Just Lauren

Brittany’s birthday party = complete.

With Elisabeth’s help, I created quite a lovely charcuterie picnic spread yesterday evening, complete with a build your own peanut butter pickle sandwich station. Did anyone else know that was a thing? It’s one of Brittany’s favorite (and weirdest) combinations, so I had to offer it at the party. Turns out peanut butter, bread and butter pickles, and bread, is quite a tasty combination once I gave it a try. I would eat that again, and in fact, did make a half a sandwich of it for my lunch today.

Brittany is really into black, so the tablecloth, plates, and napkins were solid black with the only hint of color being the flowers I bought for decoration. I mean come on, it’s me, I can’t do anything without a tiny bit of color at least. I also made it mandatory that all the guests dress in black in honor of Brittany. As Brittany walked towards me and Elisabeth she told us we looked like we were going to a funeral. I’m not sure I agree with that statement, especially since we were dancing and smiling, but okay, it’s her party, I’ll go with it this one time. 😉

We sat around visiting and eating for quite a while before giving a go at a charades type game. Turns out we don’t all have similar tastes so when I chose “Hobbiton” as my place and “Lin Manuel Miranda” as my person, not everyone knew what I was talking about. I think I need to introduce some of these ladies to Lord of the Rings and Hamilton. To be fair though, I needed help remembering who Steven Tyler was and I couldn’t remember Dita Von Teese’s last name. We just run in different circles. We all laughed a lot though so the confusion was worth it. And while it rained a bit on us and the wind threatened to knock everything down, neither lasted long enough to cause us to run and the evening ended with a pleasant calm and pretty sunset.

So my weekend was good but tiring. Before the party (because all I did after the party was sit on the couch), Elisabeth and I hung up curtains on our balcony. Next level, I tell you! Look at the evening sun shining through the curtains in that picture. Look at that cool little greenery mural I put above our table. I’m just in love with the space more and more. It’s so f***ing pleasant! If covid wasn’t a thing I’d be inviting everyone around to come have some dessert and tea* on my balcony. One of these days, it’ll happen.

*You’d have to bring your own tea.

Tonight for dinner we had breakfast, which meant I finally got around to making vegan biscuits thanks to a recipe Martha sent me a while back. I was a little nervous because it called for solid coconut oil and the stuff we had had been left out so it was pretty not solid, but 15 minutes in the freezer and it was good to go. The biscuits flattened out a bit, like most vegan baked goods tend to do, but other than that they turned out. I had four of them, so that’s saying something. I made the Just Eggs my mom let me have from the other week and we finished our Beyond breakfast sausage to make a complete breakfast. Do commercials still say that?

Now it’s time for me to stretch and say goodnight. Today passed by so quickly.