Birthday Party World Part 3: Motown Museum

The day after my birthday we went here!

I don't have a ton of photos because photography was prohibited, but I managed to sneak in a few shots.

CJ and Chuck check out some photos.

Barry Gordie's record player.

Now, I know this photo is pretty blurry, but it's my favorite.  This pic was taken inside the Motown records studio at the museum- the studio where every single Motown song was recorded until 1972!  So many famous people have recorded in this room (which is actually the converted garage of the house).  Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Smokie Robinson- just to name a few.  Dr. King even recorded the album version of "I Have A Dream" just weeks before he delivered the speech in Washington.

At this particular moment, everyone on our tour is singing happy birthday to me, which was really cool!  Being in that studio was definitely the highlight of the tour.

After not being able to take pictures inside, we made up for it with lots of photos outside.

After that, we had to eat, of course.

CJ and Jaclyn were brave and ate oysters.  Gross!

My wonderful father in law Chuck bought me homemade donuts from One Eyed Betty's.  With raspberry and chocolate dipping sauces.  They were so good...!

Pruitt wanted some but he wasn't allowed.

He was probably sad about that.

And then I got this!  A dessert pizza!

I was pretty excited about it (and so was Pruitt, from the looks of this photo).

Jaclyn made it for me.  It was amazing!

Thanks to Jaclyn, my lovely in laws Babs & Chuck, Carl & CJ for helping me celebrate! xoxo

Hope Springs Eternal

Look what we saw on our walk today!

Birthday Party World Part 2: Dinner at Roast, Ghost Hunting (and dessert) at the Whitney!

We went downtown to celebrate on my actual birthday, March 2nd.  3/2 is a great birthday to have, since I get to share it with Mikhail Gorbechov, Jon Bon Jovi and my favorite, Dr. Seuss!

Two great Detroit institutions, one new and one old, were the spots we went to have dinner and dessert.

HERE...

...AND HERE!

But, beforehand, I stopped by my mom's for some birthday love (aka, presents)!

This greeted me at the door...

...and these were waiting for me inside.

An El Camino & a crown- she knows me well.

Then, it was time to head downtown.  And since we were going out on the town, we had to get a little fancy!

Black and white clad robots.

We started with dinner at Roast, which is in the historic Book Cadillac Hotel (or as it's called now, the Westin).  Roast is a great place if you are a carnivore and love you some meat.  Which makes it not the greatest spot for vegetarians...especially cause of stuff like this.

My mom was as little scared of of the pig, but Jaclyn and Kara didn't seem to mind!

Neither did we!

Shot inside the gorgeous lobby of the Book Cadillac.

After dinner, it was on to dessert at the Whitney.  It was my first time there, and I really, really loved it.  The house is that compelling combination of very beautiful, very historic, and very creepy.  It's definitely one of those places where you can actually feel the age of the house when you are inside.

If you look very closely, you can see a mural above the mantel of a child shooting another child.  Weird.

More on exploring the Whitney later, but first- dessert!

Carrot cake

Some delicious strawberry thing.

Peanut butter chocolate cake.

It was delicious and it made us really happy!

After we ate, we did some exploring.  At the Whitney, you can pretty much go anywhere inside the house.  The first floor is the restaurant area, but almost all the rooms on the second and third floors are open to the public.

It was really fun to walk around, open doors, look inside the rooms and take photos.  However, it also made me a little worried, like how would the staff know if people were doing stuff they weren't supposed to be doing- like smoking cigarettes in Mrs. Whitney's former bedroom (which is what happened when we were there).

I'm not trying to be the fun police or anything, but the Whitney is one of the few truly beautiful and historic houses left in the city that hasn't fallen to ruin and has been somewhat able to retain it's grandure.  I just hope that people realize and respect what a rare treasure it is and how lucky the city is that the house is still standing.

To learn more about the Whitney, go HERE.

We spent a lot of time on the second and third floors, trying not to run into any ghosts.  There was interesting stuff everywhere we looked...

...some of it was a little creepy.

Check out the reflection of this painting in the mirror.

We found this in a closet.  It probably wants to kill you in your sleep.

But the majority of what we saw was just unbelievably beautiful.

My mom said that when she was touring the house, she really felt like she could see flashes of how it looked back at the turn of the century.*
*Kind of like in Titanic, when they intersperse shots of the ship sunk at the bottom of the ocean with shots of the ship when it was first built and all beautiful.  Yes, a Titanic reference.  What can I say- I love that movie!  I was 17 when it came out.  I really didn't have a choice!

Thanks to CJ, my Mom, my sister Kara, my SIL Jaclyn and of course, Detroit, for making my birthday truly special.  I love you guys! xo

The best things in life are free...

...especially if those things are pizza!!!

Apparently, Supino's felt bad about the tiny, tiny hole (like, the size of a quarter) in our pizza, so they made another one and gave us both!

It was a Thursday night miracle.

Birthday Party World Part 1: Friends & Food

I just had a birthday.  It was this past Friday, so I used it as an excuse to celebrate pretty much the entire weekend, do a bunch of awesome Detroit-centric things, and eat A LOT of delicious food.  Ah food...I love you.

Since so much fun stuff happened over the weekend, I'm breaking it down into three separate post, so you don't get excitement fatigue.

Things got started on Thursday when two of my favorite guys took me to Five Guys for lunch.

Now I know Five Guys is a chain and I usually try to focus on local places, BUT, where I work, their aren't a ton of lunch options other than like, Subway, so Five Guys is pretty much as good as it gets (Big Boy is also on the list of exciting lunch locales, so you see what we're working with here)*
*That was NOT intended in any way to be a knock on Big Boy.  I really love Big Boy.  Slims Jims are amazing!

Andrew goes for it.

Burger being manhandled by a pro.

Almost as good as In-n-Out.  ALMOST.  

Ok, well actually, not really even almost, but these are the lies I have to tell myself.

Since I chose to live in a state without In-n-Out.

Later that evening, I got together with some lady friends for dinner at Anita's Kitchen in Ferndale.  Anita's Kitchen is a great local Michigan spot, so there you go!

Megan and me with our b-day Irish loot from SOB (our friend Shannon's initials are SOB, so that's what we call her...don't judge- she even calls herself SOB)

Look at all those lovely ladies (and little JT too, though he is certainly not a lady)!  I have to tell you, I'm lucky to have them as friends- they're some of the best people I know.
Thursday was a lovely start to my birthday weekend!


PS- Do you really want to know how much I love Big Boy?

This much.  Yeah, enough to pose with the Boy himself.

Also, enough to force poor, unsuspecting co-workers to pose with me.  Special shout out to Andrew for putting up with stuff like this!