Mom's Surprise 60th Birthday and Retirement Party

You may have suspected from reading this post (or know because you were there), we recently celebrated my mom's 60th birthday and retirement from teaching elementary school.  And it was a surprise.  A surprise my dad, Bryan and I have been planning for months, but was probably in the back of our heads for over a year.  

Mom and Dad put a pool in their back yard since last summer.  My dad has gone hog wild on this pool, also putting in things like a tiki bar and a screened-in gazebo for when the weather is not so nice.  The result is sort of like Disney meets Jimmy Buffet meets the south western United States.  Yes, there is a kokopelli on top of the mini rock waterfall, and no, you can't see the back side of water.  

When I was first thinking about this party for mom, the back yard didn't come to mind as the best place to host what should be a pretty classy shindig, but as the pool was put in and the other pieces came together, there was no better place to have it.  The problem was:  now that Mom was retired, how would we get her out of the house long enough to set up the party without her being suspicious?  That's where the Hotel DuPont came in.

When we were planning Megan's bridal shower back in February or March, my friend told me about the Green Room at the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware.  They host a pretty fabulous tea there at 3pm every day.  My first thought was, I can't afford to have a shower there, but I could take the moms for a special tea!  My mom and my MIL, Joni, have birthdays just days apart.  So I called Joni and asked if she would like to go for her birthday, and also disclosed that while this was a birthday present to both of them, it would be perfect timing to get Mom out of the house so the party could get set up.  Also, with the Hotel DuPont being as special as it was, I hoped it would throw Mom off that this WAS her party.  So I made the reservation on the spot and called mom after work and told her I was taking her and Joni for tea.

Luckily Grandma, my dad's mom, was able to swing it to be in town during Mom's birthday, so I added her to the reservation later.  Her birthday is in September.  Happy Birthday, Moms!

Joni and Grandma

Mom and I love everything about tea.  The china, the little sandwiches...  Ever since she would play with me with my little tea set when I was little (it was an actual china tea set, just smaller for little hands), tea became the epitome of how a lady should behave in my head.  When I was like 5 or 6, she threw a little tea party for me and my friends and we used her special strawberry tea set.  When I was older, maybe 12 or 13, she took me out for high tea at a fancy hotel while we were vacationing in Canada.  She and my bridesmaids threw me a tea themed bridal shower when Randy and I got married.  We love Alice in Wonderland with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare...  Mary Poppins with the tea party on the ceiling...  Love it!  I could not wait for this tea, and I think she was pretty excited too.

Look at this room.  Can you imagine a more perfect place to have tea with the ladies?

Everything was so good.  We each got our own pot of tea, here is the menu.  All four of us got the chamomile, and it was great.  First they bring out five silver dollar-sized open-faced sandwiches.  There was a cucumber, a turkey and tomato, egg salad, chicken salad and lox.  Then they bring out scones with cream and your own little pot of jam.  The last course was my absolute favorite and you can see it in the picture below:

Lemon mousse pyramids with chocolate on the bottom, blueberry whipped cream boats, vanilla cake with chocolate and raspberry layers, blueberry and raspberry american flags, almond paste cookies dipped in chocolate and my favorite, tiny individual key lime pies.  It was like I had died and gone to heaven.  My brain was on how-do-I-make-this-dessert-at-home overload.

If you ever get a chance to do tea at the Hotel DuPont, DO IT!  The moms loved it so much, they were talking about taking the boys with us for tea at Christmastime.  Oh and do the Valet Parking.  It's worth the money to not have to worry about parking your car, and it makes you feel like you belong there.  ...Even if your car is a mess, like mine always is.

So a funny thing happened on the way home.  We couldn't find 95 N to hop back to Philly, and the GPS on my iPhone chose that moment to stop working.  So it took us a little while to get going, but I made up the time on the highways home.  I had timed it perfectly, getting Mom home actually a little early, when she announced we HAD to stop on the way home for potato salad.  Since I had been a little overzealous with my speed, I conceded and stopped off at Wegmans.  My fatal flaw was letting her go in by herself while Grandma and I sat in the car and called home to let them know our ETA.  20 minutes later, Grandma turned to me and said, "You better go in there and drag her out!"

