{birthday} weekend recap!

Hey, guys! I know this is so, so late to do any kind of weekend wrap up but since it was such a full weekend I really wanted to post about it. I took the day off from life on Monday because I woke up not feeling that great and decided I needed a day to recuperate from the weekend festivities (aka sit on the couch and watch Ellen all day). And then Tuesday kind of followed suit.. and I was playing catch up the rest of this week which means I'm finally getting around to recapping the weekend!

Last weekend was Halloween, my birthday on Saturday, and my cousin's baby shower I helped to throw was on Sunday. To recap, here's a huge photo dump:

I worked at my internship on Halloween and brought these pumpkin spice cookies that everyone seemed to love. Or they were just being nice which is a good possibility. Either way! I decorated them to look like pumpkins and Frankenstein and such.

My boyfriend and I were invited to go by his brothers house to hang out with him and his wife (and her brother and his girlfriend). We were told they were going to dress up which is why we scrambled to come up with this "army" costume...

I told him it was important to be serious..  we're dorks. Like my knife? ;)

but then we got there and they were not festive like they had promised. So we felt like even bigger dorks. Luckily, her brother and his girlfriend dressed as Danny & Sandy from Grease so we weren't the only people in costume. I was, however, the only person tying and retying my dollar store knife to my thigh which was super attractive. But, we laughed, ate pizza, watched the Bulls game, ate too much Halloween candy, and I stole the Moscow mules my boyfriend's brother kept making for his wife because.. vodka and ginger beer.

My birthday was on Saturday and made me feel all sorts of blessed. My mom decorated our dining room to look like, what my 21 year old brother described as, a six year old's birthday party.

That's right. You're seeing all sorts of princess decor right there. I said I was a little princess obsessed. I also insisted all the decorations be saved for my future daughter (or my 24th birthday) ;). 

She nailed it ;)

Beautiful flowers from my Dad

I requested we go to Freddy's ,this little Italian grocer/deli near the city, for lunch because it never, ever disappoints and their pizza gives me so much life. The same couple who bought the place still own it and cook everything in the back themselves so it's legit. 

After my boyfriend got off of work he took me out to dinner just the two of us which was really nice because this is the first year he's been home on my birthday since we're usually apart because of school. We went out for Italian because I can never have enough. & I wore the outfit above (which I'm super aware is terrible picture quality): dark wash jeans, black chiffon top, leather jacket, and cheetah heels. Not pictured: my vamp-y lip. 

He also posted the sweetest birthday message/collage below on facebook for me :)

"Happy Birthday to @armessinas You deserve every bit of happiness today. You have shown me year after year how selfless, mature, captavating, and kind-hearted you are. Being by your side since 2nd grade has been so sublime and I thank you for the constant support and love you give to me. Love you forever!"

He's pretty great. Then we came home and spent the rest of the night at home with my family, some lovely gifts, and pumpkin pie (since I'm not a big cake person). It was certainly a wonderful day filled with my favorite people and my favorite carbs.

To cap off a busy weekend, we had my cousin Erin's baby shower on Sunday. My sister and I had met with my aunts and some cousins late this summer to start planning her shower to figure out what we wanted to do. They aren't going to find out the gender of the baby early so I suggested having a few activities that included both genders and since I'm pinterest obsessed all of this planning was right up my alley. 

I bought this chalkboard for $7 at Target which I was thrilled about and tried my best to make it look "cute" so people could guess what gender they thought my cousins would have. 

My cousin's MIL bought two baskets with pens and slips of paper where people could write name suggestions for each gender since my cousin and her husband don't have any names picked out yet haha. 

Erin also doesn't really care for shower games and god bless her for it. So, in lieu of games I wanted to try and find something guests could do that would occupy their time in between eating or while she opened gifts so I printed out a bunch of these "baby wishes" I found on pinterest here and put them at everyone's place setting. There are sentences like "I hope you get..." and "I hope you love..." and you fill in the blank. I thought it was as sweet way to write something to the baby and something meaningful Erin and her husband could go home and read later. 

As for decor, we tried to keep everything relatively simple and kept everything, besides the flowers, gender neutral and used a lot of sage and cream which were some of her wedding colors.

My aunt, Erin's mother, gifted them with the rocking chair from their registry and brought it to the shower so she would have someplace to sit while she opened her gifts. It made for a surprisingly pretty focus piece.

Erin's spot at the head of the table

Because my cousin has celiac disease we have to be careful of the kind of food we provide for her especially with the gluten. We decided to keep it kind of easy and have food that is easy for people to serve themselves so we decided on having a (gluten free) soup and salad bar.

All of us hosts brought something for the lunch. All together we had a potato soup, a vegetable soup, fruit salad, pasta salad, tossed salad with many toppings, and egg & chicken salad with buns so people could make sandwiches if they wanted to. All gluten free and rather delicious if I do say so myself. 

My sister made the gluten free dark chocolate cookies which are some of Erin's favorite. There was also a gluten free sheet cake and a gluten free chocolate ganache cake. 

As for drinks we had coffee, bottled water, and two punches; one blue, one pink. I hate to admit that the blue one was a bit tastier ;)

As for the favors, Erin's MIL brought little chocolates people could take home and I made little bags of lavender and jasmine bath salts with tags that said "From Erin's shower... to yours". I was originally making little bars of soap but that turned into a giant shit show so after making 55 melting bars of soap I scrapped it and bought some bath salt and called it a day. Sorry the pictures aren't the best quality. I was trying to snap as many as I could before people got there.

She's the most gorgeous, is she not? I hope I look half as good when I'm pregnant. 

Last weekend was definitely a packed weekend and now that this weekend has arrived I'm looking forward to not doing much. I do have to work a bit this weekend which isn't my favorite but I need that $$$ so I don't mind as much. Other than that I plan on hopefully keeping up with my new running schedule (which is barely a schedule as it's me trying to keep my shit together and avoid becoming diabetic with all the crap I've been eating lately), catching up on blogging, and making some room on that DVR. 

If you made it to the end of this you're my favorite damn person. Have a great weekend everyone!