A Fantabulistic Birthday Party

Fantabulistic. Yes, it's a word.  Yes, I made it up.

Anyways, yesterday, I celebrated my birthday with my friends.  It was, well, fantabulistic! :D I had an awesome time.

First, my grandma and I set the table and made the food.  I had brought a package of brownie mix with me from America, so I baked those.  My grandma baked a cake, and also bought some cookies.  My grandpa went and got lots and lots of strawberries.  The table looked like this:

Cookies, brownies, cake, strawberries, chocolate, strawberries, cake, brownies, cookies!  NOM!

When everyone came, we just talked for a while and then ate.  Everything was freakin' delicious.  We chatted when we were done eating, then slowly migrated over to the living room to open presents.  I got some awesome presents.  For some reason, all the pictures turned out kinda blurry, but I don't feel like taking them again.  Sorry. ;)

This is awesome.  It's a box, and Laura wrote things like "We'll miss you when you go back!" on the sides, and one side is a picture of all of us.  It's a really heartfelt gift that took a lot of effort

One Republic CD!  I love One Republic!

 Bracelet and necklace

 

You put tealights in them and they're little lanterns! :)

LOTS of nail polish!

Mini perfume and shower gel

Mini cake pan!  So cute!

This book was recommended to me by a lot of people.  Do you remember that one of the beehive award nominee books was called Ruby Red?  Well, the series is written by a German author, so this is the original!  I'm excited to read a German book that is in a genre I like to read in English too. :)

    Chocolate!

I was really excited about all my presents.  Presents are just awesome. ;) Here's a picture of all of us:

  From left to right: Sara, Sofie, Mona, me, Celina, Lisa (the one that lived in America for eight years, not my neighbor), Laura, and Nadine.

The Lisa that lived around the corner from me emailed me the day before to say she'd come an hour late.  She didn't come at all.  Oh well. :/

After presents, we all sat down at the dining room table to brainstorm ideas for what we wanted on our shirts.  I, being totally decision-challenged, sat there for about half an hour trying to think of what to do.  I think five girls did shirts that said "I <3 #*picture of tree* *picture of cat*.  Apparently, one time one of the girls said "Baumkatzen," which means "tree cats."  It doesn't exist, but now it's kind of an inside joke or something.

We all chatted throughout the entire project and laughed.  A lot. :D After we had our designs, we went to a patio to actually draw the designs on the t-shirts with fabric pens.

Working on our t-shirts

    Finished!  From left to right: Sara, Nadine, Laura (her shirt was being ironed at the time), Celina, Mona, me, Lisa

This is Laura's, which turned out the best by far.

This is mine.

We're all planning to wear our shirts when we go on our field trip to Liege, Belgium this Wednesday.  THIS WEDNESDAY!  I'm so excited.  I'm not entirely sure what we're going to do there, but I'm excited anyway!

The shirts took longer than expected (artists can't be rushed), so we barely had time to take a picture in our shirts before some of the girls had to go home.  The five of us left went down to Minini, an ice cafe.

 From left to right: Laura, Mona, Sara (and I'm on the bottom)

 The same except with Nadine this time

This marked the end of my birthday party.  I'm super happy with how it went.  I also feel like I'm a lot closer with my friends now.  Something about receiving presents from them, discussing t-shirt designs and goofing off in general seems to bring people closer. ;)

There are more pictures, and I don't know if I should put them on Facebook or not because I don't want to hurt the feelings of people who weren't invited, but, you know...

Unfortunately, I'm still sick and had to occasionally step aside and hack up a lung during my birthday party.  But it wasn't that bad... ;)

German word of the day: Richtig toll.  This is more of a phrase, but whatever.  It's pronounced RICH-tich TOHLL.  Again, the ch is made in the back of your throat.  It pretty much means 'really awesome.'  It would be used, for example, as an answer to someone asking you how your birthday party was. ;)

The Sunflower Project: Is it just me, or is that one sunflower getting more shredded? :(

I also just wanted to show you a pumpkin blossom:

Those are my grandma's gardening shoes.  They are there for size reference

So you thought that was big? (Maybe you didn't, but whatever.)  Look at the rest of the plant!  

Book update: I only read one chapter yesterday, but it's okay because I read three the day before.  Since my last post, the family has become poor because the dad's a writer who can't write.  Anyone who speaks against Hitler is thrown into jail, and that's what Anna's dad writes about.  He can't find work in Zurich, the town in Switzerland where they now live, because Switzerland wants to maintain its neutrality.  So the family moves out of the expensive hotel and into a bed and breakfast type thing on a lake.  Anna and her brother Max also start going to school again.  Anna is annoyed by the fact that the girls and boys are separated and never talk to each other, unlike her school in Berlin.  She gets annoyed to the point that when the guys are doing cartwheels and the girls are sitting and pretending not to watch, she just goes over and shows the boys how to do it properly.  On the way home from school, the guys follow her and pelt her with rocks and shoes.  It turns out that that's what they do when they have a crush on someone.  WTF?  (The f stands for fryingpan, by the way)  Oh, and I think I forgot to mention that this book is a true story....
:O