My best friend is a blue gal, so I had to make some more birthday cake tags in blue. 
And ninja tags!
Finally, pears. I don't know why I love pears so much, but I do. They have a nice shape, nice colours, and they taste good. I personally prefer the crisper pears for eating over the mushy ones. How about you?
These little umbrella tags are the result of one of those moments. I love umbrellas, and red and white striped ones are just the thing for a perfect little rainy day tag.
And then there are these cakes... they even wish you a happy birthday! How can you go wrong? Ah, I love them. 
The little birthday cake tags are each individually drawn and coloured so they are very special and wonderful.
These little umbrella tags are a little on the difficult side to cut with my new circle cutter, so I'm not sure if I can really make many more of them. Grab them while you can if they're just your cup of tea.
Well, Beard Papa's Fresh N Natural Cream Puffs saved my life. It was big, fresh, and filled with oh-so-yummy green tea cream. My boy doesn't like green tea one bit, so this one was alllllll for me! (No complaints here!)
Then we walked over to see the giant welded men statues. There is a whole group of them and they are all doing different things. It's quite fun.
You can still see them in the distance from the inside of this restaurant called Raincity Grill which, by the way, is excellent. You'll see...
It began with tiny round sourdough rolls (that I wouldn't call home about), followed by giant saucers of creamy squash soup. There's hazelnut shortbread crumbled on top, and that green stuff is parsley. I'm not sure what that mound of brown stuff is, but it was nutty and tasted good. We suspect it's some kind of chopped up hazelnut or something like that. Either way, it tasted really, really good in the soup.
Next up was the main course. I ordered the mushroom linguine and I was surprised to find that it was not some saucy gloop. Instead, it was a neat pile of linguine bordered on both sides by generous mounds of different mushrooms.
My boy ordered the lamb cheek. It was tender and juicy, and it came with pureed potatoes (soooo good!), pureed carrots (which are surprisingly sweet and reminded me a little of childhood), little golden onions, sauteed mushrooms, tender carrots, and roasted fennel root. He loved it, but he would have preferred a different cut of lamb since he finds the cheek a little fatty for his preference.
This was my dessert. It's hazelnut cake with a poached pear, pear sorbet, a rich alcoholic cream sauce, whipped cream, and a generous topping of walnuts. I couldn't believe I was eating it. I love pear flavoured desserts and this was heaven for me. I'm still surprised I ate it. It doesn't seem possible that such a scrumptious dessert could exist for me to consume. It even had tiny cubes of a red, fruity jello on the side as decoration...
My boy's dessert was an eyeful. It's chocolate mousse, but it's paired with so many other wonderful things that it begins to go above and beyond my wildest expectations. For goodness sake, there's RASPBERRY POWDER on the side! I can only imagine that they freeze dried real raspberries and ground them into a powder form, but I was eating it like a slow motion drug addict. I looooove raspberries and these tasted like concentrated real raspberries in powder form. *swoon*
After dinner, we headed to Vanier Park to check out the new spotlight attraction. This is one of the recent additions in preparation for the Olympics taking place in Vancouver.
Every ten seconds, the spotlights move into a new configuration. My boy says that you can go online to design your own configuration, and it will be entered into a queue to be used for the actual configurations being shown.
I thought this was a really neat addition to Vancouver night life. It brightens things up, and it's really lovely too- definitely makes for some great photo ops.
In Stanley Park, we spotted another Olympic-themed photo op. These neon blue olympic rings look pretty snazzy over the water.
The look even cooler when the car is in motion!
These beautiful tulips were given to me from my sweetie a few days ahead of my birthday. He actually surprised me with a little gift every day for a week until my birthday! (He's really into special occasions *beams*) He would pick me up from school and have little treats like chocolate, bubble tea, flowers, etc, for me. It was really sweet of him.
My sister baked me a marvelous cake for my birthday. See how pretty it is? She even shaved some white chocolate to decorate the sides.
My brother "pimped" my cake slice with some extra whipping cream. Yum!
And these are some stuffed melons covered in a creamy ham and green onion sauce. She steams this dish, and each melon (I don't know what kind of melon it is...) is filled with a ground pork mixture that's really delicious. I'm drooling just thinking about it again.
There were also some other lovely surprises such as a card and gift in the mail (on the correct day! Way to go, Em!) which I thought was particularly thoughtful. My brother also got me a nifty monitor calibrating tool, so my monitor now shows proper colours.
This is the card I whipped up for him today. I used one of my newest ACEOs. This design is very versatile. It comes in rainbow colours, Christmas colours, orange tones, and red tones. I picked the orange one since it's cheerful and he likes orange/gold tones.
Inside are lots of present boxes. I figure my family can add doodles or little messages inside of them when they sign the card. 
After the dinner, I gave my dear friends some treats (because don't you ever wish that goodie bags were for grown-up parties too?) including my Unloved paper doll kit, some strawberry Pocky, and some yummy Japanese gummies (those things are so fragrant!). Then I opened all my cards and gifts. Some highlights are the ever-so-lovely pink roses that my honey gave to me, and the gorgeous bouquet of tulips that my best friend brought. 
Tulips are my favourite flowers! I love how they bend so gracefully out of a vase. See the pretty little buds that accompanied them? I can't stop looking at them. 
On the weekend, I went for a stroll with my sweetie and we found the most delicious treat at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory - a bouquet of chocolate dipped strawberries. Each luscious, juicy strawberry is on a long wooden stem and dipped in dark chocolate. It's soooo good, and the strawberries were so fresh and sweet (and big!). I would highly recommmend them for anyone looking for an ideal Valentine's day gift. Our bouquet was gone in seconds!
It was a marvelous birthday with all the trimmings a girl could wish for.
My aunt and cousin from Australia were in town and they came over to celebrate. My mother cooked up a delish meal, and my dad remembered to bring home a fresh steak for me. My dad is a genius at cooking steaks and I ask him to cook me a steak every year for my birthday. There's really no comparison to his steaks, I swear. I've eaten steaks all over the place, and Dad's steaks are still better. I'm best to just save my money and go home for the good stuff!
I had a very good time, too, with my aunt and cousin. I hope they will visit again soon. And thus another birthday passes. But, never fear, more birthday festivities are a-coming! I still have to celebrate with my dear friends this weekend. Lucky, lucky me!
*Swoon* There's nothing like a pink cake for a girl's birthday. It just seems right. I can't wait for tomorrow!
