Simple but Special Birthday Breakfasts

James' birthday was yesterday and my very favorite birthday tradition is birthday breakfast!! 

It's a tradition that my parents started with my brother and me. Whenever it's someone's birthday, the whole family gets up to have breakfast together and everyone has to be there, so it has to happen before the first person needs to leave for work or school. For many years our dad had a long morning commute so we'd all get up for birthday breakfasts before the crack of dawn and it's pretty much like that for us now! 

It's kind of like saying "We love you so much we'll sacrifice that extra little bit of sleep to get up and sing you Happy Birthday over a plate of pancakes! Except you have to get up too. HAPPY BIRTHDAAAYYY!!" 

It's the greatest. 

 

Pinterest is full of ideas for fun birthday breakfast treats. Yesterday, when I was up in the dark, early AM before the rest of the family, I eyed the Pinterest recipe for funfetti pancake muffins on my "Birthdays" pin board and I was liiiike... Nah. Probably not.

Not that the recipe was complicated... I am just not really into baking and I like to keep things super simple and familiar (read: lazy), especially at 6 AM. But for birthday breakfast I still want to do something to make it special.

So here are some ideas for some simple (lazy) but still special birthday breakfasts. Most of them involve boxed pancake mix. We're into pancakes around here.

- Toss some sprinkles into box pancake mix. Boom. Funfetti pancakes.

- Put cake icing on pancakes. Bonus points if you put a few drops of food coloring on the icing and swirl it around. You could also add sprinkles. Because sprinkles.

- Make your breakfast look like an animal. This could get complicated, but it doesn't have to be. This birthday pancake bear I made for Calvin was not hard to do.

- Hit the donut drive through. Our favorite is Krispy Kreme. You can even go the night before and reheat them in the morning. Bonus points if you stack them into a donut cake.

- Have cake for breakfast. Go for it. As the saying goes, life is short, eat dessert first!

- Just stick a birthday candle in any breakfast food. Except probably cereal. Once I even did birthday breakfast chicken biscuits for my brother. 

What do you think? Do you prefer whipping up a special recipe? Any other lazy cooks out there? 

What would you want for birthday breakfast?

Friday Favorite: Coffee O'Clock

Mmmm. Coffee.

Coffee is one of my favorite things in life. 

James and I are both big coffee drinkers. You might remember our morning nicknames "Chirpy" and "Grumpy." Grumpy (James) is one of those people who really doesn't function well in the morning until he has had at least one cup of coffee. He loves coffee, and he also kind of needs it because he is SO NOT a morning person! 

This is so him:

I, on the other hand, am the chirpy one. I am totally a morning person. I don't need coffee to wake me up, I just LOVE IT. I like the ritual of a morning cup of coffee. I like the comfort of a nice hot mug on a cool morning. (Mornings are always cool where I live.) And if it's warm outside, I like a glass of iced coffee just as much!

I'm a simple kind of coffee drinker. I like it black. I don't have a favorite brand or roast. I usually buy the Wake Up blend from Trader Joe's. But I do have a favorite coffee mug! It's a Hawaii mug that was a gift from one of my sweetest students ever. A girl named Nyssa brought it back for me from her Hawaiian vacation. I love it because it reminds me of the trip James and I took to Kauai in 2011, just before I got pregnant with Calvin. I remember drinking yummy Hawaiian coffee there, spending days at the beach in the hot sun, and hiking the Napali coast with James. 

Here's a little #FlashbackFriday of that trip to Kauai. Feels like a lifetime ago!

On the Kalalau Trail, Napali Coast. 2011

Touring the Kauai Coffee Company Koloa Estate in 2011

Coffee tasting at the Koloa Estate, 2011

What's your favorite morning beverage? How do you feel about coffee? Love it or hate it?

P.S. The "Coffee O'Clock" sign and the "Now you may speak" mug are both products on Etsy! Click on the pics to check them out. I have no affiliation with either of these Etsy sellers or their products, but I thought these two were perfect for this post :)

Henry's First Easter

Some-bunny just celebrated his first Easter!

