Now that I’ve been 30 for 20 days now, I think it’s time for me to recap my birthday! Before I get into all the details, I want to thank my amazing husband for planning an amazing weekend! My birthday was so special! He did an incredible job planning everything. Thank you Lincoln for loving me, being my best friend, and an amazing party planner (who knew, right?)!!!

Okay, now where was I? Oh right, my big 3-0 weekend extravaganza!!!! Lincoln came home early from work on Friday (3/18, two days before my birthday) and presented me with the most amazing cake ever!!! It was another beautiful creation from my aunt Honey (you might remember the guitar cake she created for Jackson’s Rock Star Birthday Party), inspired by this cake by CakeJournal! Pretty Amazing, right? It was a banana cake (my favorite) and tasted like a little piece of heaven. I know that I probably gained some lbs after eating a good portion of this on my own! I have no regrets!

The above photo is the cake created by Cake Journal (photo courtesy of Cake Journal). Now, look at my cake below. They look pretty similar, right? I love this cake so much!!

Lincoln also gave me one of my birthday presents. He was so cute. All week he kept trying to give me my presents. He was so excited and totally adorable. A few weeks prior I was blogging or something and he said, “It would be cool if you could turn your blog into a book.” I agreed with him. That would be cool, right? Well, that’s exactly what my husband did. He did a ton of research and ended up finding a company called SharedBook. They take blogs and makes them into books among other things. Yahooo!!!! This was by far, one of my most favorite gifts! It was so thoughtful, personal, and something that is near and dear to my heart. Here are some shots of my book. My blog as a book, so much fun!

I included a few pages on my DIY Mini Cupcake Stand Tutorial. I choose those pages because that is one of my posts that is re-posted over and over. It makes me happy when people repost my blog posts! That’s one of the best compliments!

We went to dinner that night at PF Changs (one of my favorite restaurants) with many of my closest friends. If you didn’t get invited, it was Lincoln’s fault. He did his best to remember everyone, but keep in mind, he is new at this party planning thing! We ate, we drank, I played match maker (you know who you are) and we had a wonderful time. I drank a few “Poolsides” too, which is one of my favorite drinks. We ate some of my enormous cake and Laura made these adorable place settings. I couldn’t get enough of them. I saved every single flower too! Watch for these to appear in an upcoming party of mine! Well, that was a great birthday, right? Oh no, it wasn’t over yet!!! There was much, much more to come!!!! It was like the party that never ended!

Saturday (1 day before the big 3-0) was a normal day. We woke up. I took Skyler to baseball practice. We dropped the older boys off at my amazingly talented brother-in-law and sister-in-law’s house for my nephew’s birthday party! My adorable nephew, Finn was turning 4 and having a super-heros party. Skyler and Jackson even got to have a sleepover. They were super excited. We dropped Emerson off at Lincoln’s Mom’s house and we were kid free. This was the first time that I had ever been away from Emerson overnight (remember this because this will haunt me. Did I mention that I am still nursing him?). Before we even left Lincoln’s Mom’s drive way he said, “I already miss my dudes.” He’s super cute!!!

So, no kids whatever should we do with ourselves? Check into a beautiful, trendy hotel, yes please! Lincoln had planned a night away at the Nines which is a beautiful hotel in downtown Portland. I’m always talking about wanting to go on vacation or have a good nights sleep. All that nagging really paid off! If you’ve never been to the Nines, you really must stay there! I can’t say enough wonderful thing about it! When I walked into our room, I almost died. I couldn’t have done a better job decorating it myself! Okay, so I would pick different bedside lamps and make a few other changes, but overall it was my dream bedroom! I am going to try and recreate it. So, if anyone knows where I can find this incredible hanging light and the beautiful fabric on these arm chairs, I would be very grateful!