Mom was at the checkout with a belt full of groceries.  If you're anything like me, you go into the store for one thing, and end up picking up 4 or 5 things you forgot you needed.  If you're like my mom, you go in for one thing and fill your cart!

So we get her in the car and as we're driving home, Mom looks into the back yard and says, "There's a lot of people at our house!"

"No, Mom, that's just our family, the neighbors are having a party."

She believed me!  We pulled into the driveway and she says, "Their music is really loud!  That's not like them."

"I know, isn't it crazy how loud it is?"

I thought for sure we were busted, when I turned around and she was gone.  I was trying to take her through the gate to the backyard for the big surprise, when she disappeared into the house, directly up the stairs.  I called after her and she replied, "I have to go to the bathroom!"

Bryan, Dad, Randy and I sat in the kitchen for 5, 10, then 15 minutes when Randy said, "She's going to come downstairs in her bathing suit, just watch.  She's getting changed."

Well gosh darn it if he wasn't right.  She came down in her suit, and we're all just standing there staring at her, not knowing what to say.  I was the first to speak.

"Mom, do you want me to get you a cover up?"

Randy, Bryan and Mom.  I'd say she was pretty surprised.
 

Randy and his brother, Jason.  Look out, girls!  Jason is single!

Ashley and our little cousin, Katie

Z, D, and Lily

Z, you may remember him from such gems as Wolverine Bakes a Cake 

Ashley, Aunt Donna and awesome Cousin Treva

Bryan and his friend, Kyle.  Kyle is showing off the awesome paper plates I found at the dollar store!

Nan and Aunt Jane.  Nan, Dan and Donna came in a few days early to help and hid at my house.

Mom and Dad's long-time friends from when they were at Penn State

Awww, Lily and John

Kelly, Uncle Dan and Mom

Look, Randy is as good with D's kids as I am

Dad and our neighbor of 30+ years, Joe

Joe and Joanne.  Joanne taught me how to ride a bike.

Our neighbors across the street, they used to babysit me when I was little

Our neighbors through the backyard, who also used to babysit me.  Their son and I were best friends when we were toddlers.

Me and Dad - so relieved the party was pulled off!

Our neighbors to the side

Dad's college roommate and good friend, with his daughter and her boyfriend.  He used to work with D's dad.  Small world, huh?

His sister and very good friend of Mom's and Dad's

Our cousins and Penn State friends and family - Kevin is shielding his head so I don't drop a house on him.  Long story.

Uncle Sean brewed Mom her own special beer!

Cousins of Dad's, long-time friends of Mom and Dad in all the way from Texas!  and Grandma in her cute button shirt

One of our littlest cousins, Matthew

Bryan was in charge of food, and got a hand from Joni and Ashley, and our gourmet chef cousins, Mary and Treva.  We had a spread of the best food imaginable.  But as you know, you can have rockin' food, the most fun location, the best music, but what makes a party are the special people who come.

Thank you everyone for making Mom's birthday party the best one yet!

P.S.  If I didn't put your name down under your picture, it's not because I don't know who you are.  It's because I respect that not everyone is ok with having their name and picture on the internet, and we are so glad you could make it!!!

Summer Pinterest Challenge - Strawberry short wedding cake

Have you guys heard this story about the mayor of an Alaskan town being a cat?  When I leave for work in the morning and see the cats lounging around, I joke around that they should get jobs to help earn their tender vittles.  I even had a dream once that I had to help Camille rebalance her 401k.  So maybe the dreaming Jodi wouldn't have been so surprised to hear about this very career-oriented feline.


Apparently Stubbs has been the mayor of Talkeetna for 15 years, so I'm surprised this is the first time I'm hearing of it.  Yep, nothing but breaking news for you here at 2P4C! 

I'm a little late with the Pinterest challenge this season. We've been off hobnobbing with celebrities (and their pets), but we'll get to that in future posts. I'll give you a little hint for now, and that is, "Hey, where's Perry?"

For those of you who don't know, my inspiration for starting this blog was two of my favorite blogs, Young House Love and Bower Power. Randy knows this, but thinks they're imaginary friends when Ashley and I get together and say things like, "Hey doesn't this remind you of the penny tile in Sherry and John's kitchen?" or "Has Katie found out if the baby is a boy or girl yet?" I don't flatter myself that our little blog is anything like Sherry and John's YHL or Katie Bower's, but Ashley introduced me to YHL about a year ago on our family trip to Hilton Head and I've been hooked ever since.

