Birthday Adventures: A week of celebrations

So I'm finally done celebrating my birthday!  This is my recap of all of the crazy activities we did!!

I had some weeklong mini adventures.  I'm not one for organizing big parties (unless they involve costumes!) because I find it challenging to coordinate my friends who live all over the tri-state and have crazy different schedules.  Some people are only free on weekends, some have rotating schedules, some are never free on weekends.  Some live out of state or not near enough for a convenient trip.  So I tend to celebrate in small outings with different groupings of people so I can hang out and enjoy with everyone I love.

When I turn 35 I think I'll try to organize a big party... with some kind of book character theme, like for my 28th when I got everyone to dress up from Alice in Wonderland.   But I have plenty of time to plan for that since I only turned 32 this week.  3 more years till that craziness!!

So on the 22nd I went to my second ever Paint Night!  I met up with my friend Danielle who brought us a bottle of wine to share and we painted to our hearts content.  We had a blast and made some beautiful paintings to put on our walls. Go here to read more about it!

Then the morning after, I headed to Queens to head over to the Renaissance Fair in Tuxedo, NY. We spent a few hours running around admiring costumes and eating delicious food.

Then afterwards we headed back to NYC and got to go to Little Italy for the last day of San Gennaro.  I love adventures in Little Italy!  We ran around trying different foods and seeing some lovely booths before I headed back to NJ for some rest before my work week.

On Tuesday night, hubby and I got to celebrate.  We ate and then headed to The Color Factory (sadly now closed... but there should be a new exhibition soon so if you missed the Color Factory, there should be something equally fun coming your way!!) We had such a wonderful night.

On my actual birthday, I went to work.  And my coworkers threw me a surprise party at the end of the day!  They managed to really surprise me since they waited till the very end of the day so I thought they may have forgotten!

It was so cute.  They gave me flowers, a teddy bear and a balloon and cake, lots of cake.  I'm so happy to be a part of my team!!  I love them so much!
Afterwards, I caught a ride home (yayyy! no train for the birthday girl!) and then I crashed.  Well, first, I found flowers on my doorstep from one of my besties.  Grace sent me some beautiful fall inspired flowers!   Then I got inside and crashed.  I was so tired.  Eventually, Baros got home and he surprised me with flowers too!  He got me beautiful red roses and lilies!  I was such a happy birthday girl.  We ate a little dinner and I took my first online Spanish lesson (I didn't think he'd make it home till late so I scheduled poorly).
I got such a cute message from my brother-in-law, Burak (later on in the week he even sent me a picture of a beer and a toast in my honor!) and then I got a wonderful call from one of my favorite Californians and we caught up and talked about life and her upcoming nuptials.  Alex is awesome and I can't wait to see her soon.

Then we fell asleep.  Baros fell asleep while I was talking, but I made him move from the end of the bed to where he belonged, next to me.  He was so exhausted and adorable in his exhaustion. He fell right back asleep and then I followed shortly after.  We had wanted to eat the ice cream in our freezer... but it never happened.  We were just too pooped.  It was a "we're asleep by 9:45 kind of night" and that's so rare for me that I'm okay with it!!  It was a relaxing way to spend my evening so I was really happy. 

Then the following Saturday I got to go back to the Renaissance fair for Adventure Part II.  I went with Danielle, Jeremy and his group of friends and it was so much fun. It was an all day affair that ended with pancakes and breakfast food at Brownstone Pancakes.  So delicious.
It was a lovely full and busy day.

One of my last birthday celebrations actually came as a surprise to me exactly one week after my birthday.  One of my best friends, Endira, came in from Chicago for work so I met up with her.  She treated me to birthday dinner and drinks.  We went to an outdoor happy hour and got some wine and some dumplings.  And then we walked over to delicious sushi at Asuka on 8th Ave and 23rd St. We got edamame and rolls to share.  If you're looking for good sushi this is a great place to go. Plus, we had some delicious cocktails.
We had a wonderful few hours of catching up and hanging out. It was a lovely celebration with one of my favorite people who I don't get to see as much as I'd like to!
Life and distance! But no worries, Chicago is on my horizons.

Then on Saturday night I had one last surprise.
Baros and I went to Brooklyn to see our friends Bihter and Ernesto for the first time in a long while.
We had a raki night with yummy food and even better company. And once we were finished eating, out came the surprise cheesecake and birthday song.  It was so fun celebrating with them, even though I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of all of us together.

fried liver, yummy yogurt sauce called haydari made by Bihter, cucumber and tomato salad and feta. 

All the food... just a little blurry... 

About to cut the cheesecake!

The desserts, baklava, cheesecake and a jammy cookie

On the subway home!

With that birthday surprise, my birthday celebrations have dragged on for two weeks so now I must declare the celebrations over!

I'm so lucky to have so many amazing people in my life.  I didn't get to celebrate with everyone, but I felt so loved between the messages and celebrations!
I didn't even get to celebrate with Mom and Paul, but Paul sent me a beautiful color changing butterfly mug and I got to have a great conversation with the mamma bear on the morning of my birthday.

Hopefully in a couple of weeks, I'll get down to visit them too and we can have some other adventures... Maybe even Mom's first tattoo adventure since she wanted to get a mother/daughter tattoo for my birthday.

Let's see where this year takes us!! 32 is going to be a good one!