So I wanted to do something special for Andrew's birthday this year. He had already gotten his birthday present from me - a spiffy new iPod - so I had to come up with something ultra cool for his birthday celebration. So, I surprised him with a "Food Network" day last Saturday, 11/10.

First, I surprised with tickets to the Fabulous Food Show, sponsored by the Food Network. We had gone before in 2005 and had a blast - we even got Andrew's Alton Brown cookbook autographed! So this year, we made sure to see Alton's cooking show again while we were there. I then surprised him with additional tickets to the wine sampling event at the food show. Finally, at the end of the show, I presented him with the final part of our day - dinner reservations at Lola, Mike Symon's restaurant in downtown Clevelnad. For those who don't know, the day after our birthday celebration, Chef Symon was crowned "Next Iron Chef" on Food Network. My parents gave use a gift card to use towards dinner as their gift to Andrew and everything we had was fabulous - lobster, rabbit, duck and more. Mike Symon was there that night and we got to say hi to him when we walked in, so that was pretty cool.

I made a series of 4 cards based off the Mastercard commericals to give to him throughout the day that specified the price tag of each element of the day with the final card stating "Celebrating your birthday in style...priceless."

I think it was a pretty good birthday for him and I was happy to be able to do something unique.