Tag: Birthday

Happy “Bird” Day Celebration – Our Evie Bird’s Birthday and Mother’s Day Celebration.

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Happy “Bird” Day Celebration – our Evie Bird’s Birthday Celebration.
 


You may have noticed that we love giving each other nicknames (Evie, Feather, Peggo, etc.).

We also love personalizing every celebration and playing with words. 

When we needed a theme for our little Evie Bird’s birthday, it just seemed natural that we would have a bird-day party instead of a birthday party!

 
As soon as we saw these beautiful plates covered in birds, lace, tea-cups and flowers we knew they would be perfect for her Springtime bird-day party, as well as Mother’s Day!


The bird plates and napkins are paper (from Dollar Tree), so we pressed the paper plate between a silver charger plate and a clear glass plate. 

This is our new favorite way to dress up a place setting and create a custom looking party theme. We did this for Feather’s birthday party as well. 


We added a grapevine wreath on top to give each place-setting its own little “nest.” 

The table was decked out in a pink tablecloth with a white lace overlay and silver candlesticks wrapped in delicate spring blossoms. 

We added a lovely antique bird cage as the centerpiece.


 Of course this birthday party would not be complete if we didn’t serve all of the birthday girl’s favorite treats(no matter how peculiar a collection of food items they may be!). 

We whipped up one of her favorites — Rice Crispy Treats!


 We made a batch of our family recipe for macaroni salad. 

Our family recipe brings me right back to so very many childhood memories. 

We used to have family gatherings so large that we would make the family macaroni salad and potato salad in such large quantities that we made them directly in the crisper drawers of our fridge!


Of course we had a birthday cake for blowing out candles and making birthday wishes. (I didn’t get any pictures of the delicious Chocolate Sundae cake before it was cut, because we all gobbled it up before I could snap a single picture! Here is picture of the very last piece)


 We also picked up some fresh ripe strawberries, shortcake and whipped cream for making strawberry shortcakes. 

Evie often tells the story of how she would have strawberry shortcake on her birthday when she was a child, and how it was extra special because strawberries were not available year-round like they are now. 

Strawberries were a springtime treat that always made her childhood birthdays extra sweet!















So there you have it —  Evie’s 88th Bird-day party full of birds, berries, blossoms and blessings.

Happy Bird-day to you Evie!

 

 

 

Birthday Party for Feather

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A Very Merry Birthday Party for Feather!

We had a small birthday party for Feather on his birthday this Sunday. 

There are no pictures of the Birthday Boy, or the guests because we were able to keep the Paparazzi at bay for the entire event.

Sometimes it’s nice to just live in the moment and see things through your own two eyes rather than on a tiny screen while you snap pictures!

In the afternoon we had a small family get together and had some delicious home-made ‘mud pie’ (his absolute favorite) — my aunt makes this for him every year on his birthday.

This yummy pie is served with whipped cream piled high on top of it.

I didn’t get any pictures of it topped with whipped cream because I know better than to stand between a hungry birthday boy and his chocolate puddin’ pie!

After the party, once the guests had all gone home, we had a small dinner party with just the four of us.

Peggo made Veal Parmigiana for dinner (another one of Feather’s top requests).

I personally have to suspend all thoughts of what Veal is, and even then I have a hard time getting through dinner — but I kept that to myself!

After dinner we surprised him with his favorite Carvel Ice Cream Cake.

I don’t know if it is a Long Island thing or just a Hickey family thing, but Carvel Ice Cream cake is like the official taste of birthdays. 

A million childhood memories of birthdays past flood into my mind when I see or taste a Carvel Birthday cake.

It seems like this frosty confection made an appearance at the birthday celebrations of just about every one of my family members — nearly every year.

I can remember family members soaking knives in hot water just to be able to cut through the cake with a house packed full of family members just waiting to get their piece!

If you’ve never had a Carvel Ice cream cake, it’s vanilla and chocolate ice cream with that signature Carvel crunchy chocolate cookie crumble between the layers (that I thought was coffee grounds when I was a small child).

You can buy these cakes in grocery stores nationwide now, but when I was a child we would get them straight from the Carvel Ice Cream Parlor, and they would write a personalized Happy Birthday message on the cake.

I loved that blue gel they used for writing, and always hoped I got a piece with some blue gel letters on it!

The party decorating was quite a mish-mosh of holidays. 

We are still all decked out for St Patrick’s Day so there is lots of Irish green around. 

We swapped out a few pots of gold for birthday party decorations and we were set for a party.

Paper plates can actually go quite a long way in decorating for a birthday party!

Here we have a paper plate sandwiched between a gold charger plate and a clear glass plate so that it has the look and feel of a ‘real’ plate as opposed to a flimsy piece of cardboard (and oh boy do I have a lot of decorating plans for these clear plates!)





It was a day of family and fun with pie and cake and smiles all around.

That about sums up our celebration of Feather’s 88th Birthday Celebration! 

We’re looking forward to giving him many more birthday parties to come!