The big birthday celebration

Here we are at the end of the week, and I'm still in progress of returning to normal routines. Our big birthday celebration spanned a couple of days.

The first of the days was last Saturday, as I'd told you all before. My daughters really wanted a picnic in a local park. Leading up to Saturday, the weather was looking iffy at best. Saturday morning we actually had some sunshine. Then some rain returned. So we made a plan for all to meet at our family home and decide in the moment. As some good luck would have it, there was a break in the rain right around lunchtime. So we headed over to this local park. There are paved walking trails, some picnic tables (both under a cover and in the open), and a zip line. We had the park completely to ourselves. And there was just enough time for us to eat our lunch of BLTs, tangerines, potato chips, and apple wedges, followed by some walking and play on the zip line.  When the rain returned we headed home for cake and gifts. 

The cake

So I need to preface this with some info on my daughters and their cake-baking. They have a reputation (in our family and within in our church family) of baking some pretty outlandish cakes. One cake that has been an item of conversation is the yellow cake, frosted with cooked fudge icing, topped with homemade caramel sauce and some whipped cream.

The cake was my daughters plan. One daughter wanted chocolate chip brownies, the other want confetti cake. The compromise was a cake with a chocolate chip brownie base, topped by three layers of confetti cake, with chocolate ganache in between layers and chocolate frosting on the top and sides. The very top of the cake had a rainbow of sprinkles. And around the base of the cake, my daughters piled up some gold foil-wrapped chocolate coins. The idea was gold at the end of the rainbow. It was a very, very rich cake. Oh well, it was a celebration after all. 

After my daughters opened their gifts, we all sat around the table talking until very late. I think my days of staying up late and then getting up the next day like normal have about come to an end. On Sunday we dragged ourselves out of bed to get to church on time.

So that was the big (in group size) celebration. Monday was my daughters' actual birthday. For the last several years, when we've celebrated with the larger family and friend group on a weekend, we've also done something fun, but smaller, on the day of, if their birthday falls on a weekday.

We hadn't made any firm plans for Monday. One daughter doesn't work on Mondays, the other daughter took Monday off, as it was her birthday, and my husband took the day off to be with our daughters on "their" day. When we all got up, we just sort of impromptu decided to go to the vintage district for the afternoon. And my husband actually wanted to come along with us. (Maybe it was the promise of pie that convinced him.) So we very quickly made some peanut butter sandwiches, grabbed the last of the apple wedges and potato chips, filled our water bottles, and we were off for a rainy day adventure, complete with a car picnic as the rain was significant.

Many of the stores were decked out for Easter. Even the shops that are solely vintage items curated their displays with a focus on spring. The entire town seemed to be feeling the spring vibe, too. Pink flowered trees in bloom and large pots of primroses, tulips and daffodils dotted the sidewalks.

By mid-afternoon we were ready for a slice of pie. While I can make pie at home for substantially less than buying pie from a shop, the fun is really in choosing the type of pie we each would like. So I figured a piece of pie each was part of the fun of celebrating. And with pie in our tummies, it was time to get back on the road and head home.

This was a big birthday for my daughters, and both of them had expressed that they were not looking forward to it. By the end of Monday, they had both changed how they felt about this marker in their lives. Thank you for reading along as I recalled the highlights of their celebration.

By the way, happy spring, y'all!

Planning for my "new" spring tablecloth

Hi friends,

Our birthday celebration was wonderful, but tiring. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. But today, I want to share my latest project with you.

It looks here like I inherited the lion's share of table linens from my mother, grandmothers and great grandmothers. They've mostly been taking up room in a closet. I just don't use them, as they're either white or ecru. They'll show stains, and they're not very cheerful, IMO. 

I had wanted to use them in some way. Some of these are really lovely, about 100 years old, and even monogrammed. Others are vintage from the 1950s. Those are fun, too, especially the ones with a little embroidery on the corners. 

I was reluctant to change them in any way, like afraid that I'd spoil them if I altered them in size or color. Well, I had a conversation in my head and decided that my grand and great grandmothers would be more pleased if I did alter them in order to put them to use rather than allow them to continue aging, stacked in a closet.

Part of my daughters' birthday celebration included a day in vintage shops up north. One store in particular had tables set in pretty pastels for Easter. It got me to thinking that I could do something special for our own Easter table this year, and not spend very much money. I could dye one of the linen table cloths and a set of linen napkins from my grandmother a pale shade of pink. I think a pale pink tablecloth would be much cheerier for spring than off-white and would go well with our dishes.

I combed through all of the linens and found a pretty damask cloth. 

The napkins don't exactly match, but they do have a damask pattern woven in. They also have a nice hemstitch edge. And there are 12 of them!

Going online I was able to score a 30% off coupon for in-store pick-up at Michael's (craft store) to use on a bottle of fabric dye. My daughter swung by Michael's this afternoon and picked up my order on her way home. My pale pink dye had a total cost of $4.34, including tax and bag fee for the pick-up. I think that's a bargain price for "new" table linens.

I will dye the cloth and napkins later next week when the weather is slightly better, and I can hang them to dry.

One pretty pink tablecloth with matching napkins coming up!