#30 - Turning 30!

A note on pastries: I felt SO loved over my birthday in many ways, but most notably through the medium of pastries.  If pastries seem like an odd way to show love, we have clearly never met.  I love sugar and all things pastry/dessert/confection like.  Over the course of my birthday I received:
- Four giant boxes of gorgeous pastel petit fours (lovingly made from scratch and individually frosted at great pain) from my dear friend Mallory
- A three layer red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, also made from scratch (and all the more notable because the poor chef was allergic to cocoa and couldn't even TASTE her amazing confection) from my wonderful friend Becca
- A pear galette in the French style, also made from scratch by my delightful friend Giancarlo who somehow remembered that pears and tarts and butter are my favorite.  (Yes, he owns a fluted tarte pan and yes, he's single.)
- Two chocolate caramel cakes from the bakery in my hometown, the dessert of my childhood birthdays, from my hilarious friend Jonathan (who managed to drive 250 miles to surprise me, while managing to smell the cakes and not eat them!)  
If that isn't love, I don't know what is.  So to all of you, and to the many people who worked hard to make my birthday a success, thank you all SO much.


Without further ado, the final installation in the birthday story.  So, shortly after the tea party, the husband had scheduled a surprise activity.  I'm not a huge fan of surprises, so I was a little nervous.  The surprise?

Bunnies!  Fred (with the help of my friend Paula) had hired a service called "Bunnies for Birthdays".  It's quite simple, a lady arrives at your house with a quilt, a basket of greens, and a dozen baby bunnies in a box.  And then you frolic on your lawn with baby bunnies until you are so happy you can't see straight.  The bunnies are each only a couple weeks old and are totally tiny and adorable.  Let's do a runthrough of my guests with their favorite bunnies.  Now that I'm re-reviewing the photos, it's like a bunny fashion show!

Mallory is looking lovely in the afternoon sun and don't you love the way she coordinated her dress to match the bunnies?  Perfect!

Paula snuggled with the crazy one.  They are both bringing the fun to this party!

 

Pam was already looking lovely in blue.  However, adding a tiny tan bunny to this outfit really takes it up a notch, don't you think?

 

Becca always looks adorable and pixie-like, and her vintage dress for tea was quite charming, but I think it's hard to see it for the adorableness she's got in her hands!  (She also appears to be accessorizing with lettuce, which is a good choice in this company.)

 Sheila is communing with her bunny of choice.  How sweet are they?  Sheila has the most lovely tiny hands I've ever seen, so that gives you a feeling for how little the bunny is!

 

Miss Anna is cooing to her tan bunny.  Her vintage Pucci dress can be better seen in the next photo of utter adorableness:

 

And as for me:

 

Pure delight. My husband says I'm 30 going on 7 and he might be right.  Speaking of my husband:

He favored the sleeping bunnies.

 

Careful baby, don't squash it!  Big men and tiny bunnies make me happy.

 

Bunny in a pocket!  The adorable-ometer is pegged out right now. Fred was so cute with the bunnies, we eventually heaped all the bunnies on top of him for maximum adorableness.

Look at the tiny tails!  Sooo cute.  Turns out bunnies in a pile tend to go to sleep when their brothers sit on top of them.  This was so cute it had to be repeated again:

A lap full of sleeping bunnies is as close as one can get to utter bliss.  OK, I might just really love bunnies, but I think you should try it if you ever get the chance. 

After this I really did have an adult birthday, I swear.  The bunnies went home to their mamas, and we set up for a picnic party in the yard.  It was awesome.  Friends brought so many bottles of rose that we ran out of space in the ice tub.  The table overflowed with cherries, cheeses, crudites, and as I mentioned earlier, the world's most gorgeous Tarte Tatin:

Dude, from scratch.  Someone I know actually made that from scratch.  I continue to be impressed by my friends. 

OK, not those reprobates.  :)  The rest of the party was pure delightfulness, picnic-style.

The whole thing was capped off by the immense and amazing red velvet cake made by Becca:

 Pure fantasticness.  I really can't thank enough all my helpers.  Especially Becca, who worked like a slave, Miss Anna, who decorated and loaned stuff until the party looked exactly like I was hoping, and Mallory, who spent hours of her life on petit fours, you guys are amazing, thank you so much.  And to my husband and Paula who came up with the bunnies, and to Jon and Giancarlo, for the pastries, really, the thanks should go on and on.

So, with this, fair readers, I cross #30 off the list.  If a tea party, a trip to the Space Needle, a dozen baby bunnies, a picnic party and four kinds of pastry love doesn't qualify as the awesomest birthday ever, I don't know what is!  Yaaaaaaaaaay birthdays!