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FG thanksgiving feast, 4th annual

This tradition was started 4 years ago by my dear friend, Carrie, who has since (very sadly!) moved to Charlotte. But her legacy lives on... On the Saturday before Thanksgiving all of the sister groups of Aaron Bjerke's "original FG" gathered together for one huge feast! Katherine and I made our first turkey, actually Kat did most of the work and I just watched, and people came in droves. I think we peaked at around 75 people in our tiny 3-br New York City apartment (hence the reason you see us sitting on the ledges of our bathroom in the hallway to eat). I did my fair share of panicking when I found out how many people were coming, but we made it, and it was full of great food, good fellowship and old (and new) friends.



Carrie, thanks for starting this tradition! And please plan to come back one year... 5 sure is a good number to celebrate!

harry potter and the deathly hallows, part 1

As I mentioned here, I could.not.wait for the opening night of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I movie to come out! I'm a late bloomer when it comes to Harry Potter and only recently (just over a year ago) have jumped on the out-of-control-obsessed-fan bandwagon. So, this was my first movie to see at its release! Luckily, I was in good company with these other 5 New York friends, who are all seasoned HP veterans! We made pumpkin pasties, cauldron cakes, and butterbeer to keep ourselves awake until the midnight IMAX showing of the movie and (some of us...) dressed our favorite part. I started to have flashbacks to college of staying awake all night, but I made it until the ending of the movie at 2:35 am...and it was well worth it!

too long gone

I've been feeling bad and guilty because I am so horrible at updating my blog these days. But, I'm trying to remind myself that this age-old adage MUST be true: better late than never! So here's a little recap of the 3rd weekend & 4th week in November, my personal fave week of the entire year:


Enjoy!


25 years of celebrations

I was born three weeks early, so my granddad had no inclination to expect he would have a granddaughter for a birthday present since my mom was due mid-December. In fact, the night I was born, it took my dad a few hours to get in touch with my grandparents to tell them I had been born! But ever since, we've been having big celebrations every year. Since this was the "25th Anniversary" of our celebrations together, I decided to pull out all the pictures of our birthdays over the past 25 years. I was partially successful... there were only 13 years missing out of the 25. My mom is still apologizing profusely (since she found pictures from every year of my oldest brother's birthdays), but being the youngest child of 4, I think having 12 years worth of birthday pictures is still pretty good. And you'll still get the idea:

1985
1986
1987
1990
1992
1999
2000
2002
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010, still going strong...

nov 19! nov 19!

And you know what that means! Tonight at exactly 12:01 AM, I will finnnally be watching the first part of the 7th Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (perhaps even dressed in my Hermione costume?). Call me a nerd if you want, but I know five other 20-something girls who are counting down the minutes as much as I am!

the birthday boy

Saturday was Brendan's birthday and we celebrated big! (If you don't believe me, just check out the cake...) He turned 27 and for his birthday dinner he decided that he wanted to invite friends over to my apt & his old stomping grounds (in case you didn't know, Brendan lived in my current apartment for two years before I moved in. Then he graciously handed it over to me and two other girls!) for a pasta dinner and celebration. Friday night we made a run to Target and bought enough food to feed a couple armies, then cooked for a few hours on Saturday afternoon and successfully made enough food to feed 35 people! It was a blast and a great turnout!


And as I mentioned in my previous post, we had sparkler candles (Thanks for those too, Maggie!)!! They were exactly like sparkler fireworks, except in the shape of a "2" and a "7". They were beautiful and perfect, but if you ever have them for your own cake, you should be ready to blow them out immediately because they aren't like regular candles that keep burning until you blow. They, just like a sparkler, go out on their own sweet timing. But they make for some pretty great pictures, don't they?!

[Sorry the pic quality isn't that great. They are from my phone because my camera took a nose dive into the toilet early in the night, and spent the rest of the party in a bowl of rice trying to absorb all the water. Good news though; it worked!]

want to see the biggest cake you've EVER seen??


Check out Maggie's blog post about Brendan's birthday cake! Maggie is an excellent baker and she kindly agreed to make Brendan's birthday cake for me...to feed 35-40 people! It was as delicious as it was big, and we celebrated with "2" and "7" sparkler candles (which you'll see in the next post)!! Luckily, for me, we had some left over...

[And, if you live in NYC and need a cake, you should contact Maggie!]

like fries?

Go here, in the East Village: Pommes Frites.


All they serve is fries. Authentic Belgian fries. With over 25 sauces to dip them in. We tried Especial, Rosemary Garlic, Wasabi, and Sweet Mango Chutney sauces, and they were all delicious. Me, Maggie, Kyo and Tim went here to celebrate Kyo and Tim's engagement last Saturday morning (along with a sandwich at a Vietnamese sandwich shop and cold skin noodles at an authentic Chinese restaurant, all within the hour). I'm glad to have found such a place. I'm sure I'll be back, only next time with a much less exciting reason, perhaps...

lots of reasons to celebrate this week!

On Sunday, August 8th, my grandparents celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary!! And you thought my parents had been married a long time... Happy (belated) Anniversary, GGs!

I graduated college two years ago on Monday, August 9th! My, how the time flies...It seems like just yesterday Leesa and I were moving all of our pink-and-green bedding into Lupton 220.

This Saturday, August 14th, my dad is celebrating his 60th birthday!!! (wow, that's kinda old.) This picture is from a couple years ago, when he was only a spring chicken. Since I'll be 17 hours away on the big day, I got to be a part of his surprise birthday party via video chat last night. It would have been more fun to be there, but I'll settle for second best!