Now that I’m well over 25, married, and graduated from high school and college, I’ve technically left all the big celebratory events in life behind. That seems so ridiculously sad.
Why don’t we celebrate more in our lives? Is it that around thirty most people are devoting their time to raising children, while I don’t plan to have one of my own? Or because a lot of these traditions were started living to 40 was a big deal?
Screw. That. I want to continue celebrating things in my life well beyond my twenties, and to highlight anything that catches my eye. Here are some birthdays and other things I’m totally going to celebrate:
Graduating from grad school. I value this far, far more than my college degree. It’s a show of my skills, I’ll be presenting a thesis, and I feel like I’ve grown considerably in the last 2+ years. My roommate should get one of his degrees when I do, so I’m building a party that’s a pretty close mimicry of a wedding for my own amusement. Plus when I’m really frustrated, spending a few minutes plotting this out cheers me up and gets me back on track. Somewhat.
I also may use this as a time to celebrate how far I’ve come as a photographer. This is one of the first photos I ever took on an assignment, and I’d love to reshoot some old frames to see how much my composition skills have improved.
I can so see how I had no clue what I was doing.
Daily awesomeness. I don’t like that hosting a party for the sake of having a party tends to be limited to birthdays. Once I’m out of school, I want to host quarterly events just to hang out with awesome people in ridiculous settings. I’d love to host a party to celebrate the first farmer’s market of the season, or the first sight of cherry blossoms in Seattle.
Candidacy Speech Birthdays. You can legally run for President once you’re 35, and become a Senator when you’re 30. Why not use those birthdays to give a speech? So what if you’re not going to be President – it’s a silly chance to talk about what matters to you and what you want to do with it. Even if your main goal is to just get more sleep.
Food holidays. I’m not going to lie – there are a ton of food holidays, often multiple on one day. I’m not out to celebrate every freaking one, but it’d be fun to pick a few that are awesome (Toasted Marshmallow Day is August 30th) and turn them into an annual group event.
Forty by Forty. Bucket lists are fun, but I’d want to start one at age 39, and then complete all of them in a year. Maybe nothing too crazy, but all sorts of stuff I wanted to do in a year, from acts of kindness to ziplining to camping. Then I could celebrate them all in one party where that party includes the fortieth item on the list. Or with forty cupcakes. I’m not too picky.
Make up new milestones. The last prime before 100 is 97; I’d totally celebrate living that long. I’d love to make a company and give it a birthday – even if only I celebrate it, it can have cake, too. Or there’s five and ten year anniversaries of staying in a town, or celebrating starting a new profession or going back to school or whatever sounds amazing in your life.














If you’re new to bento, plan in advance for the number of people involved, and just build in bulk. Lay out the trays, and work in assembly. Just focus on color and variety – some raw, some pickled; maybe reds and orange and greens. If you’re lost, try
When I was kid, though, they were totally off limits. Given the amount of regular gummy candy and Pocky I ate growing up, I suspect this was more to limit weird bits of goo being hidden in the kitchen rather than monitoring my sugar intake. Time passed, and Chris recently finding an adorable video on Hello Kitty miniature food replicas reminded me it could be fun to try some of these out for myself.

I’d love to see this done as a food photography panel or group exercise, hopefully with some sushi making tools for staging purposes. Have it filmed and displayed on a big screen, give the poor panel some alcohol for their trouble, and let’s see what can happen.


