Last week we spent a couple days celebrating Brian’s 30th birthday. He did such a great job with mine in September that I really wanted to make his day special.
The gift creating had been in progress for months. I saved up my earnings from my second job (which we had allotted to me to use to further this site) to give him a trip to Montreal. Since I knew he didn’t want to be “kidnapped” or surprised with an immediate trip (and we don’t have time to take one right now), he received his gift in 3 parts, to be opened in order: his passport, a printout of my Paypal balance and a Montreal guide book. He was pretty excited.
Even though I thought the Montreal trip was an awesome gift, Brian seemed just a pleased by the other items he got: the LEGO bird kit, the Kickstarter Ctrl-Alt-Del web comic book set and a tower of beer.
I first saw the idea for the “beerthday cake” on Cassie’s blog months ago and knew immediately that I would make one for Brian. I purchased the cake boards at Michael’s and then spent too much time at the liquor store picking out singles to stack. As Cassie notes in her post, it’s pretty important to make sure that the beers are the same height. I also wanted to make sure that I got 30 beers that Brian would really like and he is not an IPA person. There are a lot of IPAs out there, I discovered. It’s a little scary to stack 30 beers, especially since I was unable to find enough cans for a layer and used all bottles. But, the tower held and Brian was really excited when he saw it.
The next day we continued celebrating Brian with a small party. As always, I did my best to make sure there was a good spread of food. As the party was for Brian, and not me, the spread was slightly different from normal. As always, I made vegetarian buffalo chicken dip (which was a big hit). Even though that may have been enough spicy food, I also put out a can on Blue Diamond Sriracha almonds and chips and salsa. The almonds are good, but the taste isn’t as close to Sriracha as I’d like. Still, other people enjoyed trying them and thought the spice was good.
I also made slow cooker meatballs and used a silicone mold to make LEGO candies with candy melts. I wasn’t sure how well the molds would work or how good the chocolate would taste, but I didn’t have a problem with either and many guests commented on how much they liked them. I will definitely be making them again.
Despite Brian’s birthday being in the midst of the busiest week ever, we had a great time celebrating. I hope his next 30 years are even better than the first 30!
Disclosure: Sriracha almonds provided by Blue Diamond as part of the Tastemakers program. This post contains affiliate links. As always, my opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting Relishments!
