On Valentine’s Day, a bunch of my high school girlfriends and I drove up to Philadelphia for a day trip to visit our dear friend Debbie! (Dan was a great sport about watching the girls while I got to spend time with my friends, and we had already had our own Valentine’s celebrations in the days prior.) Jen, Mimi, and I headed out in the morning, and got to Philly in time to enjoy soup dumplings for lunch with Debbie! Juli flew in to join us afterwards for post-lunch dessert at Audabon Bakeshop!
Audabon Bakeshop with the ladies
Mimi and I at lunch right before.
Neat signage at Audabon Bakeshop
Delicious macarons from Audabon Bakeshop
Strawberry brick toast at Audabon Bakeshop
It was so amazing that it necessitates posting another angle of it.
Walking to The Barnes Foundation museum as the flurries fell around us.
Lovely Mimi!
Us at the Barnes Foundation
The snow made everything look so romantic!
Cool crystals hanging from the ceiling of the museum.
Juli, Debbie, and Jen at dinner
We enjoyed dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant called Kanella. We didn’t realize that we’d be dining off of their Valentine’s menu, so it ended up being quite a meal!
shepherd’s pie
lamb chops
Lobster from Kanella
Chocolate cake with lavender ice cream. My favorite dessert there!
This was also delicious.
Our day trip to Philly was quite eventful! It was a fun and memorable day, and it was so enjoyable getting to spend Valentine’s Day with these amazing ladies!
We got caught in a bit of a blizzard on the way so it took us a while to get home, but thankfully we made it back in one piece around 2 in the morning. Can’t wait until we are all reunited again!
A couple weekends ago, a couple of my dearest friends threw me the most beautiful baby shower for our second baby. After all the baby shower love we had received when we were expecting Mio, I really didn’t expect any sort of shower or celebration this time around, and I’d even read that it’s bad form to have a baby shower for subsequent babies beyond your first child. But my best friend Debbie insisted that she wanted to plan an intimate get-together on a small scale to celebrate the arrival of baby #2, especially since she wasn’t able to plan one for Mio’s birth (since we were in California at the time). She enlisted the help of one of my other closest friends, Hanna, and together they threw me a truly lovely storybook-themed baby shower! Everything was so beautiful and had so much detail and thought put into it, but at the same time the pace and tone of the shower was really cozy and relaxed, which I loved. Here are some snapshots from the celebration!
Beautiful flowers and storybooks as decorations for the shower.
Hanna, who I became close friends with while we were both studying graphic design in college, designed the lovely invitations and the printed decorations/labels for the shower.
 The front of the folded invitation: I love the detail in it, like “Misono’s Recipes” and “Mio’s Schoolbox” incorporated into the books and boxes of the design.
Back of the folded invitation
The inside of the baby shower invitation… Gorgeous!
A lovely bookmark to accompany the invitation.
There was no shortage of delicious food! Both Debbie and Hanna are amazing in the kitchen, and the refreshments and desserts they prepared were both beautiful and mouthwatering…
An amazing spread of delicious food!
All the food was labeled/named with children’s book references — it was so cute!
Strega Nona’s Chicken Alfredo Pasta and Cloudy with a Chance of BBQ Meatballs!
Charlie and the Chocolate Green Tea Cupcakes
If You Give a Mouse a Chocolate Chip Cookie with Miso Buttercream Frosting
The dessert table with the chocolate cupcakes with green tea frosting, and chocolate chip cookies.
Debbie is amazing at making homemade jam and preserves. She prepared these jars of orange cranberry preserves with grand marnier for the guests to take home as favors. Hanna designed the tags to match the invitation and the rest of the decor of the shower!
Catching up over delicious refreshments
Supplies for onesie and bib crafts! My friends know me so well. This is just the kind of activity I love to do!
Working on handmade onesies and bibs for the baby.
The bib I worked on.
Elisa’s adorable strawberry bib
With Pat. So glad she could make time to come to the shower, even as a busy mama of two! I have much to learn from her as I prepare for our own second baby.
Showing off our creations.
Hanna, Debbie, and I with our completed bibs. Loved Hanna’s sushi bib and Debbie’s giraffe bib! So creative. 🙂
After the crafting fun, it was time to open gifts! Dan and I really didn’t need anything this time around, since we already have most of our baby gear and all the baby clothes from Mio (especially since we’re having another girl — the perks of having children of the same gender!), and knowing this, my girlfriends gifted us books for the baby. Such a great idea, since you can never have enough books! I love that we now have so many more books to add to the girls’ library.
Reading everyone’s thoughtful cards and opening presents.
Thank you everyone for the thoughtful gifts! The ladies also all chipped in to buy me a beautiful baby mobile that I had been looking at on Etsy.
A group picture together. Thank you everyone for coming!
The beautiful tassel garland that Debbie made! It’s definitely going in the baby’s nursery.
Can’t thank these girls enough for all that they do for me!
Thank you Debbie and Hanna for planning and hosting such a beautiful baby shower! I’ll remember it always. Our second baby is so lucky that she got to have such a lovely celebration of her own to welcome her into the world. I’m so blessed to have friends like you in my life, along with all the ladies that attended the shower. (Special thanks to Dan, too, for staying home and watching Mio so that I could have a relaxing time at the party!)
My best friend Debbie moved up to Philadelphia earlier this year for her postdoc, and I’ve been wanting to visit her for a while now. Dan assured me that he could watch Mio for a weekend while I took the bus up from DC to go hang out with her, so I was able to finally make the trip this past weekend! As much as I missed Mio and Dan while I was away, it was so nice and relaxing to take a break from motherhood for a couple days and enjoy some girlfriend time. I’ve known Debbie since we were freshmen in high school, and my fondest memories are of us hanging out in college together, being roommates and watching movies and just chatting and pigging out on delicious eats. Last weekend felt almost like those good old college days all over again!
