Dirty 30 Brewbash!!

 

 

Last weekend we celebrated my husbands 30th BIRTHDAY!

He is now officially "the OLD MAN" ;)

 

I had such a fun time planning this big day and have been dying to share the details with you guys!

 

So without further adieu, lets get to it!

 

The invites:

 

 

I purchased these from JacksMaster etsy shop and printed them off at home.

 

We asked each guest to bring one chilled 6-pack of their favorite unique brew- 2 beers from each 6 pack were entered into the beer tasting. Each guest voted on their favorite and the winner was awarded a giant beer mug filled with goodies/gift card.

 

The party décor:

 

 Most of the décor was handmade.... Thank goodness for the enormous amount of Pinterest inspiration!!!

 

 

To keep the categories simple we went with lights, ambers, and darks. I had planned to do IPA's, lagers... etc etc. but soon discovered that there are FAR tooooo many categories of beer.

 

 

These fans are so easy to make!! For the small fans I used scrapbook paper, and for the large, I used wrapping paper (postage paper would work well too). Tutorial can be found here.

 

 

Handmade Burlap Birthday Banner

 

The beer tasting sign was another pinterest inspired idea. This thing literately cost me a measly $5 bucks to make. I dug up a piece of plywood in the garage, cut it to the size I wanted, bought a can of chalkboard spray paint and went to town. Piece. of. cake.

 

And as for the pig head....  This guy was the life of the party. He was pretty darn tasty too!!!!!!

 

The Chow:

 

 

We ordered a 60lb. pig, and it fed roughly 30 people... it was aaaammazingly good.

Along with it my mother in law made her famous bacon baked beans, and scalloped potatoes.

 

 

Appetizers included stuff we like to eat with beer. Pretzels with cheddar, cheddar popcorn, peanuts... and for the healthy people: vegi platter/ fruit platter

 

 

 

And for dessert: cupcakes by CupKates. Katie is a good friend of mine and she makes the BEST cupcakes! If you live in the eastern NC area look her up on facebook. yummm.

 

The BIG Celebration:

 

Festivities began with a surprise visit from Mike's Momma and Poppa.

 

 

 

Mike was definitely surprised!!! Especially when this was presented to him shortly after their arrival.

 

 

A custom engraved Colt45 1911. He was in heaven.

 

Party Time:

 

 

 

 

 

The Beer Tasting:

 

 



 

 

Peel & Eat

Crawfish boil? Yea… been to one of those. Crab boil? Yep… tried that. Shrimp boil? HHMMmm never even been invited to one those.

We live on the coast of North Carolina where you can get your hands on fresh shrimp any day, anytime…  SO I thought- hmm wouldnt it would be fun to throw a shrimp boil at the casa for OLD ASS-Hubby’s Birthday??! [I love giving him a hard time ha] I’ve been planning it out for a couple of weeks… & on Saturday we made it happen!

Throwing a shrimp boil is really SO EASY, I definitely didn’t need weeks to plan. A day in advance would have done just fine.

We found several recipes online -since they all sounded amazing, we decided to merge a few of them together…

Here's how it went down.

We bought 10 lbs of shrimp from a local shrimp shack, cut all of their heads off and let them marinade in 1/2 a thing of Old Bay seasoning and H2O… We were pushed for time so they only ended up marinating for about 4 hours.

That was about the hardest part, well next to peeling the garlic. Piece of CAKE!

We filled a turkey fryer w/ strainer basket 2/3 of the way full with water. Added two Zatarain’s Crawfish, Shrimp, Crab Boil Bags, 1/2 a bottle of Zatarain’s Shrimp & Crab Oil, 1/2 a thing or Old Bay Seasoning, about 3/4 cup of salt, and 3 bulbs of peeled garlic…

Let all that goodness come to a boil… then added a bag of red potatoes- boiled those about 8 minutes, added a package of halved frozen corn on the cobs- boiled another 6 minutes, added 2 packages of kielbasa (cut in 2in pieces)- boiled for another 8 minutes or so, then threw in 4 large onions (cut in wedges) and squeezed 3 lemons (halved) tossed those into the pot- boiled for another 2 minutes, then added as much shrimp as we could fit, and let those boil until pink- about 4-5 minutes or so.

We then pulled out the basket and shook it out across a crowded brown paper covered table. [next time I’ll use freezer paper]

Since we couldn’t fit all the shrimp in on the 1st go around, we did the rest of the batch afterwards. It ended up working out perfect though- as the 1st batch went missing, out came the second… this time shrimp only.

10lbs. fed 17, no problem.

I think its safe to say everyone had a great time… As for the Birthday Boy… well, he might have had a little bit too much of a great time. lol – Here he is in 3D glasses he just happened to find from outer space randomly. Ridiculous! haha

Hope you all had a fun weekend!

Today was my last day full time… I’m so excited to do NOTHING! AHHH… heaven!!

WONDERFUL WEEKEND! :)

This weekend was SUPER busy, but SOOO much freakin fun!

Friday, was DATE NIGHT! <3... It was really nice to have dinner together and catch up. It seems like most of our time together lately has been surrounded by so many distractions and busy life that we hadn't had much time to connect.

I think it is definitely important to have that one on one time, especially when your man is gone every other week training.

date night = SUCCESS!!

Saturday, my girlfriend Amanda and I hit up the beach for the 1st time this year... The weather was in the 70's and the breeze was just about perfect. 



This was such a teaser for me. I am dieing for SUMMER to get here ALREADY!! I really want to get up [and stay up] on the surf board this year... HOPEFULLY yoga has helped improve my balance and I can pull off some real surfing... not just some half ass stand up n wipe out type stuff. We'll see!

Saturday night, we got the entire team together and headed down to Wilmington for dinner and cocktails.

We had a blast... and maybe a few too many cocktails :)

Dinner started out at Mike and I's "spot"... The Little Dipper.

 It had been a while since we had been, and I missed it... THE FOOD WAS DELICIOUS & the company was even better!

Here are some shots from the festivities!

FUN TIMES!!

then Sunday, I traveled a bit to visit my favorite grocery store... Harris Teeter.

Unfortunately, Jacksonville has crap for grocery stores. The commissary is my go to place most of the time...:( I prefer to buy my meats from Harris Teeter. They carry all natural meats [none of that steroid/hormone crap] which is ALMOST impossible to find around here.

I am such a dork. I get RIDICULOUSLY excited when I get to visit Harris Teeter, Fresh Market, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, ect.

This trip made my day. :) (I know, DORK!) 

when I got home we grilled out some tasty steaks...

watched "The Fighter", great story!...

[image from google]

then passed out early...

............

Hope you all had a great weekend as well!!

xox