Happy Birthday!

This post should be about how wonderful Adam is because it was his birthday yesterday, but from my perspective, this blog is dedicated to how I pulled off a sweet birthday week!

He didn't really want his picture taken

Monday - Errands GALORE trying to everything ready for the week.  Weeks worth of grocery store, picked up Adam's birthday present, and stopped at Walgreen's for wrapping paper and a card (I have a huge appreciation for cards for any and no occasion what-so-ever; it's very important to always have a card to go with your gift).  

I actually told my mom when I was little that I was going to write cards for Hallmark when I grew up.  I have since taken a total different approach with my career choices.  I still make custom cards as a hobby, but needless to say, there wasn't enough time for that on Monday. 

After a quick run and take out for dinner, I impatiently waited to head off to the airport to pick up Adam from his latest NASCAR trip to Michigan.  (no comment on the NASCAR portion).  AND all that waiting and I was still late to pick him up, only by like 5 - 10 minutes aka he landed in Minneapolis when I left our apartment.  

We came home to a nice array of presents for him to open before wearily dragging himself off to bed.  My mom and I went in on a themed birthday present - Cheese making set from my family and a Northern Brewer home beer making set from me!  I'm still giving myself a pat on the back for the idea.  

Tuesday - Thanks to 365 Twin Cities I was able to get us movie passes to a free screening of Hit & Run.  A movie with Tom Arnold, Kristen Bell, and Bradley Cooper is a very entertaining cast, especially since Bradley Cooper has disgusting dreads.  The movie itself was horrible, but TOTALLY worth seeing for FREE!  The dialogue has hilarious one liners that won't necessary work in the whole big picture of the plot or lack of plot.  Dax Sheppard and Kristen Bell are SOOOO good together with really good comedic pros - it was really natural like witty banter you have with your friends loaded with sarcasm.  

Wednesday - Adam's official birthday.  We decided against going out to eat since we have had limited time to hang out together at our apartment this summer.  I took it upon myself to make a full week's worth of birthday dinner's.  Tuesday - per Adam's cravings last week we had sloppy joe's with tator tots, but today the dinner had-to-be amazing and delicious.  Since he's been on a kick about sweet corn lately, the idea for dinner started with corn bread.  Since my number one reference for all recipes is Bon Appetit, I went with their choice of Basil and Fresh Corn Cornbread.  Then I had an epiphany that I needed to embrace my LOVE of Southern Food.  This turned into: Fried Chicken, Mash potatoes and gravy, and corn bread.  For dessert - pictured above - pudding cake.  It is IMPOSSIBLE to cut pudding cake so it was more of a mystery cake since you weren't sure what was going to slop onto your plate.  The pudding cake wasn't exactly set when I served it.   The pudding cake consisted of:

Pecan crust
First Layer: Cream cheese with powder sugar and heavy cream
Second Layer: Vanilla Pudding
Third Layer: Chocolate Pudding
Top Layer: Cool Whip

All of the recipes can be found on my Pinterest page.  

DELICIOUS!!!!  The best part of the meal turned out to be the gravy - total surprise that I pulled out of my butt hat.  Now after dinner - we ate too much - we rolled ourselves onto the couch to watch Paul - another terrible movie that turned out to be quite entertaining.  

All in all I think I pulled off an excellent 3 day birthday extravaganza!  I'm quite proud of myself, but now tonight I have to clean up all the dishes (not so fun).