Ryan's Birthday Celebration: Flip Burger Style!

Ryan turned the big 2-9 this weekend.  To celebrate, I threw him a birthday party featuring menu items from his favorite restaurant, Flip Burger Boutique. 

We had a slider bar with a range of toppings--- pickles, pimiento cheese, jalapenos, pepper jack cheese, blue cheese, guacamole, avocado slices, sprouts, cheddar cheese, bacon, roasted red peppers, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, coleslaw, ketchup, mustard  -- you name it, we had it!

...and I have to mention the sides --- brussels sprouts with bacon (of course) and sweet potato fries!

....aaaaand last but not least: KRISPY KREME MILKSHAKES!  That's right.  We recreated the most delicious dessert offering on the Flip menu.  The ingredients are calorie-free simple-- vanilla ice cream, whole milk, and Krispy Kreme donuts.  I didn't measure exact amounts -- but I can tell you that about 6 donuts went into every "blenderful".  That's almost a full donut per shake.  (Forgive me for not taking pictures of the shakes themselves -- it was a bit of a sticky situation!)

Oh yeah -- and we had plenty of Ryan's new found favorite beer on hand.  (By the way, we were SUPER excited to find out that Costco is now carrying Guinness.  At $25 for a pack of 24 -- it's a steal!  Those suckers are over $2 each at Publix/Kroger.)

Delicious.

Thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate!  We are so blessed to have such great friends.

Cookie Party

Happy New Year!  Our holidays turned pretty hectic with the combination of travel, out-of-town guests, and a nasty cold -- so I am just getting back to the blog.  I am working on a couple of posts and hope to be less sporadic in the new year.  For today, however, my mom prepared a guest post about our recent return visit to DC (this time WITH husbands) for my Aunt Lynne's annual cookie party.  Enjoy!

In Wendy's Words...

Each year, my sister hosts a Christmas Cookie Open House for family, friends, neighbors and work associates. After hearing rumors that this might be the last year for the extravaganza, Ashley and I (along with Ken and Ryan) decided to make the journey to Alexandria to attend this year’s festivities.


After several days of sightseeing in D.C.,

Operation Cookie Party Preparation began!

Cookies were unloaded from two freezers at the house and an overflow freezer at the school where Lynne teaches. She stopped counting at 350 dozen!

Last minute touches were added to varieties that didn’t freeze well.

 

 

Saturday morning, arranging all the cookies on serving pieces was a major undertaking. Lynne has a huge collection of milk glass that she uses every year to display the cookies.

Ashley carefully arranges the ribbon cookies with all the stripes lined up in the same order.

We had to stop Grandma Britt from prying apart the cookies that were stuck together; Lynne had carefully sandwiched the chocolate stars together with raspberry preserves.

With everyone dressed in their festive attire, we began removing the saran wrap at 12:30 in anticipation of the 1:00 start time

Party Time!

The green and red color scheme of their home makes for very festive Christmas décor.

While the dining room held the most cookies, they were everywhere throughout the house.

On the desk and bookshelves in the office

On every available surface in the living room.

Even the upstairs landing had cookies.

I love how she has included her children’s early artwork in her holiday décor.

Jared’s masterpiece: “Santa in the Blender”

Clyde got into the festive spirit of the party!

Dixie was just hoping for dropped cookies.

Another Successful Cookie Party!