Happy Birthday Sooz!

This weekend was Susie's 34th birthday. Susie has been my friend since we were 4 years old and I'm so happy that we are still so close and she is still one of my very best friends. We celebrated at her friend Hana and Grant's place. They made a delicious Japanese dinner and Josh and I provided the dessert. He made a chocolate cake and I made Williams Sonoma brownies using my new brownie pan. (See pic above) The pan is the shape of a large chocolate bar that you break apart once baked. They didn't turn out as good as I had hoped but everyone at the party seemed to enjoy them. The recipe from WS was very rich and chocolatey but a little too cakey for my liking. Thanks Carol for providing me with inspiration with that big huge slab of pure chocolate you gave me!

The rest of night was spent playing with Susie's new games, Lips (a singing game on the Xbox) and "The Big Taboo". Its like regular Taboo where you try to describe a word without using any of the taboo words but with additional challenges like having to draw the words or use "Bendy Bob" (a fuzzy purple character that actually comes with the game,) to act out the word. Everyone enjoyed Bendy Bob so much that we ended off the evening making up our own actions for Bendy Bob to re-enact.

Today I went to see grams in the morning and then had lunch with mom before coming home to do taxes (yeeech) and then try to make homemade calzones. I found whole wheat fresh dough at the supermarket and thought I would try to make mini panzerottos for lunch. They turned out to be not so mini (I stuffed them a bit too much,) and the dough didn't have enough salt so it was a bit bland. But will still make good lunches for the rest of the week. Then Mel and Norm stopped by to bring me a very pleasant surprise, Mel's homemade cupcakes. They were sooo good. I think even the best vanilla cupcakes I've ever had. Just as good as the Sweet Bliss vanilla. I ate two right away but managed to save 2 more for tomorrow. Thanks Mel!

Tomorrow Susie and I took the day off and are going to Body Blitz for a day of pampering. Body Blitz is a water therapies spa. They have 4 or 5 different pools (hot green tea, cold plunge, sea salt, plus wet and dry saunas) and you are supposed to do a circuit of each pool one after the other. In addition to the pools, we are both getting mud wraps and massages... makes Mondays not so bad afterall!