In our house, Rosie and Lucy have one birthday party together. Not only does it help promote sisterly affection, but it’s fun, too!
This is our second year of the “together” party. Last year, I couldn’t envision a good way to host a party that would please little friends, grown-up friends, relatives, _and_ the birthday girl, so we devised a system: each girl gets their own party with their own kid friends — plus one dual-celebration party with big people. Since Rosie and Lucy’s birthdays are exactly six weeks apart, it works well to have a party in between. We call this extended length of time “birthday season,” and it rivals Christmastime for the consumption of cakes, cookies, and other sweets, especially when you add Easter in the mix.
Our celebration yesterday included grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and even a super-duper babysitter. Jon devised a game that we call “Two Twuths and a Lie.” He looked through his tweets from the past year, found the favorite quotes he had tweeted on behalf of the girls, and paired them up. To each pair, he added a fictional quote and we posted these trios on the wall. The players had to read the quotations and identify the fabricated one. Would you like to play? You’re in luck! Jon is planning to post that for your enjoyment in the next couple of days. The winner of our game (shout out to Grandpa!) had the special honor of helping light the candles in the cake.
Speaking of the birthday cake, we tried a new and fabulous recipe for “Chocolate Root Beer Bundt Cake”:http://www.thekitchn.com/surprisingly-quick-root-beer-c-121148. It turned out pretty delicious, but the very best part was how excited the girls were to blow out their candles:
We served a variety of other delicious treats, many of which I hope to post recipes for in the future, including some homemade cheese croissants, our favorite sugar cookies (cut out in the shapes of 4s and 6s), and my latest favorite killer chocolate chip cookies.
But the biggest surprise hit were these fantastic “pita chips”:http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/neelys/homemade-pita-chips-recipe/index.html, baked at the last minute using some embarrassingly old wheat pitas. They were crispy, salty, and delicious — a definite keeper. Just like our together party: a definite keeper, at least for this time in our lives!
I think this is a great idea. The film is especially well done and sweet. Thanks for sharing!
Lovely to see the girls! I get excited about birthday cake, too. :) Fun to see some familiar faces behind Lucy and Rosie, too.
Cool idea!
But really – I’m most interested to know more about your EQUIPMENT!? Seems like excellent quality HD, both sound-wise and image-wise! What’re you using?
This shot was taken with a Canon T2i and a Canon 28mm f/1.8 lens, just using the onboard mic. (Stereo input is available on the T2i, but I hardly ever bother to plug in.) We love this set-up. Also in heavy use around here is our Canon 50mm f/1.8. Glad you think it looks nice!
Since we’re talking about image quality, you might enjoy watching it in 720p HD, which you can do on the Vimeo page: http://vimeo.com/40375587.