Birthday Fun!

TO ME!

Well, actually, yesterday was my birthday, but we were gone most of the day and I was exhausted when we were finally home at night.  Don’t mind the droopy icing – it was a hot day and the cake spent some time in a hot car so until I got to take the pic, it got a little droopy (kind of like my eyes last night too!).

We started off the morning going to the Shady Maple Smorgasbord for breakfast.  It’s this huge buffet place in Lancaster, and when you go on your birthday, you get your meal for free!  :)   I love their breakfast buffet, especially the made-to-order pancake grill.  Best pancakes ever – I get the cinnamon chips only, but you name it, and they will probably be able to make it!  After that, we spent some time in the gift shop, and then headed to another little shopping area called Kitchen Kettle Village.  I love going there and sampling all the goodies in the food shops and looking at all the little trinkets and souvenirs.  I even got a birthday present from hubby while we were there!   :)   It caught his eye first, he thought I would like it, and showed it to me, and I ended up bringing it home:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t think jewelry has to be full of diamonds or super expensive or come from a fancy schmancy jeweler to be beautiful…this certainly doesn’t fit any of the categories above, and I think it’s one of the prettiest necklaces I have ever owned.  :)   So, after walking around for too long in flip flops that weren’t made for extended walking (funniest moment of the day: I ended up losing one through a set of steps going up to the second floor of one of the shops – it literally fell through the steps back down to the first floor, and hubby had to retrieve it for me…thankfully it didn’t land on anyone’s head or break any merchandise!), and eating so much junk from the buffet and then sampling the goodies at the village, we left with this necklace and a really yummy looking loaf of cheese bread (haven’t even sampled that yet, but looking forward to eating some later!), and started to head for home…that is until my mom asked me the one question I couldn’t resist saying yes to (much to hubby’s dismay) – did I want to stop at the Flower and Craft Warehouse?  OF COURSE!!!  Imagine the biggest craft and gift store you have ever been to, with reduced prices!  Needless to say, I came home from there with some new beads and jewelry supplies, and a wooden coaster set to decorate for a new project.  I hope to get to the jewelry this week, because I bought seashell/beachy beads, and since I’m going on vacation very soon, I’d like to wear it then (so look for pictures later this week).  Finally, we made one last stop in Lancaster at a local farmer’s stand for some fresh picked produce, stopped for the cake on the way home, and came home for a short while to decide on dinner.  We ended up at a little sandwich shop here that hubby and I had never been to, but my dad loves because they brought back the famous “Reading Fair Mushrooms”.  Now we’re in trouble, because even though we haven’t been eating so great recently, we are still trying to eat better, and this place is now my hubby’s favorite local sandwich shop.  It’s called Oliver’s Place, and mainly serves your typical sub shop fare, but they have a few items that intrigued us, and were absolutely delicious!  We split and shared a wrap filled with prosciutto, salami, provolone, tomato, lettuce and onion and a panini made with fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, tomato, and pesto.  The fries were some of the best fries I have ever gotten from a place like that, and it was a nice little place.  Nothing fancy or especially spectacular, but had a nice 50’s diner feel with very nice people.  I’m sure we will definitely end up back there more times than our Wii Fit would appreciate.  (If you live in the Reading area – go there!  It’s delicious!)  Finally, we ended up at my grandmother’s place to eat the cake, play a couple Wii games, and come home exhausted and way too full of junk.  Overall, it was a pretty good day!   :)