My Baby is 3! - La Mia Bimba ha 3 anni!

Today is Sera's third birthday and I'm celebrating the best three yeas of my life with it. If you had told me that that little tiny 5 pound, wrinkly squirmy stranger would become this wonderful big girl, and my best friend in these few short yearsI wouldn't have believed you! What an amazing thing to happen! What an amazing little girl.

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Oggi è il terzo compleanno di Sera e sto ricordando questi ultimi tre anni, che sono stati i migliori della mia vita. Se mi avessero detto che quel piccolissimo di solo 2.4kili, straniera, rugosa, scricciola sarebbe diventata questa meravigliosa ragazza grande, eppure la mia migliore amica non ti avrebbe creduto! Che cosa incredibile! Che bambina incredibile.

I'm the kind of mum who would like to freeze time and stay in the moment forever. I get nostalgic for the littlest things even as they're happening. I worry that I won't remember the little things that she does now, which she won't do in a few short years, that make my heart sing. I love when she comes up to me and says she has a secret to tell me and then cups her little hand to my ear and says "meatballs". I love that she does the same thing in Italian to her friends and relatives who only speak Italian and I'm proud that she knows to do so. "Polpette!" I love that she tells me "but it's ok" when she sees that I'm a bit blue or that she's spilled milk on the table. I love that she gives me giraffe kisses by rubbing her nose on mine (when it isn't snotty). I love that she starts singing song she made up out of the blue and I love how she likes when I sing along ("we sang all-ke-gether!)

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Sono una mamma che vorrebbe fermare il tempo e rimanere nel momento per sempre. Ho nostalgia per le cose più piccole anche mentre stanno accadendo. Temo che non mi ricordo le piccole cose che lei fa adesso, che lei non farà più tra pochi anni. Quelle cose che fanno volare il mio cuore. Mi piace quando lei viene da me e mi dice che ha un segreto e poi mette sua manina al mio orecchio e dice: "polpette". Mi piace che lei fa la stessa cosa in inglese per chi parla solo inglese e sono orgoglioso che lei sa di farlo. "Meatballs!" Mi piace che lei mi dice "ma è ok" quando vede che sono un po triste o quando il latte è rovesciato sul tavolo. Mi piace che mi dà baci giraffa strofinando il naso sulla mia (quando non sta collando!). Mi piace che lei inizia a cantare la canzone incomprensibile e mi piace come le piace quando canto anch'io ("tutti-in-sieme!")

We rented out her old daycare for the party and invited some of her little friends for the celebrations. I prepared tutus for the girls to play dress up and fairywings for whoever wanted to be a fairy. The kids played with balloons, ate snacks, danced, chased eachother around and generally just had a brilliant time. I made a wonderful cake and then forgot to take any photos of it. Everyone said it was delicious though so I guess that's more important.

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Abbiamo affittato un nido per la festa e invitato alcuni dei suoi piccoli amici per i festeggiamenti. Ho preparato tutù per le ragazze di giocare vestire e fairywings per chi voleva essere una fata. I bambini hanno giocato con palloncini, snack mangiato, ballato, vicenda inseguito intorno e in generale appena avuto un tempo brillante. Ho preparato una torta stupendo e poi dimenticato di fotografarlo! Ma tutti hanno detto che era buono che è più importante.






Happy birthday sweet girl! You are my everything. Thank you so much for coming into my life. Love, Mommy
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Buon compleanno dolce ragazza! Tu sei il mio tutto. Grazie mille per essere venuta nella mia vita. Con amore, Mommy

♥ Jess

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Wine, cheese and Salumi party

I entertain at home quite a bit. I've thrown more than a few dinner parties and am always on the lookout for new recipes or presentation ideas for my next event.  Every few years though I decide to have a bigger affair and throw myself a birthday party. My most recent was this past Saturday evening.

First off we went to do the grocery shopping. Do you think we bought enough wine?

I decided to put all of our saved wood wine crates to use and use them to present the food instead of using plates and bowls. Here's an example of some of the crackers on display:

We chose to use real wine glasses instead of plastic ones and so I needed a system to be able to have each guest remember which glass was theirs. I have recently been playing around with recycling plastics by shrinking it in the oven and then turning it into jewellery so I thought that the same technique could be put to good use with the wine 'charms'.

I wrote out 30 words of characteristics that somellier's use when describing wines which can also be used to describe people, cut them all out and shrank them.  I then attached each to the base of a wine glass with 'patafix/funtack' which is a gum-like reusable sticking compound easily found in any office supply store. 

When the guests arrived I had each of them choose a glass with a characteristic that they thought best described them. It was fun because everyone remembered which glass was theirs and not all of the characteristics were entirely flattering. .  I guess if you turn up late to one of my events you deserve some gentle teasing... how does one choose between shallow and vicious?

We had a baby buffet for the 4 kids who attended and some outdoor toys set up. It was fun that they could choose what to eat all by themselves and kept them quite busy for a while.

 Everyone seemed to have a wonderful time, all of the food was eaten and people even asked me for the recipe for my dip - the only thing I actually had to prepare for the evening. The rest of the food was salumi, cheeses or raw (fruit and veg).  Since I also put out a lot of different types of crackers and breads to be eaten with caponata, patè or cheeses I made sure to lay out some brown paper on the table and handwrite the names of the different sauces and salsas so people would know what they were eating.

It really was a super easy and fun event to host and really a hit.  I love that there were only a few plates to clean up (but of course, all those wine glasses needed hand washing) and that we could use the space outside our house.  I could have never had the same 30 people in my tiny loft.

Special thanks go out to my hubby for being the best wine -server and DJ, to my friend Stefy who although couldn't be there lent me 18 wine glasses and didn't flinch when I only returned 16 and my special surprise guest and fantastic helper - my mom - who flew all the way to Milan from Montreal Canada just to help celebrate!