They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I refuse to believe that because I’m not a very good cook. Thankfully, I have learned to cheat by using butter, cheese and gravy.  I breaded and fried up some chicken, along with homemade cornbread, mashed potatoes and mac ‘n cheese for a birthday dinner fit for a southern king. The only non-scratchy on the list was the gravy, which was a powdery substance that came from some kind of envelope.

If only Jake was a sweets guy. I can bake much better than I can cook, and my specialty is Key Lime Pie. Jake’s favorite. The only thing better than making key lime pie is also making the crust and the whipped cream. I love to bake. I wish I had more time to do it and also more people to eat it.

In recent beard news: as an attempt to be professional at his new job, Jake has shaved his beard. don’t worry it will grow back.

Happy birthday love!

Pippy got some new sunglasses from her Grandma Beth (Jake’s mom), and since she likes to wear sunglasses suddenly, they were the perfect gift. They fit her perfectly and she kept them on, only pulling them up now and again to either get a better look at something, or show her surprise.

We went outside to lay in the grass, it was the only sort of sunny day we’ve had in a week and a half! I felt pretty lucky that the rain didn’t start until the late afternoon, so we were able to see this flower girl outside in her pretty, sunny dress. It’s the perfect dress, I got it from Pumpkin. Her shoes are from a thrift shop and I made her flower halo. Inspired by this!

We had a lot of family in town for the occasion. My mom, my dad, my brother Jesse and my Auntie Gail. It’s pretty special that Pip has had family in town every year for her birthday.

(Piper is still anti grass, BTW)

My little brother, Jesse, hasn’t seen Piper Jane since she was 8 months old. She is totally different of course. When she was 8 months old, she hadn’t even learned how to sit on shoulders yet, and she was just barely teaching herself how to tap things! Now she is an expert at each. If she ever decides to teach a class, she’s the type that can charge whatever she wants. She’s that good.

My Auntie Gail came all the way from Albuquerque, NM to meet Pip. This was a very big deal which Piper Jane caught on to, so she dealt out the snuggs left and right. (always the crowd pleaser)

After playing outside for a while, we came inside to get Pip’s sensitive eyes out of the sun. We went to the cafeteria, because Piper Jane likes the big windows, and she for the life of her couldn’t figure out how Grandma got on the other side!

The cafeteria is empty on the weekends, so Pip was able to explore it. She saw these Italian chef statues and was immediately obsessed. It was one of those things where she was really afraid of them and didn’t want to get too close, but she also didn’t want to leave them. We walked away and Piper Jane had a meltdown. She was pulling me to go back, she was stomping and she was refusing to walk anywhere unless it was back to the cafeteria. What a weirdsie, that girl.

So..4. Can you believe it? 4 is just crazy. Next thing you know, she’ll be practicing carwheals and kissing boys.

I guess she’ll just have to be silly like always!

When I was little, it always annoyed me when I would hear adults talking about how fast life happens, how fast they’re aging, how they remembered me in diapers. I thought to myself “yeah, yeah, whatevs, get a life” and swore I wouldn’t say those things when I grew up. The truth is, you can’t help yourself. Life really does speed up as you get older, and it’s mind bottling.*

I was only 23 when Piper Jane was born, and now that sounds like a baby having a baby. Today I find myself paying attention to politics, obeying the speed limit and I even have a couple of wrinkles.
(btw, my smile goes from zero to sixty, so it wont be long before i have a dangerous amount of them around my eyes.)

I got all jazzy, because I wonder if I’ll start to feel silly in a couple of years putting on a bright yellow, poofy dress with giant ruffles across the chest. I’m putting money on my sister Kelly whispering that it’s silly no matter who or what. (ps, kelly is awesome. she is wildly successful, smart, funny, beautiful, interesting. I love to joke about her disapproving of my sometimes frivolous choices, because she is my eldest sister.  Also she usually eats at super fancy places and that is why i had to mention shoney’s in that one post.)

Coat-Vintage (i’ll have to talk about this one later…i did something bad)
Dress-Lanvin for H&M
Tights-Target
Mary Janes-Bottega Veneta
Necklace-Target

For our date, we started out at Dos Caminos in the Meat Packing District for dinner. I had swordfish, and Jake had a steak. I stuffed myself and regretted not taking birthday girl pictures before dinner, haha. That should probably be rule number one for the rest of my life. No one feels pretty when their belly is pouting.

We later met up with Amanda Blair and Hannah. We talked and listened to music all night. We even danced a little bit. Jake was a trooper throughout our girl talk..
~Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
~My goal for 2011, which is to meet Snookie
~Hair Extensions
~And the three of us’ secret love for the Olsen Twins

If you haven’t noticed, learning the “prune face” from the Olsen twins’ make up artist was one of my life’s shining moments. I’ve bragged about it to every person I know. How does it work so well for them? I always look crazy when I’m pruning. Especially because I am convinced each time that it is finally going to look awesome, then I see the picture.

