Forty is the “ruby” anniversary, so we decked out the venue (the Piedmont Community Center, chosen in no small part for the fact that my parents can walk there from their house) in red. My balloon guy brought it with tons of giant red balloons, and a close family friend way outdid herself on the flowers (she’s a corporate VP, but could totally have a second career as a florist, am I right?) But what really made the party were the many, many, many friends & family that came:

Carrot cake (my dad’s favorite) was in order, and inspiration hit me when telling the bakery what to write on it.

My parents were super young (18 & 20) when they got married, so hit their 40th at a place where they still love to go to a great party. As do their friends, as was evidenced by a fantastic dance party backed by two different live bands.

It was an amazing night – I’m so glad that we got to celebrate these two.

photos: the incredible Maddie Eisenhart of Hart & Sol West

I planned Alissa and Alex’s wedding last year, and I was so thrilled to find out this winter that she’s pregnant with their first baby, who’s due in mid-July.

I’ve known Alissa since I was seventeen (I dated a close childhood friend of hers, and she and I stayed friends after he and I broke up, although it’s worth noting that he and I are still friends as well) and it has been a total joy for me to have had her in my life for the last eleven years. I’m pretty sure I told her that I wanted to throw her a shower approximately 30 seconds after she told me she was pregnant – what can I say, I really love parties.

I’m not a big fan of booze at baby showers (it just seems… slightly mean to drink when the guest of honor can’t?) so we settled on afternoon tea. My parents have an amazing garden, and my fingers were crossed that the weather would be nice enough to hold the party there, and I totally lucked out. The day was unseasonably warm and gorgeous for April, and it ended up being more of an “iced tea” party than a traditional one.

We kept things relatively small (20 guests) and simple  – no games, just eating, socializing, and gift-opening. I didn’t want to go too traditional (aka cutesy) on the color scheme or decor, so ended up with grey, blue, and orange, with touches of gold. The dinosaurs were way too much fun to make, and were a big hit (many of them were gone by the end of the shower – they ended up acting as impromptu favors.)

It was really lovely to spend time with a group of women who were all invested Alissa & Alex’s lives. I cannot wait to hold their baby boy later this summer!

all photos: Emily Takes Photos. You can see more pictures from the shower, as well as some maternity shots of Alissa, on Emily’s blog.

just a little PSA to say that this is one of the the best prices I’ve seen for poured-in-glass candles around (poured-in is easier than separate candle & glass by nature of less moving parts. they also tend to burn longer. whoever is setting up and lighting your candles will thank you for using them.) You can get 96 candles for less than $0.70 each after shipping. So if you’re looking for bulk candles for your upcoming wedding/party, I’d suggest jumping on this one…

photos: save-on-crafts (thanks to Tracy for the site recommendation!)

a few things I really liked from the last week or so:

• these snakeskin print velvet flats from daniblack. which are as comfortable as they are rad.
• buying tickets for my next trip – Chicago in February! (because apparently I’m a masochist – it’s very possible that I hate cold weather more than anyone in the world.)
• the big 60th birthday party I planned for my dad the night before NYE, complete with made-to-order street tacos, gallons of sangria, and a plethora of papel picado (above.)
• spending New Year’s Eve with some close friends, risotto, & champagne.
• oh hey! I worked with the amazing APW ladies to make some downloadable wedding-related spreadsheets. They’re pretty awesome, if I do say so, and you should totally use them if you have a wedding coming up.
• this piece from the Times on “The Joy of Quiet.” yes.

I started with this recipe from Mark Bittman, and it’s pretty delicious as is, but the best part is that it is SO easy to modify. My favorite (and almost always the biggest hit) flavor of crackers to make is lemon-pepper – simply halve the amount of parmesan cheese, add lemon zest from either 2-3 large lemons or 4-5 small ones, and a really generous amount of rough ground black pepper. Other great additions: sage, rosemary (add the fresh herbs to the food processor before the liquid,) sesame and/or poppy seed (add a handful to the dough and then press more into the top before baking.) I’ve also replaced half the cheese with slivered almonds before, and while it doesn’t make much of a flavor different, it makes the texture a little more crumbly, which is actually somehow great.

*note: you need a food processor for these. also: food processors rock.

Two weeks ago I took a super quick trip to New York, in celebration of my birthday and for my first non-working-vacation in several years (I actually travel fairly frequently, I just always work at least part time while I’m doing it.)

This birthday was feeling kind of angsty* for me, so I decided to do the obvious thing and blow it up with bi-coastal parties. I always joke** that one of my ultimate goals is to live a bi-coastal life, and so what better way to start moving towards that goal? And then, because I am amazingly lucky, I got to celebrate it not only with my large group of New York based friends, but also with four different friends who decided to fly to New York for the occasion – from California, Chicago, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. My people, they are awesome.