What do you think? Isn’t the room amazing? The hotel is beautifully decorated. I’d love to just move in permanently! Wouldn’t that be fun? In my dreams, maybe! Ahaha! Okay, snap back to reality. I guess I wasn’t totally dreaming, we were kid FREE. We really didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We almost always have the kids with us except for the occasional date night out. We sort of had to ease into the kid-less mentality, but it didn’t take too long for us to get back into the swing of things. We packed as many things into our “stay-cation” as we could. We went to happy-hour at Departure, an almost Jetsons like restaurant and lounge located on the 15th floor of the Nines, shopping at Pioneer Place, and then we came back to get ready for our night out on the down. We decided to go to dinner at a local bar, Thirsty Lion. Lincoln and I love pub food and we enjoy going to new places (plus, a ton of our friends go there). Lincoln really wanted to go listen to live music and to our surprise The Bradley Band was playing! They are a cover band that played a ton of awesome music like Sublime! Linc and I use to listen to Sublime when we were dating in high school. After dinner and a few too many drinks, we made our way to the dance floor and danced for what seemed like hours. To be honest, I have no idea how long we danced.

At some point we stumbled back to our hotel room and called it a night. We had every intention to go to late night happy hour at Urban Farmer, which was also located in the same building as our hotel. In fact, our room looked down upon the restaurant. Even though we didn’t make it there. Here are a few shots from our room. Someday we’ll make it back there!

The next morning, late morning, we woke up in our luxurious bed! Finally, it was my 30th birthday! I was hung over, still in some of my cloths from the night before, and oh yeah, in a ton of pain! You remember the part about me still nursing? Well, that was the most uncomfortable feeling of my entire life. WARNING!! This is going to be some major TMI (too much information) so if you can’t handle it, skip down to the next paragraph! Last chance! I woke up with rock hard boobs. I mean, I don’t think I’ve felt pain like that since my milk came in with Skyler almost 6 years ago! What should I do? I had no idea how to fix this problem, short of hooking up a make shift pump and turing it to overdrive! I really had contemplated bringing my pump, but had already packed away all of the key components in storage! Honestly, I didn’t think I would be in so much pain! So, I did what any desperate Mom would do! I self-expressed as much milk as I could to relieve the pressure! I literally, by hand (pun intended!) pumped off a huge glass of milk. After I recovered from severe pain, we showered, got ready, and said good-bye to our incredible hotel room!! I missed it the moment I shut the door!

Notice something unusual about my milk? The color perhaps? Well, it was “teal” from the Poolsides a few nights before. YIKES! The dye in those drinks can’t be good for you, but they do taste yummy!

Still recovering from the night before, after all, I am 30 now and I just can’t bounce back like I could in my younger days, we went and got coffee at Starbucks. Okay, so I don’t even like coffee. I always get Caramel Sauce Hot Chocolate, but Linc loves coffee! After that, we stopped by William-Sonoma and I bought my cupcake core (which I have already used several times, I might add) and then headed to breakfast.

We were meeting my Mom, Dad, sister’s, Jamie and Kellie, my grandma, and my babies for breakfast. The talented Miss Courtney Jade had told us about this really cool pancake house in Southeast Portland called Slappy Cakes. I knew we had to check it out! It is a full service breakfast restaurant where you can make your pancakes right at your table! It was so good and really fun! I can’t wait to go back there. They had this “house” syrup that was a Strawberry vinegar based syrup. Sounds gross, right? Actually, it was so yummy! I’m hoping they’ll share their recipe with me!

I told you we had a full weekend extravaganza!!! I know it was killing Lincoln, but we went back to my Mom’s house and FINALLY opened all of my birthday presents. To be honest, at my age there’s nothing I really need. Just getting together with friends and family was enough of a treat! With that being said, I did get some amazing gifts. I got several gift cards so I can take myself on a shopping spree (I always enjoy buying new cloths and not having to pay for them out of my own pocket makes it even better), some cupcake earrings, a ton of awesome cookbooks (and one that I already had which you will benefit from), some incredible Rosanna pieces, bottles of wine, and a bunch of other thoughtful gifts! It seriously was the best birthday that I could have ever asked for! I am the luckiest girl in the world to have such wonderful friends and family! I could not have asked for a better weekend! Now, I just can’t wait to do it again (everything except the whole engorgement thing) next year! I’ll leave you with one of my beautifully wrapped presents in cupcake paper, no less!!!