Happy Birthday, Mr Rae

This past weekend we celebrated my handsome husbeast's 30th birthday!
I ended up making three different types of cake: vanilla, lemon, and yellow with chocolate frosting. Long story involving cake sticking to pan, blah, blah, blah...anyway, it turned out alright in the end. I used my Martha Stewart cupcake flags for decoration.

As a sidenote, I found that champagne and white cran-strawberry juice in a 50/50 ratio makes an excellent champagne cocktail.

I also had a chance to bring out my pride and joy, Felt Birthday Banner:

Close-up:
As you can see, it's a bunch of felt circles strung along a piece of ric-rac. The genius of this getup (if I do say so myself) is that the letters can be rearranged and another person's name can be added instead of "Nate." I was also informed by a party-goer that it could be used for "Happy New Year" if I added a "W." To make it, I traced a glass and a mug (with diameters of about 3" and 3.75") for the circles and freehanded the letters. I hot-glued the pieces together with a ribbon loop in between them for hanging. Voila!

And here is my cute birthday boy: