Birthday Recap

Yesterday was my birthday, and I'm happy to say I've had two excellent birthdays in a row. Last year's toga party was fun, but this year I opted for something more relaxed. Yesterday evening Matt took me out to a really nice restaurant, the Artichoke Cafe. I got dressed up, and wore this sweater dress that I've had for a while and not had the opportunity to wear it. Matt got me this cool bracelet I was checking out last week in Old Town, which also matched my dress. I almost bought it then, but I'm glad he got it for me. It's so neat, it's made from tagua nuts, and has sort of the look and feel of ivory but it's from a plant! It's a chunky bracelet, and I don't usually wear anything around my wrists, but I've decided I'm going to try to accessorize more.

For dinner I had the pan roasted duck breast over edamame jasmine rice with snap peas and baby carrots with a soy apricot reduction. A side car as my celebratory drink. This place also does flights of different alcohols, so we shared a flight of three different styles of tequila. Matt got the squash ravioli in sage butter sauce, he let me have a taste and it was also really good. I almost got that, but whenever it's a special occasion, I seem to always get duck because I don't have the will to make it myself and I love it. For dessert we split a chocolate orange pot de creme, that had little slices of candied orange peel and a little cookie as a garnish. Itw as the best dinner I've had in a long time. Everything was so delicious, and so pretty.

Afterward we went to the Chama River Brewing Company to meet up with some of my classmates, and I had a beer, and Fred bought me more dessert! It was dulce de leche something-er-other ice cream with chocolate and caramel and pinon nuts in a chocolate bowl. I also got to meet her special friend, John, who was visiting from Oregon.

Today we are going out for a bit with Mouse and Dave to some alpaca farms that are having open houses, but I also need to find some time to clean the apartment a bit because I'm having a wine and dessert party tonight. I invited the girls from my incoming class over, and it should be a good time. I'll have a pretty full apartment, because my place isn't that big, but we'll make it work.

Time to go clean house!