It’s Been a Wonderful Birthday!

I’ve spent several days celebrating my birthday. When you get older, that’s a very good thing!!! And I’m not really done yet since I’ll be celebrating with one of my best friends on Wednesday. The best gift I got was having Sarah and Adam here this week. We had a lovely time, and a big family get-together on Thursday night with lots of food and a beautiful birthday cake.

The icing appears a bit more blue than lilac in the photograph, but lilac it was to go with the annual Lilac Festival in Highland Park this week and the beautiful flowers Tracy sent me.

Last night we had dinner with our book group and when I got home I had an email from Katie telling me to check the Making Memories blog. What a surprise! I was one of three winners of a lovely package of new product just out by Making Memories.

Last month I won another fabulous prize from Moxie Fab World. The Hello, Sunshine papers from lily bee are just so bright and cheerful. I know I’ll have a lot of fun using them. I’m feeling very lucky these days.

Today Sarah was off leading a retreat in Canandaigua and Matt was working all day so Tracy and I drove to Ithaca. It was a beautiful day for a road trip and we visited some of our favorite places, starting with the Ithaca Farmer’s Market.

We bought quite a few varieties of herbs and a few tomato plants from this stand for our garden. And some rhubarb for rhubarb coffee cake—a favorite of everyone here.

But the market has more than just fruits, vegetables, and plants. There are food and bakery stands. I had a berry scone.

There are pottery stalls, weaving stalls, basketry stalls, and stalls selling homemade food products.

I love the packaging for this Finger Lakes Popcorn!

From there we drove to the Cornell Plantations. I was pretty sure the azaleas and rhododendrons would be in bloom and I wasn’t disappointed.

The dogwoods were beautiful too.

And I was glad to find these beautiful blue flowers for a photography challenge.

On our way back to campus this deer appeared out of the woods and was happy to pose for a photo. We’ve never seen a deer marked quite like this one. He has a neck band and two ear tags.

Our next stop was the book store on campus. I got a new fleece and Matt wanted a set of license plate holders. The Cornell campus is just beautiful.

Our last stop in Ithaca was one of our favorite restaurants. Matt found it when he was there, and the food is always superb.

We did a little shopping at the Waterloo Outlets on the way home and were here by dinner time.

Sarah just arrived home from her retreat which went very well, and tomorrow should be a much quieter day.