Jenny's birthday festivities

Jenny's birthday was last weekend and I was happy to host a ladies-only dinner party in her honor saturday night.  The evening was high class from top to bottom.  We started off with baked brie and white wine, courtesy of Jenny's cousin Katie, and we sat out on my deck amongst the flowers before dinner.  The main course was a bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin with maple sauce, mashed potatoes, and an avocado and mandarin orange salad with homemade poppyseed dressing, supplied by Anna.  

Dessert was champagne and carrot cake, as Jenny requested.  I was happy to try out a new recipe I found in my Martha Stewart magazine - 3 layers!  I even made enough extra frosting to dye and decorate with.  I take great pride in assuming that this cake would not end up on my new favorite blog, cake wrecks.  Ruthie also brought a box of beautiful cupcakes from a bakery near her new apartment.  Unfortunately none of us had room for them at the time, but the next night I enjoyed eating the one I kept.  It's the one on top in the picture with pink and green swirls.  Someone suggested that I wanted it just because it was pink and green.  I cannot argue.  But it was also vanilla cake and very good frosting so who can blame me?   

Movie Minutes

My netflix queue has over 50 movies on it, most of which are old and I'm not interested in seeing.  This is what happens when you live with a boy whose main objective in life is to see every film in the American Film Institute's list of top 100 movies of all time.  That is an exaggeration, but not much of one.

             I try to always have one girly movie from netflix in the house.  Sometimes they're mindless goodness like 27 Dresses.  Lately I've been taking netflix's suggestions.  They say because I liked the original Parent Trap, that I would enjoy watching "The Courtship of Eddie's Father,"  a movie that made me realize that a very young Ronnie Howard was not such a great actor but still very cute.  The plot was also surprisingly complex - I always expect movies from that era to be pretty predictable.  This one was, but only after going through a few plot twists.   I have also been enjoying the "Anne of Green Gables" series thanks to Netflix.

             This past Thursday, Nate and I went to the Landmark Century theater, which shows mostly independent and foreign films.  We used to go all the time, when we lived a little closer to it.  We decided to go see "Man on Wire," a movie about the french tight-rope walker who walked between the tops of the 2 towers of the World Trade Center.  It was a good way to spend a rainy afternoon.  A lot of the movie was centered around the act of breaking in to the WTC in order to get to the roof and set up for the stunt, which is a very uncomfortable subject for all Americans at this point.  The guy was definitely a little crazy, but that is unfortunately the mark of most great artists.

Up next on the queue: Anne of Green Gables, the Continuing Story,

Coal Miner's Daughter

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, disc one.  

Camping and Crafting

OK so it wasn't actually "camping," but I did spend this Labor Day weekend at a log cabin in wisconsin without television or internet.  Our little group of 5 all piled into my station wagon and made the 3 hour trip up to Gilbert Lake, which I still haven't located on a map, to spend the weekend swimming, tubing, water skiing, tanning, reading, boating, cooking lots of good food, and playing my new favorite game, Apples to Apples.

And of course, Jenny and I found some time to do a little crafts project - 5 Frank Lloyd Wright inspired picture frames for each of our lady friends who went on a nice little trip up to Taliesin a few weeks ago to see the home that FLW built for him and his lady friend, Mameh.

Overall, it was one of the fun, most relaxing, and cheapest weekends I've spent in a long time - a welcome respite from city life!  Below is a pic from our sunset booze cruise Sunday night.