Thrift Shops and Birthdays

It's been a busy week that started with a trip up to Port Washington to visit Beth in her new apartment, explore her new neighborhood, and hit up some thrift shops.  Downtown Port is quite adorable, and I'm sure Beth is going to love how walkable the area is because I know we both miss that aspect of Oshkosh.  We stumbled into a new little vintage shop called Mobocracy which had some great clothes and custom jewelry.

We did make it to the Saint Vinny's thrift store, but I only found one thing I couldn't live with - a floral enamel pot I plan to use for removing used postage stamps from old envelopes.

Then yesterday was H's birthday and we made and decorated some cupcakes.

The inspiration came from these frog cupcakes from a Disney Princess cupcake book and I think the girls made some adorable frogs.

But Miss H had some other ideas.

Today Tia is coming over for lunch and I'm planning a solo jaunt for some errands tomorrow and hopefully I'll have enough time to swing by another thrift store, what can I say - I'm a little predictable. 

Birthdays: 24 times!

Yesterday was my birthday, and I certainly had a grand old time! My parents took Richard and I out to dinner at the local steakhouse where we indulged in a bit of wine and all shared a piece of turtle cheesecake for dessert.

It was a wonderful day, and I had a really great time just being with my family. My parents and Richard gifted me with some really awesome presents as well! (I will readily admit that saying that makes me feel ten years old!)

My father picked out a new bicycle for me that I am rather anxious to ride - we're supposed to be going on the interurban trail from Brown Deer on Saturday and I just hope the weather complies. My mom put together a s'mores kit complete with giant marshmallows the size of your fist! They also ordered the film/slide scanner I wanted - but I think they may have ulterior motives :) as there have been a lot of my mom and grandmother's old slides about the house lately! I really can't wait for the scanner to get here because I'm really anxious to start scanning my mother's family memories so that we can more readily share them with everyone. It will also come in handy when I start experimenting with 120 film in my Kodak Duaflex, which Richard is enabling with the dark bag that he gave me.

Two weeks ago today my great-grandmother Jean passed away. I want to write something for her, because I love her so and am so proud to have been named after her, but I'm still finding it a bit difficult. So I'll leave with that.