MY BIRTHDAY WEEKEND! | Design by Occasion

While today is officially my birthday (YAY!), I had a “pre-birthday” celebration over the weekend. My aunt and cousins (that I haven’t seen in over two plus years) made a road trip to visit us from NY and my brother & his girlfriend drove from VA to visit as well. I can’t tell you how much fun we had! I thought I would share a recap of my birthday weekend.

Prior to my family arriving at our house, my better half took me to our favorite winery to pick up desserts and surprised me with a gift to go flower picking. The above picture shows just one section of the rows and rows of flowers grown at a section of the winery. I found that I was the only person in the garden area. The birds were chirping, the sun was shining and there I was, with a pair of scissors in one hand along with a container filled with water. It was a tranquil and calming experience to just leisurely walk around to your favorite blooms and clip the stems that would result in a pretty bouquet.

This was the flower arrangement I created and placed in our guest room.

Since it’s no secret that I LOVE LOVE LOVE flowers, I later received a gorgeous bouquet filled with my favorite flowers from my one and only!! It was similar to the bouquet that was made for our engagement shoot. The stunning arrangement was all-white and included peonies, hydrangeas, roses, and ranunculus.

I took some of the flowers, placed them in a vase and displayed them on our ottoman tray – in the living room. The remainder of blooms are sitting pretty on my makeup vanity.

During the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday, I would always enjoy watching those heartfelt, feel-good type of movies where a family would have relatives visiting from out-of-town, their house would be filled with overnight guests and you would find the whole family gathered in the kitchen, sharing good times, all while helping prepare a meal…that was us this weekend! In the evenings, you wouldn’t find an empty glass because the wine kept flowing. On the first evening, we all gathered on the outdoor deck, sat underneath the stars, eating, drinking, laughing and telling jokes. Sounds like a movie, right? Well actually, while we did sit on the deck underneath the sky catching up and telling jokes, it was so humid, damp and there wasn’t enough candlelight to see in front of us that we had to whip out our motion spotlight to see around us but we found the humor in it all! Sunday morning included a brunch and mimosas and since it was hot as hell outside, we played fun water games in the backyard (I truly felt like a kid again)!

On their last night with us, we had already pre-planned an elaborate surf and turf dinner menu and since thunderstorms were in the forecast, I decided to create a simple tablescape inside.

When hosting a lot of overnight guests, we found ourselves cleaning a lot of dishes (you would always find my mother or aunt handwashing everything) and I didn’t want the night to end with more cleanup so I used some disposable items – the kind that are too pretty to throw out. Remember this post? I had a white and gold confetti theme with these patterned paper placemats and these ivory gold rim confetti heavyweight disposable dinner plates. To create a moody vibe, I inserted white taper candles into my mercury glass candleholders along the center of the table and in between each of them, I placed a few of my birthday flowers in clear glass cylinder vases.

After dinner, my family wanted to sing happy birthday to me but I had expressed to them that I preferred they didn’t because the evening was a celebration of all of us – like my company tag line “Celebrating All of Life’s Joys”. So I went around the table and explained that we are celebrating all of us…the recovery of my aunt who had recently undergone kidney surgery and thankful for God healing her. For my cousin who had recently received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree – so proud of her! For my brother who started his own business as a bowling pro-shop owner and who has found a wonderful woman to stand beside him, for the happy engagement of me and my longtime partner, for my mother who is blessed with a new beginning and to have her live near me, for my other cousin who is a hustler – working a full-time job as well as an entrepreneur – dedicated to pursuing his passion. To me, these are all of life’s joys that are worth celebrating so I included a tall gold taper candle in each slice of limoncello cake (one of my favorites) handed one to each family member and told everyone to make their own wish that evening.