Anyway, I’m 27 now. This is my last year of being allowed to say that I’m in my mid-twenties. Quick, someone call me a young spring chicken!

(tomorrow is a big blogging day. pictures of Pip, her new clothes from Africa, a music post about my sister’s band, a little talk about my new job…lots going on. come back.)

*i know it’s really mind boggling. but bottling is funny.
ps “i don’t want diamonds, i want lanvin”.-Lanvin for H&M commercials.

So, not to dwell on the fact that Jake wasn’t dressed scantily, he still looked like a tall drink of water.
Fancy-sparkling water.

I threw on a little winter white number and called it a day. (ps my 9 dollar manicure is on day 8 without a single chip. can you believe that?)

I chased Jake through a dark ally apparently. He lived.
Pheeeww.

For dinner, Jake had Gnocchi to start out, and the Veal for his entree. I had Tomato soup with cheese, shitake mushrooms and caviar for a starter, and potato ravioli for dinner. They brought out my soup bowl with just the caviar, cheese (it was some kind of creamy feta) and shitake mushrooms placed beautifully in it. Then they came out with a little pitcher and poured the soup in with the rest. It was so cool! As hard as I was trying to pretend like it’s a totally common-totally normal thing for me to eat at fancy places while sitting next to former president’s daughters, I had a hard time keeping up the show when they whipped out fancy stuff like that. I was giddy about the soup pouring.  Next time I make lipton’s I’m going to pour it from a fancy pitcher into my bowl of goldfish crackers. Like I learned at Blue Hill.

We shared raspberries over lemon sorbet and cheesecake mousse for dessert. Sweet, sour and smooth is the formula for yum if you want to know my opinion..

I hope Jake had as good of a time as I did! Because he is cute and deserves it.

Jake and his mom, Beth, in 1979.

It’s Jake’s birthday today. I have always loved this picture of him getting down to birthday business. He is Piper’s age in it, and I think they look so much alike.

Anyway, Jake is the type of person who hates attention and birthday fuss. I think that’s just silly, birthdays are awesome.

And now, a sexy poem.

Jake, Oh Jake.
How I love you so
You are so hot, and you don’t even know
I like to make out with you every day
And snuggle up tight in a snuggle up way
Don’t feel sad about getting older
Hopefully you’ll always have use of your shoulder
I like you a lot and I love you hard core
With us together, life’s never a bore
I promise to cook and keep you well fed
I just invented this poem off the top of my head
Your eyes, height and hiney are all visually appealing
Can’t wait for our date, hope you wear something revealing.

Hooray. Muah. And have a nice life.

party monsters.

Aubrey was the best roommate ever that isn’t jake and as far as I know she never tried on any of my clothes and didn’t use my razor a single time.

ps you’ll see more of aubrey after our special secret (it’s not a secret, i already blobbed about it) event this saturday.

also, Pip is pronounced like “pipp” or “pihp”. Not pipe. although a few of her nurses call her pipey. which is ok by me.

PS again. Aubrey is the “girlfriend” who I went to the ballet with. If you look at “the pile” post comments you’ll read an awesome one from her. It’s a true story, I did try to hold her hand during the ballet, but ONLY because they dimmed the lights so romantically after the intermission….you all believe me don’t you?

I like this one because it looks like Piper Jane is giving Jake a good swift punch to the nose.

and I like this one because it’s kind of a good shot of her birthday dress. You know, the dress that was way too big, Booo! I guess she is still wearing 6-12 months.

On Saturday Jake and I woke up at 4:30 to take the subway to Brooklyn to run 13.1 miles. How crazy does that sentence sound? It was a rough start (the waking up, the long train ride, starting out the race) but once I got warmed up around mile 5, I had a great race. The very best part of the Brooklyn Half Marathon, is that it ends in Coney Island. I love Coney Island so much, it is one of my favorite places in NYC. If you’re going to knock in front of me, then you should be prepared for me to defend it to death.

It wasnt my best half marathon time, but I was happy with it since I haven’t run over 7 miles in several months. I finished under 1hr and 50 min. I can’t wait to train better and run some more half mar’s this year. Oh yeah, and now I’m feeling much better about the start of our NYC marathon training that will start in June!

So anyway, about the picture….so I’m stretching Jake out after the race and he’s all “I want to take a picture of you”. So he did, and now I see why he wanted to. What a cool view to have during some stretches, eh? Isn’t Coney Island cool? There are weird things like this everywhere. <-Jake knows what this thing is. I don’t.

Poor Jody took a 1 hr 45 min train to come hang out after the race. I felt bad for her since we didn’t do much there, but she is a good sport. We rode the wonder wheel, got some breakfast and wandered around a little before coming home. She went to the met and Jake and I went home to shower and nap off our 4am wake up. I am excited to go to Coney a few times this summer when I’m not sweaty and tired. Now I’ll let you in on a fun fact, in my 5 half marathons, this could very well be my favorite so far. I’ll think about it for a day or two and let you know what I decide.

