strawberries in paris

We like to party!

Oh yes we do! Just hop on over to this youtube link to enjoy some Vengaboys while you are reading this post!

So Bethany, or Beffy as I like to call her, turned 31 a few weeks ago and we had a fun bash at her house to celebrate! Lots of champagne drinking out of 89.7 cups, hugs and cake!

Had to have cake! Because I am a baking overachiever and love my friend so dearly (and had some time to devote to this project!) I went with a three tiered red velvet cake. When Bethany and I started throwing out ideas for the party I mentioned doing the Pioneer Woman Red Velvet sheet cake, cause for transporting from Frederick it would be great. But as the day approached, I wanted to up the ante and go big! See the below picture for big!

And there were lots more tasty treats that evening, go check it out below!

The main dish for the night was pulled pork so Bethany made a kick ass mac and cheese to go with it! She has this nifty old school salad shooter and it worked awesomely to shred the cheddar cheese.

And here was the mac and cheese ready to go in the oven. Seriously this was the easiest mac and cheese recipe I have ever seen! Thank you Deb for saving the day again!

It’s basically a little bit of butter for the pan and on top after cooking for a while, 1 cup of cottage cheese and 2 cups of milk, with some seasonings all blended together in the blender, and then hella lot of cheese (1 lb!) and dry macaroni! DRY MACARONI PEOPLE! Could it get any easier??

What you see is what you get and what we got was cheese heaven.

And then there was pork. I made it with this method – Bobby’s Pulled Pork. I had about a cup of his rub leftover in my pantry so I used all of that up! It was perfect for one shoulder.

Kelly made this awesome quinoa dish, with corn, red onion, goat cheese and chickpeas. Definitely perfect for the vegetarian birthday girl!

And so we ate, all 7 of us around her big dining room table (which was lovely!) and then we headed outside to play with fire!

We ended up making smores and stuff which was very fun too. And at about 9 pm we went back in to eat cake!

Here is the beautiful birthday girl with her slightly wonky red velvet cake. (I need to learn another method for putting parchment paper under the unfrosted cake to do the icing and then trying to remove it after the icing is done! Maybe smaller sheets of parchment and more of them??)

Because I am becoming obsessed with all things homemade recently, I saw this inspiration on pinterest and found the printable letters here!

And then there was the next morning. We gave everyone nice big slices to take home the night before and we had enough for Kel, Bef and I to eat for breakfast! Overall this party was a success! Can’t wait for the next one we have together! But for now my next big planning event is Martha’s Bridal Shower! It’s in 9 days! Everyone pray for good weather on the 21st!