining room. and amy gave me flowers!

I made a paper table runner (polka dots cut from the anthropologie catalog and various other places), and grouped some colorful stick candy in a mason jar.

food! (don’t you like the reoccurring circles of the items on the table?)

and more food.

we had homemade pizzas for dinner.

and a place where people could type up a message to the birthday girl

I made these paper stars (using a snowflake pattern) and hung them from the ceiling. (the paper for these was also from the anthropologie catalog)

see this record wall? well, it was the backdrop for the photobooth! a few weeks ago i ran across the idea of a DIY photobooth. the more i thought about it, the more i wanted to do it. and we made it work!

with a macbook, a borrowed photo printer, a homemade record wall, an old trunk to sit on, some garage lights… we made a photobooth! the brains behind it, however, was an automater workflow created by a genius. basically, all of the actions (taking photos, putting the images together, printing them, etc.) are batched together in one easy to use workflow.

it was immensely fun to use, and i’m so so glad it worked out. (we did go through some software wrestling – with another program that didn’t work.) and, it created a fun party favor for people to take home.