Laurelai's First Birthday

Jennifer and John's puppy Laurelai celebrated her first birthday on Sunday at Lake Griffy. It was a beautiful day, and we all got to sit by the lake and eat cupcakes. Although some of us were actually eating something called pupcakes.

Party hats were worn (for a couple of seconds), and gifts were opened (with teeth), and then we all went on a walk in the woods.

Laurelai was very pleased with the success of her first party.

Fondant and Festivities

On Saturday, I went to Jon and Erin's party to celebrate their wedding. We played board games and ate delicious food ...

... including this incredible cake, which Erin and her friend made in the shape of a Scrabble board! All the words are significant, and every detail was there, even little fondant tile holders.

Erin's Bachelorette Party

Congratulations Erin and Jon!! They got married yesterday at City Hall. Last weekend, Jennifer and I went to a fun bachelorette party for Erin hosted by several of her friends. Erin is the one in the feather boa and tiara, and the other bachelorettes (some honorary) are Meg, Jennifer, Karen, Mayme, and Tina.

They planned a really fun party at which we did each other's hair and nails, played lots of games, ate chocolate fondue, and had a massage therapist giving hand, foot, and shoulder massages.
And I don't know whether you can see this, but there was also a cat providing entertainment at the party. She obviously chose my lap because she matched my outfit so well!

Christmas at the Dunns'

Monday night was Mike and Sally Dunn's annual Christmas party. It's always a particularly beautiful event: you walk down a long garden path lit with twinkly lights, and you enter a lovely house full of people enjoying themselves. Also, there is always a table of delicious cakes.

We used the nighttime setting on our camera, though, and all our pictures turned out sort of strange. Here are David and John re-staging their conversation so I can get a picture.
The nighttime setting made the light of the lamp and the Christmas tree blaze behind John, Jennifer, Jon, and Erin.

Erin's Craft Party

This is my friend Jennifer and her adorable, if glowing-eyed, puppy Laurelai. Jennifer has amazing taste and style, and ever since we met in the third grade, she has been introducing me to many of my favorite things: chocolate-covered pretzels, They Might Be Giants, fern motifs, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sanibel Island, Jim Jarmusch, mu shu vegetables ... the list is endless. She is responsible both for my beading career (by telling me about Etsy) and for my music career (by introducing me to her husband, John of Adeptive Radiation). Yesterday Jennifer invited me to go with her to a craft party hosted by her future sister-in-law Erin.

Jennifer's brother Jon, his fiancee Erin, and Jennifer.

These were the ingredients of Erin's successful craft party: a gorgeous house with lots of light and color and comfortable seating, lots of tasty snacks, a cute dog who will run around and entertain everyone, and a group of women with different and interesting projects to share with one another, including cross-stitching, knitting, crocheting, applique, and bead-weaving. And this is how you know that your craft party is successful: when your guests are having so much fun that they stay for five hours!

And this is a picture of Laurelai in which you can see that she is not demonic, but instead incredibly cute.