Birthday!

This past Monday was my birthday, but the celebrations started on Sunday when some of my LA friends came out to share the day with me. The morning began with a brunch hosted at D's house and cooked by me and K. We made crepes, toast, sausage, fancy bacon that is sweet and spicy, salad, and R brought a yummy egg and bread casserole. I don't even like eggs and I thought it was good. We fed about 14 of our friends before I scooted off to get my nails done for that evening.

Around 3, S and I hopped in the car and headed over to Beverly Hills to Color Me Mine to paint pottery. I love this activity. Whether it was painting my own work after my handbuilding pottery class or painting pre-made pieces, it's so much fun. But getting seven adults together to paint is altogether different than getting kids together to do it. After selecting our pieces, we all got super focused on them and spent three hours making sure they were absolutely perfect.


K and me


S and I chose to do a sake set together. We painted each of the four cups a different season (I did fall and winter, he handled spring and summer), the tray a Japanese garden, and the bottle featured Mt. Fuji. We're picking them up tomorrow and I really just can't wait to see the final results!


(by the way, S claims he can't paint. I don't believe him anymore.)

After painting, we went to Remedy, a stellar Indonesian restaurant that S had discovered, and shared two yummy bottles of wine while we stuffed ourselves silly on course after course. The food was great, though I think we were all a little bit freaked out by the semi-gelatinous dessert drinks. Mung-bean shakes? Mmmm...



Here I am guarding three of them from S



The night ended with a nightcap at Saints and Sinners, a great rockabilly bar on the West side, where the bartender made us shots of a drink she was working on called a Tattoo something or another. In it was Malibu banana rum, Captain Morgan Tattoo, orange juice, pineapple juice and something else I'm forgetting. It was tasty, as was the El Diablo she poured me.

I opened my presents the next day and I won't go into details but they were all super thoughtful and it is great to have people around me who know me so well! Thank you very very much.

That night, I dressed up and S took me to dinner at Piccolo Restaurante, a cozy, romantic Italian joint right next to the beach. The serving assistant poured olive oil onto our plates for the bread and poured a cute little heart onto mine! Over the course of the night, S and I shared beef carpaccio that featured argula and parmesean shavings, roasted quail with porcini mushrooms and polenta, and a bottle of pinot noir from one of the wineries we visited during our trip to San Luis Obispo for S's birthday. The wine really brought back the fun memories of that trip. Each of us got our own pasta dish - he had a linguini like pasta (they're all homemade there) with beef tenderloin, and I enjoyed squid ink pasta with a variety of shellfish. Delicous.



After dinner, we returned to the apartment and S presented me with two cupcakes as he sang me happy birthday. It was such a great birthday and S has assured me it continues from where we left off tomorrow, so I'm excited to find out what is to come!