My Nerdy 30!

This is a big year for folks like me, born in 1983... I kept going back and forth about whether or not I should throw something for myself and had kind of settled on not.  So I owe a big thanks to my older sister Natalie for deciding to come into town for a few days because she was the catalyst for this event that turned out super-fun!  I thought I could provide a way for the family to have an excuse to all be in town, while she was here, and so as many people I love as possible could be all together for my birthday :)

And how cute is it to celebrate my 30th on the 30th (even if it's not the real day...)

I, of course, needed to have some kind of theme.  I thought about "30 Flirty and Thriving" from that movie I love, "13 going on 30", but I don't really think of myself as flirty and nothing was coming to me.  So, I started thinking of other things that rhyme with 30 and, well, Nerdy was the obvious choice, if you know anything about me.....

I knew I wouldn't have time to do much, so I just picked a couple of things to tie the theme together.  I was trying to find a cheap, plaid table cloth, to no avail, and so decided on making my own argyle ones by cutting up those cheap $1.50 ones from Zurchers.  I admit, as soon as I thought of it, I was super excited to have an excuse to buy my own test tubes and beakers to put flowers on the table.  I obviously had to dye daisies (and then Costco had them, so I didn't have to dye them at all!)

I wish I had thought of this for our wedding!  Test tubes are CHEAP!

I was so excited to try out a recipe from a book my mother-in-law had, and I coveted, that Jay just got for me for no reason, in July (he needed to buy one more thing on Amazon to get free shipping.  Thanks for thinking of me, hun!) but we've been off sweets since we got home from our Mass trip and so I have held off, with much difficulty.

Do you know what my cake says? ;)

I knew one cake wouldn't be enough for 26 people, so I also made cupcakes using part of my birthday present- Demarle muffin tins and heart shaped pan.  Their nonstick bakeware is awesome!! Notice, my cupcakes have no papers on them?  That's because they came right out without them!

I've wanted to buy cute straws for some time now, and I finally had a reason to.  I hot glued little "bow ties" on them so it would look like you had one on when you drank from them.

i *heart* this picture

and it kinda worked...

Cousin C went to Hogle Zoo while in town and had a little giraffe-souvenir clutched to her side much of the party

plaid napkins!  I'm a big fan of fun napkins.  If your napkins are cute, you must be celebrating, to me.  (Which is funny, since their sole purpose is to get dirty...)

And my favorite- I got cheap sunglasses from Oriental Trading and popped out the lenses to make some awesome...

nerd glasses for all!! (PS like my owl earrings? Already had those...)

And finally, I had Jay look up a bunch of trivia questions whose answers were all "30" or "1983".  I was born in a pretty cool year!! Were you born the same year as the chicken McNugget and the original Nintendo Entertainment System?  Yeah... I was....  Oh yeah, and now I can be a senator.  So, be watching for that....

And, I obviously needed balloons.  Duh.

I grilled chicken and hot dogs and let everyone else do the rest.  We had soooo much food!  And it was all really good! :)

There were 13 Kids all under 8, only 4 of them were girls. There's no telling what may occur with a crowd like that, but it was actually really fun and not as crazy as I expected.  I had a great time!

I forgot that the easiest way to hang balloons is to tie them to the string and so we threw the ones we had prepped before on the trampoline.  (As soon soon as all the kids got on, they didn't last long...)

Eve decided to dress for the occasion

Retainer and all! :)

It's hard getting a picture of John when he's not pulling a face, so I thought I better post this for posterity's sake- Uncle John can actually look pleasant after all! :)

Thanks, Natalie, for being my photographer!  I know the event would not have been properly documented, were I also in charge of that!

The kids loved the Izze's.  I love that they are not sugary like regular soda.

binary candles

Nate prepping the gigantic bucket o' ice cream!

Wouldn't be a family function if John didn't do something to try and bug me... ;)

Uncle Nate saving the day and pulling grass out of a dropped cup cake :)

boys bein' boys

Melibindsay- making the nerdy librarian look good :D

I had so much fun celebrating my birthday!  Thanks for coming everyone!!