Celebrations in the Summer

This blog post will be a little different. My posts are usually about something I baked or somewhere I traveled, but there hasn't been any traveling for me this year and my last few posts were on baking so I wanted to switch it up a bit!

Summer is my favorite time of year, specifically the past few weeks. Between June 22nd and July 11th Jon and I get to celebrate our birthdays and our wedding anniversary. This year, we celebrated my 29th birthday, our 4th wedding anniversary, and Jon's 30th birthday. We've celebrated many birthdays in Pittsburgh before, but this year was different because we actually live here finally!

Obviously celebrations of any kind are quite different this year because of COVID-19, but we still tried to make the best of it! For my birthday, it just so happened that two local photographers were doing a pop-up shoot ON MY ACTUAL BIRTHDAY! I clearly had to go because Jenna is someone I've been following on instagram and I love her work. I also wanted to support a great cause since they were collecting donations for each five minute shoot. I worked on my birthday since it was a Monday, but after work Jon and I headed straight to Schenley Park for the pop-up shoot. We had a BLAST in those few minutes and got some really cute photos. Check out Solich Photo + Film and Hannah Lee Photography - they are great and so fun to work with!

After taking photos, we went to The Porch for dinner since it was right near Schenley Park. The food was great and I would definitely go back there again! We then walked down to Dave and Andy's to get some ice cream and then walked around Schenley Park a bit since we've never been down there before. Jon then drove us up to the lookout at Mount Washington. It was POURING down rain when we pulled up so we waited in the car for a few minutes and then went to the lookout once it cleared out. It was a beautiful view of the city and there was a gorgeous rainbow. It was the perfect evening...Jon still made my birthday absolutely incredible. We then wrapped up the evening on our balcony at the apartment where I enjoyed one of the birthday beers Jon got me. If you like sour beers, do yourself a favor and try Prairie Artisan Ales Rainbow Sherbet. You won't regret it! I've tried their SLUSH sour since then and it was really good as well. I'm now on the hunt for more of their sour beers.

Every year for our wedding anniversary we go get sushi for dinner. Our favorite spot is back in our hometown, so we've been on the lookout for some great sushi in Pittsburgh. I got a recommendation to try Slippery Mermaid so our plan was to go there since they have a cute patio outside and signature cocktails. Unfortunately all restaurants in Pittsburgh shut down indoor dining and consumption of alcohol, so we thought our plans would change. However, they were still offering takeout and the choice to eat it on their patio. It was a little different than planned since we weren't necessarily "waited on" and couldn't try the signature cocktails, but it was still VERY good and we were still happy our plans didn't go completely out the window! The sushi was the closest we came to our favorite place back home and we keep thinking it may have even topped it. There's still more sushi to try in Pittsburgh and I can't wait to try more! After dinner we walked right down the street to Sewickley Confectionary for some ice cream and it was delicious. I got French Roast Coffee flavor and Jon got cookie dough. We were very pleased.

Jon had mentioned at the beginning of the year how he always wanted to have a surprise party for his 30th birthday. I started trying to plan things back in January in our hometown. But then I received a job offer in Pittsburgh at the same time that the world announced a global pandemic and our lives (as well everyone else's lives) were flipped upside down. So now I had to try to plan a surprise party in a city that was just recently completely shut down again and limiting parties to a certain amount of people. I was hopeless. I wanted to do something special for him because he thought his birthday was ruined this year (as well as everyone else who has had a birthday during this mess). His original plan once he knew we were moving out here was to go to ReplayFX, which is an annual massive pinball convention hosted in Pittsburgh. He always wanted to go and this year it landed ON his birthday weekend AND we lived out here now. Obviously that convention got canceled once COVID-19 hit. I felt terrible and knew all he really wanted was to hang out with some close friends, have a couple beers and play some fun games. So I reached out to literally ALL of the pinball arcades in the area. I even had it scheduled for one place, but then they canceled on me just weeks before the party due to the current circumstances. I was hopeless again and really feeling like I couldn't make his birthday special. However, a friend that was invited mentioned a place in Butler county, which doesn't have any of the restrictions that Pittsburgh currently has. It was a little further out that what I wanted, but they were the ONLY place of the dozens I reached out to who were willing to host my event. I am SO glad I chose them though because I was able to pull off his surprise party and it was everything I wanted it to be. I ordered his cake from Lee's Cakes which is in my hometown because she is amazing and I knew she would do a great job with the idea I had in mind for his cake and cookies. People were still able to have beers and play games and hang out and everyone had a great time. Jon was so surprised and loved every minute of it. He thought his birthday was ruined (so did I) but I actually pulled it off! I highly recommend Tokens Arcade since they were amazing every step of the way and their arcade is really fun - check them out!

It was a great couple of weeks we've just had. Despite everything going on, we made the best of the situation and probably had our best birthdays yet - and ones we'll NEVER forget!