My Birthday Extravaganza (or What I Ate For My Birthday)

My girlies...and my Carvel ice cream birthday cake.

 Since losing weight, all I can think of when I think of celebrations is food. So, for my birthday I ate. And ate...and ate. My 72 Hour Birthday Extravaganza started on my birthday eve at Chili Willi's and I practically licked the plate clean. On my birthday, Seán and I had a date night and headed to Charleston where I ate even more.


We started off at Pies and Pints, which is amazing. It's a simple concept, pizza and beer, but they take it to a whole new level.

People in the bar next door were laughing at us for this.

I'm not a beer drinker, but you can't go to someplace called Pies and Pints without getting a pint. I got the Breckinridge Vanilla Porter because, well, vanilla was in the name, so I thought that maybe I might like it. I'm so not a porter drinker. However, the more of it I drank, the better it tasted. I'd still rather have a margarita or martini.

My pint of porter.

We ordered chips and salsa for an appetizer and the salsa was exactly how I like it. It wasn't chunky and it wasn't runny. It was just right. There was a mix of traditional tortilla chips, blue chips, and red chips. So yummy! We ate the whole thing before I thought to snap a picture. The pizza itself was an event. We ordered a large with half Grape Pie (for me) and half Chipotle Chicken (for Seán) and they were so off-the-charts awesome.

16 inches of delish!

For dessert, we split the Chocolate Peanut Butter Brownie Terrine. The waitress heard it was my birthday so they comped dessert. How super sweet is that? We were literally down to the last bite before we remembered to take a picture. Yeah, it was that great.

The last bite and it's all mine!

After eating all of that, we needed to walk it off. Seriously. We strolled down to Haddad Riverfront Park to see if there was any live music. There's a Live on the Levee concert series that has music every weekend in the summer.

Getting tired of cutesy couple photos yet?

I don't listen to country music, but we hung around for a few songs from Andy Griggs.  He's good at what he does.

Andy Griggs

After we had had our fill of country, we discovered an adorable bookstore called Taylor Books where the indie band Holy Cow was performing. They sounded amazing. And I'm in love with the store. It's exactly the kind of place I'd always dreamed of when I wanted to open a bookstore.

So then we went to Krispy Kreme and picked up some lemon doughnuts. 'Cause we needed more food.

Krispy Kreme's lemon doughnut and Coldstone Creamery's Cake Batter Delux Cupcakes

We went to see Horrible Bosses. So funny I ached from laughing! (I also had some Cookie Dough Bites and half of Seán's popcorn.)

Saturday, Mom dropped by with my nieces, my birthday present, and a Carvel ice cream cake. Even my present is food-related. She picked me up the student kit and lesson book for a Wilton flowers and cake design class that I plan on taking at some point and a cake tool that creates the decorative ridges on the sides of cake. And there was a beautiful blank book that she suggested I use for recipes.

I have just enough time to learn to make icing flowers for Mom's birthday.

And Sunday...Seán picked me up some Coldstone Creamery Cake Batter Delux Cupcakes. "A Rich Belgian Chocolate Cup filled with a layer of moist Red Velvet Cake, Fudge & Cake Batter Ice Cream® & topped with fluffy Pink Frosting & Rainbow Sprinkles." That's lifted from their site. For the record, the ones I had were cream and lavender, not pink. And they're as delicious as they sound.

I think I'm going to explode.