October is flying by! Whew! As I mentioned in my last post, October is always an exciting month because it’s a month of birthdays! Almost all of my family member’s birthdays are in October, including mine. It was a very eventful month, so I felt it was necessary to give a recap of the birthday festivities and share some photos of the amazing food we’ve indulged in over the last month. After all, I appreciate eating food just as much as I enjoy cooking it, if not more.

Jurassic Park themed cake by Sandra’s Cake Studio.

My husband celebrated his 30^th birthday on Oct. 1 and we celebrated by throwing him a surprise birthday party in Baltimore! Back story, I’ve been asking Derek for months what he wanted for his birthday and he continued to tell me he wanted a surprise party. Who asks for their own surprise party? I think that is a little contradictory to the whole premise of it being a surprise. I continued to shut him down on his request for a surprise party, telling him it was too much work, too expensive and ridiculous that he would ask for his own surprise party. Little did he know that I was going to make his birthday wish come true and he was SO surprised!

Surprise!

All our family, friends and co-workers joined us for a fun night in Baltimore. The party theme was Jurassic Park (one of Derek’s favorite movies). We even had a beautiful Jurassic Park themed cake designed by Sandra’s Cake Studio. The cake was a strawberry cake, filled with strawberry butter cream with fondant accents. It looked and tasted amazing!

Derek’s 30th surprise birthday party.

On Oct. 4, I celebrated my 28^th birthday. I unfortunately had to work, but luckily my mom drove out to my office and took me to a birthday lunch at The Grill at Harryman House, a local restaurant in Reistertown, MD. This is one of my favorite restaurants near my office. It’s super quaint, the servers are super friendly, and the food is delicious. I had a cobb salad, topped with blackened chicken that was perfectly seasoned. After work, Derek and I celebrated with dinner and a quiet, relaxing night at home.

Lunch at The Grill at Harryman House with my mom.

My brother Dylan’s birthday was Oct. 13 and his girlfriend Anna’s birthday was on Oct. 11. Finally, my mom’s birthday was Oct. 17. So to wrap up our birthday season, we had one last big birthday dinner towards the end of the month to celebrate all of our birthdays. We exchanged birthday presents, laughed a lot and topped the night off with some yummy desserts. It’s always so wonderful to celebrate birthdays with our family.

Our second annual October Birthdays Celebration.

Now that it is almost November, I am super pumped to post some fall inspired recipes I’ve been working on. Be on the lookout for two new recipes I will be sharing in the coming weeks, which include a fall inspired side dish and a pumpkin dessert that is perfect for Thanksgiving! And soon to come, Christmas treats galore with my annual Christmas cookie baking frenzy. Fall really is the most wonderful time of the year!