Birthday Celebrations

We celebrated my birthday this weekend, and Dean planned all sorts of fun goodies and surprises for me! I'm a lucky girl.

Call us dorky, but one of our favorite radio programs to listen to on NPR is "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," the Oddly Informative News Quiz! They have a portion called the Listener Limerick Challenge where listeners have to complete a limerick about a current event/news tidbit by filling in the last word. Anyway, Dean knows that I love NPR and limericks, so he decided to create a series of limericks for me to solve for my birthday - each leading to a present!

Look how nicely wrapped the gifts are. He even used my twine and followed my present-wrapping tutorial to wrap the movie. :)

I told Dean not to get me a big present this year because I got an iPhone recently (which I adore, btw), but he picked out a few small gifts for me that he knew I'd like. Okay, maybe he had some help from my Amazon wishlist...

My favorite gift was the custom DIY stamp kit!! Isn't this the coolest thing ever??? It comes with two font sizes and two wooden-handled stamps, so you can create customized messages, notes, address, gift tags...even limericks. :)


My birthday festivities started out on Saturday with lunch at Bay Cities Italian Deli, where we tried their infamous Godmother sandwich. It was chock-full of tasty Italian deli meats, cheeses, and lathered with spread and some veggies. We also got some of their hot mac 'n cheese, a loaf of crusty bread, and cute, single-serving nutella packs. The store was really busy that day, so we didn't get to explore much, but I do hope to go back and explore more soon.

Our next stop was the Eames House, the home of my favorite American designers, Charles and Ray Eames. I've admired this house on the pages of textbooks and magazines, but it was another experience altogether to see and experience it in person. I'll share more photos and thoughts in another post about the Eames House.

I happened to read somewhere that Takami Sushi was donating 100% of its profits to the Red Cross Japan Relief Fund, so we decided to check out this ultra-hip sushi restaurant located on the 21st floor of the Wilshire building downtown.

The view from the restaurant was pretty amazing. They had this really neat indoor/outdoor wrap-around patio area that offered a really great view of downtown LA. It felt like you were sitting inside a building, but you could definitely hear/smell/feel the air outside.

The food was okay, not extraordinary, but we only had food from the lounge menu for happy hour. I think the best part was just the environment and the view (and my lychee saketini). Admittedly, though, we felt a bit out of place amongst all the hip and glamorous Angelinos there.

Afterward, we stopped by the LACMA to check out artist Chris Burden's Urban Light exhibit. Burden apparently collected the 202 old city street lamps over a period of six or seven years and restored them to create this installation, meant to create a connection between the LACMA and the Broad Museum of Contemporary Art next door, as well as to passersby and the community.



And our last stop of the night was at Doughboys, because what's a birthday without cake?

Thanks, D., for a sweet and memorable day, and thanks to all my family and friends for all the birthday wishes!