Katie created the Pinterest Challenge to challenge them to "stop pinning and start doing". This summer, what better challenge than to use this cake as inspiration for the 60th birthday and retirement party cake for this lady:

Mom- I won't give you the year because that's me on the right

Mom's favorite cake is strawberry shortcake, and every year, I make something a little different for her, but all based on the strawberry shortcake theme, like this strawberry genoise from a couple of years ago:



Or this strawberry cake from last year:



Admittedly, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of variation here, but the cakes, fillings and icings are completely different. I knew for Mom's 60th, I wanted to do something big, something special, but still with the original strawberry shortcake theme, when I came across this a couple of months ago:

marthastewartweddings.com

It is an almond paste corn meal pound cake with mascarpone cream and strawberries on top. I had zero experience with almond paste before I made this cake, so it was a perfect new challenge.

My original intention was to follow the Martha Stewart recipe perfectly, but as I was shopping for ingredients, I realized I needed to make this cake with less fuss, less muss and less $.

I couldn't find almond paste at Wegman's, which as anyone who has been to a Wegman's knows, if they don't have it, you're not going to find it locally anywhere else. So I followed this recipe to make my own. I didn't have Kirsch on hand, but I did have Amoretto instead, and found it to be necessary to get my little food processor to mix up the almond paste without grinding to a halt and burning out yet another kitchen appliance motor. This is how it looked when it was done. Probably not as smooth and perfect as almond paste you could buy, but at about $18/cup, I was glad I didn't buy it... and for my purposes, it worked in the texture of this cake with the stone-ground corn meal.



I tried to find a good, sturdy cake stand with the columns for the three tiers (for my cake, I made a 6", an 8" and a 10" tier) online, but these cake stands fit my budget, and the tropical paradise theme better. I bought them here, and was very pleased with the darker teal color you see below:



That's my Aunt Donna, my cousin, Heather's mom, and my mom's sister. She took the rest of the cake prep pictures and helped Ashley to assemble the cake while I took my mom out to tea to get her out of the house, but we'll get to more on that in later posts.

I used the Martha recipe for both the cake and the filling, with some minor tweaks. Make sure you spray and flour your pans really well, because if the cake sticks to the pan and falls apart, it won't work for this stacked approach. You can always brush off that extra flour with a pastry brush later. Instead of baking one large cake for each tier and torting them to make 3 layers for each tier, I would definitely recommend following the directions and using 3 different pans and baking 3 separate cakes. I know, more pans to wash, but totally worth it. I just made sure I put enough batter in so it could bake up to what I hoped was an inch thick, so I didn't have to trim any of the layers.

If your oven is like mine, a little crooked, (I'm sure there is a way to fix that but I haven't actually looked into it yet), and your cakes turn out a little thicker on one side, just stack them so the thicker side is on the opposite side of the one on the cake below it.

When I went to buy the mascarpone cheese for the filling, I realized it was $6/cup, and I would need 6-8 cups for it. I didn't want to cheap out on my mom's birthday cake, but I was on a budget. The package literally said, "Sweet, italian cream cheese," so guess what I did? Yep, threw 8 packages of Wegman's brand cream cheese in my cart and called it a day. Don't tell Randy, he would flip. He is a born-and-raised Philadelphia cream cheese man. I can't tell the difference, but I guess it is like Heinz vs store brand ketchup. They just don't match up. So if you are looking to make a smaller version of this cake, go for the mascarpone, I'm sure it's fab. I was making this cake for 60 people and just couldn't see spending almost $50 on the cream cheese for the filling. Or if you are a Philly purist like Randy, go with the Philly cream cheese, it's not that much more expensive. I just made sure to taste the filling and added extra powdered sugar until Donna, Randy and I thought it was sweet enough. Honestly, I'm not sure how different the mascarpone would have tasted, but the Wegman's cream cheese filling was wonderful.

