Sally's Birthday + Art Fest

Yesterday was Sally's birthday. She's my oldest friend (in number of years that we've been friends... which is 29) and one of my best friends. We only made up some plans the day before. Somehow Sally is not as into celebrating her birthdays now that we've reached into a certain age. That's NOT what I believe! I think we should celebrate no matter what our age, so I took it upon myself to show Sally a good time on her birthday!

We met at The Linkery in North Park. It is one of those "farm to table" restaurants, where they will tell you exactly where they got all the ingredients that go into their food. (Which farmers, even.) They also have craft beer on tap. I'm not into beer so I was there for the food. Todd and I got there first and secured a table.



Sally and Stacy (our other friend whom we've known since we were 12 years old) walked up shortly after.  Here's Stacy and Todd's side of the table.


We ordered our food and waited patiently for it to come out.

Yesterday was not a day for diets.  My little farm fresh hamburger (upper left) had grass-fed beef, an egg, and bacon on it, along with grilled onions, a Meyers lemon sauce, and marinated cucumbers.  Sally and Stacy shared a fish sandwich (yellowtail) and some cheese crostini.  Todd got their homemade sausage. 

Sally asked Todd if he actually gets to EAT his food, or he only gets to pose with his food for his crazy photo-taking wife. Hee hee! "Todd Shots" wouldn't be quite as fun if he didn't actually get to eat his food!


A beer cheer for Sally and Stacy.


I presented Sally with her birthday gift. A little something handmade that I worked on this week. Full details coming this Wednesday for my New 52 blog post. Todd forgot to take photos when I actually presented the gift to Sally, so we had to re-enact it after our meal. You know you have a great friend when they always agree to "re-enact" scenes from your life so you can get photos of it, ha ha! :p





However, this reaction is genuine. Sally really loved my gift so much that she gave me a huge squeeze!


After lunch, we walked down the block, literally like 2 minutes, to Heaven Sent Desserts for some birthday cupcakes. We sang "Happy Birthday" to Sally before she dug into her Guinness cupcake. I think she loved it.



Stacy and I both got the red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting pictured in lower right.  Upper left is Sally's Guinness cupcake with whiskey frosting.  Lower left and upper right are both pictures of the same bread pudding with ice cream that Todd got.  He got a HUGE portion!

I told Sally that I loved the sentiment on the wall, so she went and posed for me. I really love a friend who poses for pictures!


After dessert, we walked around the North Park Festival of Arts. We really needed to walk around after eating!




There was a pretty good local Ska band there.

Lots of food, art, and craft vendors, plus several music stages and a flamenco dance demonstration. Cool stuffs, and such a gorgeous day after the clouds burned off!

Around 5:00PM, we walked over to Ranchos Mexican to get some takeout dinner to bring home. Ranchos is the only Mexican restaurant I know in San Diego that specializes in natural and vegetarian Mexican food. I ordered a tofu enchilada! While waiting for our food to take out, we ran into our friends Yaiza and Karsten! We have run into them at the most random places all around San Diego! A pic of Todd and Yaiza.


After picking up our dinner, we said goodbye to Sally and Stacy and headed home. I had a great time celebrating Sally's birthday. I hope she did too! Post coming Wednesday on the handmade gift I gave her. :)