Playing Catch Up...

   Oh Hey 30th Bday Santa Barbara Ladies...

Hope you are ready to celebrate!

Way back in April about 14 beautiful women traveled from San Francisco, LA, and Colorado to Santa Barbara in celebration of turning 30.  Although I am 3 years away from that milestone the majority of my friends happen to have turned 30 this year and so I was lucky enough to be apart of this fantastic weekend.

There was a remarkable amount of planning that went into the weekend, including finding the perfect house to hold the bash, teams for meals, a dinner out for 13 women, some pretty impressive grocery lists...

And some very very packed cars...

My dear friend Mara Olson-Bailey is fantastic in many many ways but one of her true gifts is travel planning.  Seriously, she has found us the most amazing houses or hotels to stay in, organized the meals and activities, and has the most remarkable gift of reuniting old friends while introducing new ones... This Santa Barbara weekend was no exception. 

Thursday: Arrival day!  As you can see my poor little car was packed to the brim! The weather was not the sunny Santa Barbara weather we had been expecting but who needs sun when we have homemade pizza, tequila, wine, and some seriously hilarious ladies. 

Oh and a dance party with props... Obvi. 

Friday: The original plan for Friday was to take a hike where my team of Maura, Kate, and I would bring along a picnic.  The weather however had other plans and we awoke to complete downpour.  It turned out to be kinda perfect though, with no real plans we were all able to relax and catch up with out the stress of fitting too many things into the day.  This however meant that the picnic needed to be revised into an indoor picnic.  Complete with gorp (no idea how that is spelled but another word for homemade trail mix), mini individual hummus, a variety of sandwiches, and homemade chocolate chip cookies.

After the indoor picnic Erin (Mara's younger sister and the only other non 30 year old) and I spent the afternoon playing in this amazing house and kitchen! There were lemon trees, orange trees, rosemary bushes, etc. in the front yard that we used to make lemon tart, fresh lemonade for the evenings cocktails, and a perfect cheese platter. 

Friday evening we had cocktails and got ready for a night out in Santa Barbara... 

About a month before the trip Mara and I did some serious planning while on a mid week ski trip.  We picked an adorable restaurant called Jane and decided that a week before I would call and pre order some appetizers and the wine.  I would definitely suggest doing this for large groups.  It is so nice to walk into a place and have wine already on the table and appetizers brought out right away.  Pre-ordering the wine helps keep the cost down by avoiding the wine list from getting into the wrong hands.  And Frankly being in charge of picking the wine can be a little stressful when you have 12 people anxiously awaiting its arrival.  This worked perfectly I decided to start with Procesco then had a red and a white option.  The restaurant did a great job accommodating us and even put out their own little decorations! 

After a delicious meal we hit up the town (some of us more enthusiastically then others)... Jesse (a UCSB grad) led us to Wildcat Lounge which is a gem of a dance club.  Seriously though despite the name and the gogo dancers it really was a blast made complete with some fantastic dancing and a hilarious bachelor party.  

Saturday:  The sun finally came out and we put our fabulous back yard to use! Brunch was delicious and was followed by a relaxing morning of lounging in the sun and liars dice... well relaxing until you lost and had to take a tequila shot which after the prior night of wine, tequila, and dancing was simply painful.  

Now if anyone had not already been convinced about how awesome each and every women in this group was this should seal the deal... Under the enthusiastic organizing of the famous Ms. Jesse Gillette all 14 of us competed in our very own Beer Olympics.  It was a triathlon of sorts consisting of but not limited to the use of the Flabango, handsfree passing of a lemon, running around the fire pit while singing "Burning Ring of Fire", limboing, pole dancing... Everyone put in there best effort, despite being dominated by Team Young Ones (Erin and I) both times ;).  Sarah stole the show however, by performing amazingly while injured and in a boot earning her the unanimous MVP vote. 

We finally rallied and made it out of the house to check out the beautiful Santa Barbara beaches... I packed up a little picnic of the left overs from the weekend along with the makings for Moscow Mules and we headed out.

Don't worry the day was not yet over! Team JAB (Jill, Annie, and Bridget) had been prepping for our Saturday night fiesta all day.  

Despite a semi minor head injury by team member A, the meal was an extreme success!  Unfortunately the cake I had insisted on making for the occasion was an epic fail.  I decided two things were to blame... 1. The cake was a little undercooked due to underestimating how much longer I needed to let it bake to make up for the larger pan the house offered.  2.  I got impatient and tried to construct and frost the cake before it had completely cooled... both of these led to this. 

FAIL! 

If at all possible to see beyond the disaster of the cake I was actually pretty happy with how the bunting turned out and it didn't taste too bad either! Proof that no one especially me is perfect! 

The rest of the night consisted of a frightening game where Mara had found an app that ages you 50 or so years.  Using that she aged all of us and printed out the results.  She strung those up along with our baby pictures below it in a different order.  We then had to match the baby pictures with the aged pictures... 

Although Maura won she was generous enough to share her prize... 

Finally the "Best Day Ever" ended with some wine and great friends around the fire pit...

The next day was rough for many reasons... We all were going through a variety of serious withdrawals, physically and emotionally. And so since the thought of not being around 13 other women for more then 5min was to awful to deal, Maura, Ashley, and I met for some post trip sushi and yes more wine.  

The final picture from the weekend... Yes I have always considered myself an efficient packer. Ha! 

good lord, only I need 6 bags for a long weekend. 

Although I am just now (four months later) getting around to blogging about this fantastic trip I still consider it one of the most entertaining and memorable weekends possibly ever.  Every time this group gets together I feel so honored to be surrounded by such phenomenal young (yes even at 30!) women.  Every single one of them is confidently unique, hard working, kind, hilarious, and beautiful.  I absolutely cannot wait till next year, although this one will be pretty hard to beat!