Happy July Birthdays

At the end of July, we're always getting ready for a few days of birthday celebrations with our two best friends, SW and JL, who were born just three days apart. Sometimes I think we end up celebrating on those days in-between too, so they get just a combined half a week of birthday fun. Lucky guys!

For SW's big day, we went and visited his new home. SW moved into a house near his part of the UNT campus, the week before. How exciting! Needless to say, the rest of us are addicted to HGTV and our Trulia and Zillow maps, so we're totally jealous. It's kind of our dream to just fill up our own cul-de-sac one day, so our kids can all grow up together.

I didn't have any wrapping paper at our place (besides my hoards of Christmas paper, which I didn't want to use for a birthday), so JL and I wrapped our gifts with some leftover SOFIA fabric from my above-the-cabinet kitchen project. 

After opening gifts, we headed to the movie theater to see The Wolverine, which I only slept through a few minutes of (I can't do late movies, you guys. Gotten too old, I guess). 

The next day, we started birthday celebration #2. JL was going to be working on his actual day, so we started the festivities early. My husband wanted to figure out a better way to give money than just handing a stack of bills, so he used this tutorial to create some origami. 

When JL got to our house, we told him we bought him a few shirts for his birthday. Confused, he walked into our room and saw these cute polos. I think he likes these, more than any clothes we could have picked out for him!

I got to mark another Summer bucket list item off the list, baking a cake. It's definitely not how I imagined that one, since I baked and decorated this one in about an hour, but it is done and I ended up loving the ombre look!

I meant to get a picture of me with my cake creation, but it was immediately cut into, right front and center...and what kind of piece was that? A square from a circular cake?

After my cake was brutally mangled, we went to Best Buy for what seemed like 3 hours, looking at computers. JL planned on buying one for his birthday and being a group of nerds (the guys, not me), they took their sweet time looking over every single detail of each and every brand and type. Fun times. 

Eventually, we made our way to a bowling alley. Thanks to Groupon, we got 2 hours for $25. Sweet. We used our two hours wisely and got in 4 full games. 3 of which, I was in the 100's which is pretty much the best I've ever bowled. 

As the Summer starts winding down, it's nice to have a couple of reasons to celebrate and eat some cake. It's always a good day when there's a reason for cake, right?