This next picture isn’t weekendly, but I have to include it anyway. So get over it. After eating dinner and watching Reservoir Dogs on Wenesday night, Jake got an email that a new Banksy had shown up in Harlem. It was 11:30 pm but we ran to the train anyway. These kids don’t last long with all the tagging wars going on throughout the city, so that explains our mad dash. Jake has seen almost everything Banksy has done since he has been in town, but I’ve never seen one in person. I got so excited when we rounded the corner and saw this:

There is still question if this one is an authentic Banksy. I like to think it is since I got to see it, but I have to admit, I’m not 100% sold that it is his. Those yellow post-its near me are pleas to not tag over this. They say things like “cultural significance, do not deface”. I later told Jake that this one is better protected because of all the crackies and prosties sharing the block. (seriously, I know some parts of Harlem are beautiful and nice, but those parts are not here. And I was a little scared. And I saw more than one crack deal go down just in the 5 minutes we were there. Not kidding.)

Banksy is by far my favorite street artist. I love them visually, I love the messages, I love his anonymity and I am just so fascinated by him. If you aren’t familiar with him, you should read about him or see his new film “Exit through the gift shop”. It was rad.

bye!

ps sarah is back!

I dressed Piper Jane in her little 3 year old dress and took her to school. I am super bummed that her dress is too big. A lot too big. I ordered it on etsy from a frequent seller I buy from. Disappointing, but whatevs. She still looked edible.

I’m seriously proud that I finally learned how to frost cupcakes. Not quite billy’s, but sorta cute.

I was so happy to be able to throw Piper Jane a party at her school with all her school mates. The kids all had a great time and loved the party hats I made.  Here is Pippy making a mess with a cupcake. She doesn’t eat food, but it was still fun to see her with the cupcake and frosting.

Pip kept making sure I was still there. There was really a lot going on and she observed everything while keeping one eye on me all along.

After school we went back to Pip’s room to open presents. My sister, Jody, is in town so naturally Piper scored. Look at what my sister Erin made! It’s a felt board with felt stuff. Sorry, I don’t know what else to call these things. I guess I’ll just call it Piper’s new favorite toy. Look how interested she is! haha

Then of course the epic Dora doll. Jody could not get it out of the box fast enough. Piper Jane was falling apart to get her hands on miss Dora.

She decided to lay down (in the splits) to bond with her new dolly. Who lays down in the splits? Look close, she is literally resting her head on her own foot.

My friend Holly came along too and brought Piper this fairy doll. Holly started out being a client but has become one of my very best friends. She knows everything there is to know about Piper Jane, so I was so excited that she took the day off to meet her on her birthday. I wish I had a picture. I don’t have pictures of anything from today. Holly, all the cute kids from school (that I’m not sure would fly posting on my blob anyway), my cute goodie bags and food and a little more of the party hats. I made a million of them and had a complete ball doing it. Almost every single kid wanted to wear one, which I was surprised about.

I hung one of the party garlands that I made in Pip’s crib and she loooooved it. There was no theme to her party. Just bright colors. Just to make it easy.

To be honest, I’m exhausted. We are running a half marathon in the morning, and I hardly slept last night due to totally effing up the cupcakes and having to make an entire new batch. I am feeling guilty about not blogging a tribute to my sweetest nugget of an angel, but I am not feeling it at all right now. I’ve lost my muchness. Just know that she was the best. I love her. And she melts me more than ever. And she’s 3.

love

Reagan

we started out at the brooklyn flea market. it’s the best in nyc.
they have it in this old bank during the cold winter, however, it felt as cold inside as it did outside. we kept our gloves/coats/scarves on.

the building is gorgeous.

all pics courtesy of my jake

sifting through raggedy old coats. i am cool with the overpriced vintage clothes on ebay/etsy, because it is a huge adventure to find something pretty and in good condition.

in the basement vault, there are a bunch of local food vendors. we had gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. i love sandwiches and soup.

i only bought a gift for a friend, but my favorite thing about fleas are just browsing the old stuff. i love to see things that i had growing up. jake and i showed each other rotary phones, pencil sharpeners, chairs, lunchboxes, clothes and dishes the we had in our childhood homes. it’s fun to remember.

then we went to the ballet. are you curious why i still don’t do my hair even when i’m doing something fancy? it’s because i only like doing other people’s hair. like my client who plays the flute for the NYC ballet. he got us amazing tickets to sleeping beauty. we were front row so i got to see down in the orchestra pit. it was fun to watch him wail on the flute during his solos. pretty talented…

the lincoln center theaters are so beautiful. i love my birthday date.

sleeping beauty was so great! it was pretty cool being so close that we could hear their point shoes shuffling about the stage. during the performance i realized that i weigh more than everyone on the stage. combined. haha.

i guess 26 wont be so bad. i’m looking forward to another great year with my baby and my baby’s daddy. hooray!

also, i was asked to be the maid of honor at an upcoming (2011)best friend’s wedding. i have never been so excited in my whole life. whole. life.