After a beautiful Easter weekend, I am feeling very blessed indeed. This month has been so busy with Calvin's birthday and Easter that it has left James and me feeling a little crazed, but it has been a lot of fun.

On Saturday, we did a simple little egg hunt, just the four of us. Golden Gate Park is full of little grassy nooks and crannies and we found the perfect little sunny spot over near the tulip garden.

Calvin loved egg hunting!

This sweet sleepy boy took a nap in the shade. Big brother shared some eggs with him.

One of his eggs had bubbles inside. Guess the Easter bunny knows toddlers love bubbles!

After he found his eggs and explored his goodies, Calvin wanted to throw them all over the grass and collect them again! And again! And again. And again. Until we convinced him it was time for lunch.

We walked over to Park Chalet for a picnic with wait service :)

That's a beet salad with some very colorful beets. Calvin still entertained by those eggs!

On Easter Sunday we went to a church we have been visiting lately and it was a very nice service. They even had a little egg hunt in the sanctuary for the kids after church so Calvin got to hunt for eggs again! After church my cousins came over for lunch and Calvin and Henry got to check out their Easter baskets. They each got a Beatrix Potter book (The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse) and a sippy cup that looks like a little green Mason jar. 

Happy Easter and Happy Spring from our family to yours!

Turning Two at the Zoo

Calvin loves animals. His favorite toys are his animal figures and his stuffies and he absolutely loves going to aquariums and, of course, the zoo! So what better place to bring him on his birthday than the zoo??

While I got his birthday breakfast ready, Calvin played with his birthday presents without even realizing they were presents! Apparently my animal habitat gift wrap was entertaining enough. 

I needed a brilliant idea for making my usual brown paper gift wrap extra special and exciting for Calvin's birthday presents. Washi tape felt wishy washy. I wanted something more interesting. So I channeled my inner cut-paper collage artist and turned the wrapped gifts into backdrops for these animal figures he already had!

How much fun to have presents you can play with while they're still wrapped! I saved the wrapping after he opened them. I might mount the backdrops on cardboard or something so he can keep playing with them. 

After he enjoyed his beary adorable pancake, we broke the news that we were going to meet his friends at the zoo.

I used banana slices and dried blueberries to make this bear pancake!

He was So Excited all morning. He was signing nonstop giraffe, lion, penguin, zebra, tiger, monkey, friends, Autumn, go, car, elephant, bird, rhino... over and over and over! Yes, yes! We're going to see those things and our friends! Yes, Autumn is coming! Yes, we're going in the car! Now please please please put your foot in your pant leg! That's about how the morning went. 

It was sunny and warm at our house, so I excitedly dressed the boys in adorable shorts outfits and then had a minor nervous breakdown when we got to the zoo and it was foggy and chilly. I should have known! Visitors please note! It is almost always foggy and chilly at the San Francisco zoo no matter what the weather is anywhere else! So we dug up some sweatpants from the car and borrowed a sweater and blanket from our friends and made do. Not that the birthday boy cared! He was just thrilled to be there seeing all his favorite animals.

Hobbes? Is that you?

Watching some adorable monkeys. Oh and the zoo monkeys too. 

Zoo lunch for the birthday boy! Got the inspiration for the giraffe from Swanky Baby.

Calvin's favorite part of the zoo! It's my favorite too. 

Calvin was signing "zebra."

We went home for nap time and then the birthday boy got to open his presents. 

Wearing his new Mickey Mouse hoodie from Granny Anne and playing with his new work bench.

That evening, we met up with some of our cousins at SOMA Streatfood park, which is a food truck park. Calvin dug into his pork bao (a little Chinese sandwich), but he was really excited about his animal cracker cupcakes! 

Calvin picked the tiger! How appropriate ;) 

And birthday fun was had by all! More celebrating to come later that week at Calvin's Hop 'n' Play party...!