Happy new year dear readers! Based on my Twitter feed there a lot of people who wanted to give 2013 a kick in the pants and are ready to start fresh with a new year. 2013 for me wasn’t bad. I felt that way at the end of 2012. I hope 2014 is better for everyone who struggled through 2013 and that it’s just as good for those who 2013 treated well. I still haven’t finished the Christmas post I’ve been working on since I got back from Arizona, but I figured I would be more timely to go ahead and put up my New Year’s post. We’ll just do things a little out of order because that’s my prerogative.

We rang in the new year the same way we have done for many years by throwing a New Year’s Eve party/birthday party for my husband, who was born on New Year’s Eve. I always make him a birthday cake. When I asked him what kind of cake he wanted he provided me with two requirements. One, no coconut because he dislikes shredded coconut. Two, he requested that it be complicated because he’s super sweet like that. I figured a cake with three layers and two toppings counted as complicated enough. I made this chocolate peanut butter cake from The Smitten Kitchen. It was delicious. He said it was the best cake I’ve ever made, and given the number of cakes I’ve made since we’ve been together this is very high praise for this cake. There’s still half a cake left so feel free to stop by for a slice.

Many of our friends had babies in the past year so we lost a number of our party guests to their kids this year. I had more than one person say wow there’s not nearly as many people here this year. Oh I guess a lot of them had babies. I will say one thing for having only about 20 people as opposed to our normal 40ish people, the clean up was a lot easier. I’m not sure why that is exactly. Probably it means I know who my messy friends are now.

We did have one baby at the party for a little while. One of my best friends from college just moved to the Baltimore area (sadly on temporarily), so she, her husband, and their 10 month old daughter were able to come to the party. As most of the people who did come to the party were the ones who normally show up on the later end of the party, I got plenty of time to hang out with just them and catch up which was nice. Their baby is super adorable. She was in love with our cats. I wish I had video of her reactions to them. She was so excited it was like she didn’t know what to do with herself. So cute.

As per usual we headed a couple blocks over to 34th Street to see them drop their ball. It has definitely been getting more crowded and crazy there every year that we’ve been going over. My favorite part of the night though really is the point of the night about quarter to midnight when you literally just see people pouring out of houses and walking over there. I love it. I actually took a little video of the ball dropping this year. Happy new year everyone!