Caren

Did you know that in Mexico (and throughout Latin America) Valentine’s Day is known as the Day of Love and Friendship? (Colombia also celebrates el Día del Amor y la Amistad, but it’s in September, for some reason? Colombianos, explain yourselves. ; )

It’s always been one of my favorite holidays, for obvious reasons: I love pink. I love hearts. And I love friendship. I actually always forget that it’s known as a super romantic ~couple’s holiday~ and I don’t think I’ve ever celebrated in a couple-y way. I also always forget that the color red is associated with Valentine’s Day, so clearly I live in my own valentine bubble!

heart cake 2015

I do like to celebrate by throwing a big party with my friends and making my home as pink as possible. This year Devin and I made it a dance party, featuring some of our friends’ favorite songs (we asked everyone to include their favorite dance song when they RSVP-ed). It ended up being really fun, so I decided it would be fun to share the playlist plus a few photos of our Valentine’s Day treats!

This is from our first Love & Friendship party in 2014. You can tell Devin and I were feeling *extra* environmental because we made cupcakes without liners, and we dyed the icing pink using water that we used to boil beets. (Don’t worry, we’ve since learned to use frozen berries, haha.) Related: my cousin Caren and I tried to dye the snow in front of our apartment pink using the rest of the beet water, but it ended up looking more “crime scene” than “cute.” (OK, this caption ended up being *way* more embarrassing than I thought it would be.)

In 2015, Devin surprised me by baking a bunch of heart-shaped cakes, and everyone got to decorate their own!

2017 — This year I made punch for the first time, complete with an ice ring, which is just a fancy word for a big piece of ice you make in a bundt pan. I know it kind of looks like someone dropped a cake into the punch (aaah!), but if you don’t think about it too much or stare too hard, it’s kind of pretty, no?

…and here are the treats at the end of the night because I forgot to photograph them earlier. (That three-tiered stand was a gift from our friend Nabeel, and it is my favorite thing in the world : )

P.S. A few other Valentine’s Day posts: 2012 + 2015 + 2016

A few weeks ago my cousin Caren, the artist and singer and Mexican-candy provider (thank you, beibi), came to visit. This is the second time she’s stayed with us in New York, and once upon a time I visited her in Paris, so I can say with authority that she is a fantastic city explorer. It’s always fun to play tourist with her because she’s up for anything and everything, but she also has ideas for what to do so we never get bored, and she always manages to sneak in some culture-with-a-capital-C while we’re together so it’s not just vintage hats, phone cases, vegan soup, and garlic pills (the last one was her idea).

Last time she was here we saw two operas (okay, okay; she saw two operas. I saw one…and a half), and this time we went to see a play I’d been dying to see called This Is Our Youth, starring Michael Cera (from Arrested Development), Tavi Gevinson (from THE INTERNET), and Kieran Culkin (from, um, the Culkin family!).

Afterward, Caren and Devin kindly waited with me to meet the actors and get their autographs, and I even got a picture with Tavi, who seemed just as fun and interesting as she does online and prompted me to think about how much I love the internet. Really. *NERD ALERT* I’m grateful to have this way of finding community, learning about new things, and staying close with the people I love. The whole thing is so weird and cool, and I’m still as amazed by it as I was the first time I heard about it on the radio in July of 1996. I don’t think I’ll ever have the words to fully pay homage to the World Wide Web, so let me stop here.

Fun fact: I am pretty short and shy, so to get the autographs I just kind of stuck my playbill up and hoped they’d see it. When Kieran Culkin signed it, he said, “Aggressive. I like that.” I immediately thought of Sheryl Sandberg and Leaning In and Banning Bossy, etc., so I just nodded like yes-I-am and blasted off with my rocket pack to shatter the glass ceiling once and for all.

smoothliminal

Happy Valentine’s Day (hold the heteronormativity)

A cool thing happened