Making sure my tiers were even

As I played with the cake stands, I realized why there were 3 sizes for $30. They were extremely cute and the color was perfect for the luau-type party, but they were kind of flimsy. When I imagined stacking them on top of each other with 3 layers of pound cake on each tier, I started getting cake-tipping anxiety. So, I told Ashley to feel free to arrange them next to each other rather than stack them, and she and Donna agreed it wasn't worth the worry.



So while I did dowel-rod the bottom two tiers, we didn't even try to stack them, and we were all fine with that.  And the result?  Yum!  Make sure to whip up some real whipped cream to serve as a garnish on each piece.  Heavenly.



Anyone else participate in the Pinterest Challenge or bake a huge cake for a big, family event? Please share!

Wolverine bakes a cake

My best friend, D's brother got married a couple of weeks ago on D's birthday.  Congratulations, Johnny and Kristen!  I had the luck of getting to take the day off from work to watch D's little ones, Z and Lily.  You may remember Lily from this post on how to eat cake.  Being that I don't have kids and it has been eight years or so since I last babysat, I was nervous that the kids wouldn't think I was fun Aunt Jodi anymore unless I came up with cool things for the kids and I to do.  We played music and danced around (and learned that the only music Z and I have in common is Beyonce or Britney Spears), went for a pretty eventful walk to the corner, and made a completely awesome birthday cake for D while Lily was down for her nap.  Z and I had the. best. time.  

Z was happy to be my little photographer.  He took all of these pictures, except the ones he's actually in.  He did a great job.

Normally I like to bake from scratch, but this chocolate cake recipe is fabulous and great for short attention spans.  If you try this at home, use a fudgey chocolate cake mix.  It makes a difference and you will thank me later.  Yum!  It doesn't taste like a cake mix at all.

We made two 6 inch rounds and used the extra batter to make cupcakes for ourselves for dessert.

Then we made some pretty awesome buttercream icing that turns out a lot like italian buttercream, but is a LOT easier.  It uses this stuff:

Anyone else live on fluffernutters when they were little?  Z couldn't believe they made marshmallow cream, or that moms let their kids eat it.  Don't tell D, I didn't realize I was such a bad influence.

 We added the butter to the fluff with the mixer on, one tablespoon at a time.

Then we took a break to pose like Wolverine.

Then it was right back to business.

...Until Z caught me checking in with some of my co-workers.

Then we added the powder sugar.  Aren't these shots great?  Z could have run the camera during the cooking segments when I worked at WHTM.

Yeah, we made a little bit of a mess, but it was easy to clean up.

After the butter, we added fresh lemon juice to balance out all that sweet fluff.  Not too much to make it lemon buttercream, but just enough so it wasn't too sugary.

Z said that mine was the pink one and his was the blue one.  Gender bias!  But he's 5.  We'll let him slide.  The pink one was yummy.  I shared it with Lily.

Then we filled and stacked the cakes...  and when I say "we", I meant, "I".  The stacking and the crumb coat was kind of tough for little fingers, but my little photographer came through.

Z decided he wanted to make the cake look like this one, so while the crumb coat was in the fridge hardening up, we colored the top of our big-top tent.

Helen Norman for Country Living

Z designed the pattern:

And we took turns filling it in...  until Z thought it would be more fun to color my hand.

Then we cut it with safety scissors and formed it into a shallow cone shape.

Just then Lily woke up from her nap.  What timing!

And we danced around and sang to our favorite Beyonce and Britney Spears songs.  Z and Lily are great dancers and I was so excited to have other people join in my dance marathon.  Randy usually doesn't like to participate and the cats eye me warily.

Lily even smiles when I sing to her.  That is one strong girl!

We had dinner and went for a walk and only had a minor mishap when Z fell off his scooter and got a horrible life-threatening scratch on his knee that only felt better after we used Toy Story band-aids.  The regular ones weren't quite as effective.

My friend, Stefani, lives nearby and stopped over to help us finish the cake.  Z entertained her while I put Lily to bed.

Who needs fancy candy sticks when you have straws?

 Now by time we got to this point, it was after Z's bedtime, but I promised him he could stay up until the cake was done.  A promise is a promise!

Here's my little future cake decorator!

When I took Z up to bed, read him a story, and tucked him in, he reminded me to put the cake in the fridge so it didn't melt.

So cute, and D loved it.