Saucy!

My mother always made a really big deal out of our birthdays. We always celebrated big. Gifts, games, guests and of course.... cake! After my father passed and we were cleaning out her basement we came across the special birthday cake holder from my childhood. It was a little painted metal pedestal with clowns on it. You wound it up, and it would spin around, playing a tinny version of the happy birthday song. We played it in the basement that day and wept. And laughed.

So you see - she created a monster. A birthday party, cake-craving monster.

Last year my Gemini friend and I celebrated our birthdays together with girlfriends and cupcakes. LOTS of cupcakes. We made an elegant blueberry version that the recipe described as "The Grace Kelly" of cupcakes. If that was Grace Kelly, my friend pronounced the wicked dark chocolate alternative from this recipe, as "The George Clooney" of cupcakes. I think it's been decided - we're going to celebrate every birthday with George Clooney - we just can't get enough of George Clooney!

This year, at my friend's suggestion, we gave the George Clooney cupcake a Black Forest upgrade. Pretty cute, if I say so myself. I don't know how we can possibly improve these next year. Maybe add alcohol? We have 12 months to figure it out.

We started off with a special lady salad, (a fancy one, with fruit, no bacon) segued to the infamous cupcakes and then margaritas... because those are our favorite things.

We also had party favors, party hats, and a door prize!  A verrrry fancy decorated fly swatter - this is NC - I give us points for being pretty and practical. 

We awarded the door prize to the winner of the most outrageous story contest. The most unlikely guest at the party won the door prize with her account of putting on a trench coat, ONLY a trench coat, slipping out the back door, running around to the front door, ringing the doorbell and flashing her husband when he answered the door. 

Margaritas were a factor of course, but we about fell off our chairs laughing. It seemed so out of character for our (usually) proper friend. Poor thing is probably going to think twice before she gets that competitive in a story telling contest again. I don't think the fly swatter was a sufficient reward for baring her ... (ha ha!) soul. We were going to pull numbers out of a hat for the doorprize. I'm glad we did outrageous stories instead - much more fun.

Hilarity, irreverence and chocolate – the perfect weapons against aging.