Surprise Beer Tasting Bash!

42. Grow a plant from a seed

I am officially a plant growing machine! I started by planting basil and parsley in these adorable little pots from Ikea and hung them in front of the dining room window out of reach of the cat who would undoubtedly eat them if he could reach them. I am so proud of how big my basil is getting! I will be making homemade pesto with it in no time!

Next I decided to start my vegetables that will be planted in the garden when it's warm enough. I planted bok choy, swiss chard, rainbow swiss chard, and red bell peppers. My swiss chard and bok choy are growing fantastically and are even getting a bit too big for their windowsill in C's room, but my red peppers are still stubbornly refusing to sprout.

Lastly, now that I seem to be addicted to growing plants, I picked up this little strawberry plant kit from Lowe's. They are just starting to sprout but hopefully will kick it into overdrive soon and bear lots of juicy little strawberries for us to enjoy!

57. Give a gift a month
61. Dinner date with friends once a month

This month I combined the give a gift a month and dinner date with friends because the dinner date with friends was my gift of the month. E's birthday was at the beginning of the month and while perusing Pinterest for genius birthday gift ideas I came across the idea of a beer tasting party. I immediately knew E would love it and started coming up with a plan to throw him a surprise beer tasting birthday party. His best friend was going to be out of town for his birthday weekend and I knew she absolutely had to be there so we planned the party for a few weekends after his birthday making it even more of a surprise. I spent a month planning and sneaking around behind his back secretly buying serve ware, foods, and tasting and buying beer.

J invited E to see a movie a few hours before the party was supposed to start. I suggested that they go to the movie then pick up S on the way home and we could all have dinner at our house. So it all worked out. E met J for the movie and I got going on the party prep.

I love my little Crate and Barrel serving bowls!!

I didn't manage to get any pictures before the party so I don't have any of these fantastic roast beef sliders from nobiggie.net that flew off the counter and into everyone's stomachs. Seriously though, next time you need a quick easy meal when you are entertaining, make them! I served them with some baked french fries/wedges, chips and salsa and guacamole, fruit, and mixed nut and pretzel party mixes.

I love C's cup of milk on the table with all the growlers....

My sis went with me to pick out the beer on the Tuesday before the party. We told E that we were doing random wedding stuff in preparation for her wedding so he didn't even question us.  We decided to go with a local microbrewery theme and bought only beers brewed by Colorado microbreweries. We went downtown and tasted a flight at Wynkoop Brewery, The Great Divide, and Prost Brewing. I would like to mention that I do not like beer. At all. So the fact that I tried a dozen different kinds for him just proves my love for my husband. We ultimately ended up with a growler of:

Wynkoop

B3K Black Lager

Colorojo Red Ale

The Great Divide

Colette Farmhouse Ale

DPA Classic Pale Ale

Prost Brewing

Pils

Dunkel Amber Lager

In addition to the growlers that contained the beers used in the tasting, I picked up sampler cases from New Belgium Brewery, Left Hand Brewery, and Boulder Brewery. Another party goer brought a wide variety of other Colorado beers. Needless to say, we had a ton of leftover beer and E is still reaping the benefits.

The whole tasting was pretty informal. I had numbered some plastic cups 1 - 6 and my sis poured a small sample of each beer one round at a time in the corresponding cups and sent them around the room to the guests. I provided some really simple beer tasting sheets so people could take down notes about each beer and give it an overall score. The party was a success and everyone seemed to have loved the idea of a beer tasting party. 

Oh! And I'm sure you are wondering if E was surprised! The original plan was to have everyone park in the backyard so I could close the gate and he would be clueless about everything until he walked through the door. However, mother nature screwed that up by dumping a decent amount of snow on the ground all through the night and on through the afternoon of the party day. Most people just ended up parking wherever so as soon as they pulled into the driveway he knew something was up. I guess his first thought was that I was throwing a party while he was out at the movie... He still had no idea why everyone was there even after he walked in since his birthday was already long gone. So my answer is yes, he was definitely surprised.

94. Buy flowers once a month for the house

I couldn't find any flowers that were just screaming "perfect" at the store so instead I picked up an Easter Lily since Easter was just around the corner and all. So we are driving home from the store and I decide to look up how to take care of an Easter Lily and one of the first things I see is a giant warning to never bring an Easter Lily into a house with a cat because they are toxic to cats. Oops... So our lily has been travelling all around the house, getting locked inside the laundry room when we are gone. Lesson learned.

64. Go swimming once a month

We finally made it to the pool, cutting it nice and close to the end of the month. C had so much fun that we actually ended up going again the following night. We bought some dive rings in an attempt to get C to put his face in the water on his own. He came pretty close but only managed to get to about his nose. We are getting closer though!



No, Dad! I'm not ready to leave!!