I woke up at dark o’clock to go into DC and take the bus from Union Station up to Philly, and got there in the late morning. We promptly headed over to Chinatown to get some dim sum!
Dim sum at Ocean Harbor. We ordered a lot more on top of this, but the dumplings are always my favorites!
After brunch, we got us some bubble teas and walked around some of the parks in Philadelphia and UPenn’s campus.
Domino sculptures in Philly
Giant gamepieces
In the city of brotherly love!
Cool structure in the middle of UPenn’s campus
Later in the afternoon, we went to the movie theater and watched Sofia Coppola’s latest film The Bling Ring. It was really interesting, especially because it’s based on true events and how accurate its portrayal is.
Stopping by Magpie for some delicious pie!
The menu at Magpie. So hard to choose!
We settled on Berry Lavender Crumb.
Digging in!
For dinner, we had gourmet banh mi with slow-cooked chicken and duck confit. So amazing!
We stayed up late chatting and watching criminal documentary shows like 48 Hours, and reminiscing about high school and college days! It felt like we were in our old dorm room 251 Slusher all over again (except Debbie’s apartment is much much nicer!). We got to sleep in until almost 11am the following morning (unheard of these days as Mio is usually sure to wake me by at latest 8am), and then we went out to get some lunch before I had to catch the bus to go back down to DC.
Eating shabazzi fried chicken from Federal Donuts at Rittenhouse Square.
Goodbye Philly, it’s been a fun (and delicious) weekend!
Many thanks to Debbie for her awesome hospitality and taking me around to eat so many delicious things and see such cool sights in Philadelphia! I felt like we ate so much in a short weekend — my tummy, heart and soul returned to DC full and happy. ♥ Thank you so much bestest!
Last Saturday, my high school girlfriends and I threw our dear friend Mimi a bridal shower! After getting engaged with a very romantic proposal last October, Mimi and Sujay just tied the knot earlier this month in San Diego with a spur-of-the-moment, intimate marriage/elopement(!) ceremony. While some of our friends were able to attend the beautiful ceremony, half of us couldn’t make it because of scheduling conflicts, and we all wanted to gather to celebrate this wonderful occasion with Mimi! Our friend Juli rallied all of us together and assigned us different tasks to create a lovely and memorable post-wedding bridal shower for the bride.
My best friend Debbie and I were put in charge of cooking and baking all the food for the shower, and we had a great time planning the menu together and cooking together the day of. Thank you Angel for letting us use your kitchen and stepping in to help us with the cooking — we couldn’t have done it without you!
I baked and decorated these sugar cookies for the shower in the days before. Mimi had had a henna night prior to her wedding ceremony, so I piped some henna-inspired decorations on the purple cookies. The amount of detail was challenging, but I’m happy with the result!
The bestest hard at work making matcha frosting. She was the true star chef of the day!
Me piping Debbie’s olive oil cupcakes, filled with blood orange jam.
A delicious banh mi bar.
Debbie’s amazing gluten-free chocolate cake with matcha frosting. SO GOOD!
Another look at my sugar cookies.
I assembled these easy strawberry feta skewers with mint leaves.
A simple favorite: mini baked potatoes topped with sour cream, chives, and bacon bits.
The glowing bride arrives!
Mimi telling us about her wedding day, followed by bridal shower games!
Mimi is all smiles! 🙂
Time to open presents.
Everyone watching Mimi open her gifts.
Some of the ladies at the bridal shower! (Missing Xiaolu and Stephanie and some other girls who had to leave early…)
Hugs!
Thank you Juli for organizing everything and making sure it all went off without a hitch!
Special thanks to Angel for hosting, and to Michelle and Xiaolu who handled the decorations and favors!
Chefs for the day Debbie and I with the bride. We love you Mimi!
A picture of us high school girlfriends together! I love these ladies. 🙂
I’m so happy we could come together to shower Mimi with love and wishing her the best! She looked so happy with a newlywed glow to her, and just seeing her and Sujay makes us so happy. They are such a great couple and are just so adorable together when you watch them because you can see how in love they are. With that, I’ll end with this breathtaking picture from their wedding that shows just that!
Happily ever after ♥ Congratulations Mimi & Sujay!
My best friend Deborah is hands down the most fashionable girl I know, and she’s always spoiling Mio with the cutest outfits. Mio has been wearing the Missoni onesie that she got her for almost six months now! (Amazing that she still fits in it!) For Mio’s upcoming birthday, Debbie sent her these adorable DVF ♥ GAP outfits! I didn’t even know that Diane von Furstenberg was doing a collaboration with GAP, but leave it to bestest to be on top of such big fashion news! The clothing from the collection is super cute.
Mio is looking oh-so-sophisticated as a stylish fashionista in her new designer duds!
She has been climbing up on the gate lately, much to our dismay. Where does she get such strength and athleticism?
Asian lady squat!
One week away from turning one year old!
Rocking the DVF ♥ Gap onesie.
Complete with red shorts (from Miyoung)
Love the adorable print!
I love these “democratization of fashion” collaborations that are becoming more common these days! I couldn’t help but pick up a Jason Wu for Target dress for myself just the other day! (The whole collection had initially all sold out at our local Target, but I happened to go shopping a couple weeks later and found that someone had returned one in just my size! Lucky me!) Hooray for high fashion at affordable prices.
Thank you so much, bestest, for the adorable clothes for Mio! Thanks to Debbie, Mio’s the best-dressed kid on the playground! 😉