Charlie, who has been one of my best friends since we were fourteen, despite the fact that we haven’t lived in the same city since we were eighteen, had never been to New York before***, and we got to spend three days walking around the city, talking, drinking coffee (pictured below,) and going to some of my favorite New York neighborhoods and places. Charlie had to go to the airport directly after the party Saturday night Sunday morning, because he had a shift to work in Chicago that afternoon. The boy is a trooper.

Charlie and I stayed at my sister’s place on the UWS for the first three nights I was in town, along with Kelly, who flew in from the Bay Area  for the trip. My last night in town I stayed with Tracy, who was my roommate at art school, along with our friend Laura (who came in from Cleveland) who I realized I hadn’t seen since our friend Lacey’s (who flew in from Pittsburgh) wedding two and half years ago. Best conversation of the weekend went like this:

me: I’m so happy we’re all still friends after all these years.

Tracy: I know. Thank God that no one went crazy.

Yes, Tracy, Thank God indeed. I talked so much throughout this trip that when I got home on Monday I had partially lost my voice. Which, sign of a good time, no?

And then, there was the birthday party, which was about as good as I could have hoped for. Balloons and pie and my favorite beer and temporary tattoos and many, many of my favorite people. (I still need to scan photos from it.)

Because I’m slightly crazy, I had decided to have a second birthday party in Oakland that started two hours after landing at SFO. Which meant that I was 30 minutes late to it (in my defense, I thought my flight got in an hour earlier than it actually did.) Going straight from breakfast in Brooklyn to a bar in Oakland was slightly discombobulating, although also really awesome. Regular jet setters – my hat is off to you.

photos: top to bottom, left to right – Charlie at the Highline and on the Brooklyn Bridge; me in Chelsea, birthday ballons from Amber, me at the MoMA; Charlie & Kelly at MoMA; coffee from eight different coffee shops; Kelly & my sister Alexandra on the subway, Tracy and Laura at James Fuentes, birthday breakfast at a diner in Brooklyn with Tracy and Laura, birthday dinner at a diner in Oakland with Meg, David, and Emily, on the same day. All via Instagram on my iPhone.

*Getting older is funny, and I’ve been having annual minor existential crises around my birthday for years – something to do with the fact that even though I strongly feel that every year of my life has been better than the one before, part of me mourns the fact that I’m not seventeen anymore. Is life better now than it was at seventeen? Undoubtedly. But it’s also much more complicated, and there’s inevitable baggage that’s been picked up in the eleven intervening years. In many ways, every year also comes with some loss of possibility, even though I strongly believe that it’s never too late to reinvent ourselves.

**it’s not really a joke.

***despite having lived in Boston for four years. Weirdo.

Alexandra is the lead actor, shares the story credit with the writer/director Joshua Moore, and performs several original songs that she wrote and recorded for the film (um, it’s not a musical, but there’s lots of music in it.)

I Think It’s Raining will be opening this year’s San Francisco Film Society’s Cinema By The Bay Festival on Thursday, November 3rd, and tickets just went on sale this morning! If you’re interested in checking it out you can buy tickets here (it’s actually pretty great, albeit very artsy & French New Wave-y – it premiered in Europe this summer at Karlovy Vary and you can read reviews here and here) – I’ll be attending the 7pm screening and the following opening night party, but there’s also a second screening at 9:30PM. Would love to see you there!

photo: from the film’s website

After catching up on sleep, getting trapped on the UWS by a non-event hurricane, and then running around town trying to see and do a long weekend’s worth of people and things in a single day, I finally woke up this morning, on my last day in Manhattan, feeling totally overwhelmed by it all. I’ve been carrying it around as a literal physical sensation all day. We were all a small part of something much bigger than ourselves.

I probably won’t share anything but photos about it on the internet after this. Because the truth is that I’m a kind of shockingly private person when it comes to my emotions (most people who know me don’t realize this because I’m someone who is unabashedly open about experiences, which is different than being open to how those experiences make one feel) but this morning I came across a passage in the book I’m reading right now that sums it up pretty well: “She wanted to cry but couldn’t. The feeling was too deep.”

So please go read the coverage over at A Practical Wedding, because Meg does an amazing job of capturing it – she’s already written about it here, here, here, and here – and has more coming later this week.

I do want to say thank you, SO MUCH, to everyone who came out, to everyone who bought tote bags, everyone who donated to our drive for Lambda, and especially to everyone who helped make it happen. The full sponsor list, with links, is over here. These are all great people. If only we were all lucky enough to work with a crew like that every day, the world would be a happier and more fun place. Please go out and hire them for your weddings.

But mainly, I want to say thank you to Meg. She took a little idea of mine and made (and made me make) it into something huge. And more importantly, she has built this amazing community that rose up and banded together around it, who not only said yes when we asked, but who said yes before we even had to ask, in many cases volunteering time & goods & services we didn’t even know we needed. It was beyond an honor to have my name at the top of the poster with hers.

Photo: the YNY! vendors toasting in between the wedding and the dance party, by Emily Takes Photos

See you on the flip side! And, if you haven’t already, buy your tickets to the party, and donate to Lambda through our donation page!