Birthday Week

Today is my birthday! I have been, however, celebrating it all week. In my house, we believe that one single day is not nearly enough time to celebrate the anniversary of one's birth. The tradition of celebrating birthday weeks actually started back when my husband, Rich, and I were dating. We hadn't been dating long when I tested him with the question "when is my birthday?". Ha. That's so mean. He actually wasn't far off when he guessed April 16th, which is exactly a week before my birthday. I think my birthday was coming up soon, so I told him, "Well, I guess we'll just have to start celebrating on the 16th until my actual birthday on the 23rd!" And, that's exactly what we did. What we learned from it, was that a week-long birthday is a lot of fun!! It's too hard to control just one day. You may have a rough day at work or the weather is yucky or you have something scheduled that you just can't get out of at night, etc. Birthday weeks give you 6 more days to make sure that your birthday was not "just another day"! I think it's vitally important to take time to celebrate and pamper yourself and to have others celebrate and pamper you as well. 

So, we both get a week of pampering each and we can decide when the week starts and ends (as long as our actual birth date falls in there somewhere). Rich likes to take the opportunity to get as many homemade cakes out of me as possible. His record so far has been 3!! For those of you who don't know him, he's a dietician who also happens to be a personal trainer and athlete-aholic. So, yes, he can definitely get away with eating 3 cakes, plus more, if he wanted and not gain an ounce! My favorite is getting special meals each night. He always does the cooking anyways, but for my week, the menu is catered to all of my favorite meals like grilled Salmon and a dish he makes with chicken, feta cheese, tomatoes and greek olives. This week, one of my birthday gifts was a waffle iron (which I SOOOOO wanted), so, one night for supper, we had waffles covered with strawberries and whip cream. Yum!

Moral of the story: I highly recommend birthday weeks!

P.S. The photo above (with me sitting on the table) was taken 29 years ago. I think this may have been my brother's birthday, whose birthday is only 3 weeks after mine, but I'm still sporting a birthday hat nonetheless. 

he loves me…

The other day, my husband surprised me by randomly bringing home fresh flowers. Of course he knows that my favorite is the Gerbera Daisy so that's what he got for me. 

I don't know if it was planned genius or dumb luck, but he discovered my new favorite vase - our coffee thermos! My crystal vases live in a box in the basement with the other frilly wedding gifts that we got 10 years ago. I would much rather repurpose something like a water pitcher or wine carafe as a vase, but had never considered the coffee thermos before. It has a fun urban shabby chic look to it and especially looks great with the graphic daisies. 

love it & love him!

A funny thing occurred to me today... that Easter hadn't happened yet. I often have these realizations about holidays because I'm always at least one holiday ahead for my design business. By Valentine's Day, I was already working on new designs for Easter and for the last couple of weeks have started thinking about invitations for graduations, first communions and confirmations. Last year, I started creating new Christmas card designs in July!! So, it is a constant challenge to remind myself to slow down; to live and plan for today; and to not rush through the holidays before they have even arrived! Here's to making today count!

Only two more days until the weekend! I hope you're planning something fun!