Golden Birthday Vegas Edition: Cedar City

Lisa, Becky, and I have a tradition.  To celebrate our golden birthdays we head down to Vegas and have a girls weekend! Four years ago we celebrated Lisa's golden birthday, CLICK HERE to see pictures from that adventure.  We didn't know Becky on her golden birthday, so we will celebrate her big 30 together in Vegas, but that's not for another couple of years.  We all had quite a bit going on during October when my birthday hit, so we decided to put our celebration on hold until February.  It gave us all something awesome to look forward to after all the holidays!

We left after work on Friday evening, since we got a late start on the drive, we didn't want to drive through the night to get to Vegas, so we drove to Cedar City and stayed at Lisa's cousin's adorable bed and breakfast, The Big Yellow Inn.  If you ever find yourself in Cedar City, I would highly recommend this place, it is full of such personality!  We rolled into Cedar around 9 at night, and immediately set out exploring this fun B&B

The library was my favorite room

This was our room, the top floor suite.  It was HUGE!!!! It had a queen bed, a double bed and an adorable little twin bed in it's own little nook.  It took us a good 20 minutes to explore our whole suite.  Each room has a theme, our room was decorated with an oriental flare.

We stayed up for a couple of hours chatting in the fun parlor that is located off the library on the main floor, then curled up in our beds and had a good nights sleep.

We were greeted with quite the surprise when we woke up, it had snowed all through the night and was still going strong!!!! It was a white and wintery wonderland outside our window!  We headed down to breakfast and had a nice chat with the owners of the B&B and met some of the other guests that were staying there.  We dined in the library, I felt like I was in a movie or something, it's just so charming there.

It was so hard to pack up and leave The Big Yellow Inn.  With all the snow outside it was extremely tempting to just stay in Cedar and enjoy the cozy B&B.  They had all sorts of books, movies and games along with bottomless herbal tea and a fireplace in our room, we could have had such a fun time staying there for a few days.  But alas, we said our goodbyes and ventured out into the snow, nervous to see what the drive was going to be like down to Las Vegas.

Luckily, we only had to drive through the storm for about 45 minutes.  By the time we hit St. George, it was clear skies and sunny.  We made sure to make a stop at the original Swig to get a couple of road trip drinks before continuing our drive down to The Vegas!!!!!!

Fourth Annual Valentine Tea

Every year I host a Valentine's Tea party for my two nieces and nephew that live in Utah.  I have so much fun throwing this party each year, I try to make it a little kid's paradise and attempt to make all of their wildest dreams come true.  I made GF chocolate cupcakes and got macrons from Trader Joes to help decorate the table.  I handmade two kinds of heart shaped chocolate truffles, raspberry and mint, complete with glitter and heart sprinkles and had them in glass bowls on the table as well. I also had cherry gummy hearts from Whole Food and chocolate covered cherry Jelly beans in an antique gold box on the table for nibbling through out the afternoon.

We had sparkling cherry limeade, complete with bottomless cherries, to drink

I made these fun glitter books out of old dictionaries that I found at the DI.  Aren't they the coolest tablescape decoration?  They had glitz and glamour instantly.

The lunch menu included:

 Three cheese Paninis with Fig Jam and Honey

Sharp Cheddar Paninis (for the kids)

Fresh Mixed Berries with Homemade Rose Infused Whipped Cream

Strawberry and Spinach Salad

These were the party favors I gave to the adults:

-Conversation Heart Bath Bomb

_- Red Heart Necklaces 

- Valentine Mix Jelly Bellys 

- Essence Lipstick

I had picked out lipstick colors that matched the personalities and styles of my two sisters and mom, it was kind of fun and they all loved the shade they got!  I had everyone open their favors after lunch because 95% of the fun of giving gifts is watching them being opened and enjoyed.  The other 5% is having fun picking things out you know they will love!. I also wanted them to be able to enjoy all the fun things the rest of the afternoon.  It was like Christmas morning all over again!

I didn't get a picture of what was in the kids' favors which included:

-Fanta flavored lip gloss for the girls and Dr. Pepper chapstick for Sam

- Red and Pink Gem Heart Necklaces

- Heart Shaped Bubbles

- Valentine Pez Dispensers

- Valentine Mix Jelly Bellys

Sam was especially happy about the candy...

Then it was time for crafts!  Jenny had brought a couple of different fun valentine crafts for us all to enjoy.  I took a poll of what Disney movie everyone would like to watch out of the three I have on DVD and the winner was Tangled.  So I put that on to be playing in the background while we crafted and chatted and enjoyed more treats and cherry limeades. 

Many thanks to all who attended and all who came early to help me pull everything together at the last minute!  I love putting this fun party on every year, and the treasured tradition it has become.