I had such a great weekend!

It all started out on Saturday morning when I found out that I won this.

Then, in the afternoon my husband took us to one of my favorite restaurants out here, Lucha Libre. Lucha Libre is a gormet taco shop that is Mexican wrestling themed (hilarious and very cool at the same time!), but most importantly has food that is delicious. I could go on for some time about their food. YUM. Below you will find the crazy picture they have as their logo.


After lunch, my husband/family surprised me with a really wonderful birthday celebration.

It's a long story, but in summary it involved Balboa Park, a carousel ride, a "surprise" run-in with my sister and her fiance' Ronny, and a few hours spent at the San Diego Zoo with them enjoying the animals and watching my children enjoy them as well (part of my birthday gift is that now my family has annual passes to the zoo and the wild animal park over here, and I've been wanting them ever since we moved here - yay!).

The day concluded with a really delicious dinner at a restaurant called The Fish Market where even more of my family was waiting to surprise me. The Fish Market is right on the water and has a great view of the evening ocean.Beautiful boats that were decorated with Christmas lights occasionally glided by. It was very cool. And I had creme brulee' for dessert (gotta tell about the dessert first, ha ha) and some really awesome Alaskan king crab legs with great mixed veggies and some delicious scalloped potatoes (it was my birthday so I figured I could splurge in that department), and a pear flower martini. Strangely, my martini did not have a flower in it... My daughter loves king crab legs, apparently, and ate quite a bit of my birthday meal! Ha ha ha.

Pear flower martini image found at greygoose.com

Oh! And I received a book that I've been wanting for so long - Vegan Yum Yum! I'm so excited. Seriously. If you haven't seen this book yet, you really need to. You will say to yourself (especially if the idea of vegan food doesn't appeal to you), "Hmmm... This vegan diet stuff doesn't seem too bad..." I haven't had the chance to read through it like a novel yet (I think I've mentioned before that I do this with cookbooks - I do it because not only do I enjoy it, but I find it very helpful to my understanding of cooking and baking in general), but my husband's vacation begins tomorrow and I think that pretty soon there will be a good time for that long relaxing read.

Pile of vegan yum yum cookbooks found right on veganyumyum.com

Then, yesterday after church we met up with Colleen (a very dear family friend - you may remember her as my cake decorating class partner) and we went to a Mexican restaurant out here that serves regular, vegetarian, and vegan Mexican food, called Ranchos. I had a blue corn avocado enchilada with green sauce and a vegetarian tamale for my meal. It was delicious! I spent the rest of the afternoon baking bread and making vegan chocolate cupcakes (you would not believe how incredible those cupcakes were - I finally tried one today after lunch) and talking with Colleen about food and family and life in general.

In the evening, my husband and I left our kiddos with Colleen (thank you, Nini!!!) and we had the pleasure of attending a very lovely traditional Holy Supper in celebration of the Nativity of Christ. It involved carol singing and special prayers, and many of the dishes and whatnot had a symbolic purpose. For example, the table was covered with a white cloth, which was symbolic of the swaddling clothes of Christ. A bit of hay was placed on the table in the center as a reminder of the poverty of the cave where Jesus was born. Apparently some people put a bunch of hay under their tables to be felt during the meal! I was in charge of making a large loaf of bread and was pretty nervous as I've never even seen one before - not that I haven't seen a loaf of bread, but I mean I had never seen a special Holy Supper loaf of bread. I followed the instructions (which were pretty minimal) and Providentially, it turned out beautifully golden and round and delicious. Most importantly, it was there as the centerpiece to represent Jesus Christ, the bread of life. We inserted a white taper candle into it. The lit candle represented the Star of Bethlehem which lead men to worship the true Light of the World those many, many years ago.

We ended our evening enjoying the vegan chocolate cupcakes I mentioned earlier. I think they were a hit!

The feast was definitely a learning experience for me and I enjoyed it very much.

It was a great weekend!

To top it all off, we are completely done with all of our Christmas shopping (my husband and I did this together this year) and everything has either been picked up or delivered (if only my Christmas cards were done, too...). Now I get to "get to" one of my favorite things about this season, wrapping up those perfectly chosen gifts. I can't help it. I'm a ribbons and wrappings sort of gal.

Gift wrappings by Martha Stewart found here.

Three more days until I turn thirty years old! Eeeeee!

Pretty (and pink!) 30th birthday cake found here.
I would probably not personally choose a pink cake for myself, but I do think this one is lovely. It's very feminine and well done!

Have a lovely day!

Susan