Candles and Tiaras

The Birthday Princess #14

The Memorial Day weekend is always filled with lots of activity at the Brian household. It usually involves a birthday party for Madeline on Friday-Saturday and then the holiday on Monday. This year was a little different.

Madeline forgoes a #14 birthday party in anticipation of a larger than usual party for her "Sweet 16" coming up in two years. She has a lunch, movie, shopping afternoon with mom and a birthday dinner on Sunday night. Never one to shy away from a tiara, she wore one the afternoon she lunched and shopped. It was a must to put one on her cake, although it was an impromtu idea and not executed to perfection, but close enough.

Chocolate ganache tiara cake


My dear friend Janeen and family (husband Tom and daughters Rachel and Sophie) came out for the Sunday-Monday leg of the holiday weekend. Janeen's birthday is May 26, which happened to be on Memorial Day this year, as it seems to be a lot. We celebrated by going to the Emerald Bay country picnic and the beach.

Memorial Day Country Picnic

I can't remember a single Memorial Day that wasn't nice and warm, it was cool this year; it rained the night before, but we made it to the beach and almost took off our cover-ups.

For dinner we had a nice meal and then dug into a strawberry/lemon trifle I made for Janeen as she requested. It was exactly what I made myself for my own birthday. She has a refined pallette.

Janeen and her Birthday Trifle

Janeen is a friend I've had the longest. We have known each other our entire lives, our moms were both unwittingly pregnant at girl's camp, as camp counselors, the summer before we were born. When my mom remarried and was relocating to Riverside, CA from Simi Valley, CA the summer before my senior year of high school I refused to go unless Janeen could come with me. Somehow we convinced both sets of parents to let Janeen move to Riverside for the year (negotiations started with a semester). We ended up having the best school year we could ever remember, it was a blast.

Class of "85"

Reasons for loving being in the class of 85:

-we ushered in the era of Madonna and New wave music (KROQ)

-we got to wear colored eye shadow

-peroxide highlights

-bangs to heaven

-costumish clothing (we had leggings first)

-we had childhoods in the granola and disco "70s"

-no grunge era

- we were all glam