A Day Straight Out of a RomCom

Hi friends! I am sitting here a little shook that it is June… is anyone else just completely unaware of time at the moment?? Don’t get me wrong, I am SO happy that we are starting to get back to some form of normalcy, but man.. I am not ready for summer yet! It was snowing and freezing about 5 seconds ago and now it is so nice and beautiful outside. It gets super humid in the summer in Kansas City, so I am soaking up our last few weekends of 60 degrees and perfect before it gets 90 degrees and humid!

This weekend was my mom’s birthday! This is the first birthday that my mom, my sisters and myself have lived in the same city in about 14 years. After we all went to college, we all moved to different states and different cities - and now we are all back together! My oldest sister and her husband just moved back to Kansas City a couple of weeks ago, so we were all able to celebrate together!

This year I wanted to plan a fabulous picnic in the most beautiful park in our town, Loose Park. I have always called it “Kansas City’s Central Park” lol. I know it is FAR from Central Park, but it is just our little slice of heaven. There is a beautiful rose garden and the most beautiful, huge green trees everywhere - you feel like you’re in a romantic comedy and Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are going to show up and join your picnic!

My mom absolutely loves the vibe of the French and English countryside, so I knew I wanted to make it a beautiful cottage garden style picnic. I already had most of the decor, so I just pulled pieces of what I already had.

If you know me even just a little bit, you know that one of my biggest personality traits is loving romantic comedies lol. My entire life I have loved them. I love the warm feeling they bring me, I love the belly laughs from the ridiculously stupid jokes, I love the music, I love everything. My sisters and I are the QUEENS of quoting romcoms. We will just text each other at the most random time of day with a simple movie quote and all 3 of us will immediately know what movie it was from. I know it sounds stupid, but we just love them so much. It is almost our own little language.

As Mindy Kaling said, “I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world”

I created the ultimate romcom playlist & you can listen to it by clicking the photo below!

Pretty much everything I served is from Trader Joe’s! If you didn’t already know this… Trader Joe’s has the BEST croissants. The absolute best. They are perfect for sandwiches and picnics and they are my go to now days. The sparkling lemonade is also perfect to mix with a little prosecco and makes the perfect cocktail!

My absolute favorite picnic basket - from Wayfair! I saw a blogger post this picnic basket and I absolutely fell in love. I had been searching for the perfect picnic basket and was so happy when I saw this one. So many picnic baskets have the traditional blue or red gingham pattern and I wanted something a little more pastel, so this one was just perfect.

The cake!!!!! Oh my gosh the most perfect cake ever. We order almost all of our family’s cakes from McLain’s Bakery in Kansas City. They have the most amazing cake and they decorate them so beautifully. They made this absolutely gorgeous English cottage cake and it was just so perfect for my mom. It also tasted AMAZING. You know how some bakeries make beautiful cakes but the actual cake isn’t always the best tasting? Totally not the case with McLains. The most amazing cake ever!

This is my fabulous birthday cake that McLain’s did for my last birthday! Seriously, they are amazing. Check them out here!

Okay, this is basically turning into a love letter to Trader Joe’s, but I’m sorry I can’t help it! They have these madeline cookies that are just to die for. They are so soft and moist (hate that word lol) - perfect for little french tea cookies. The tiny lemon and clementine cakes are also from TJ’s and SO good. I get all of my flowers from TJ’s and I get them fresh every Friday - it has become my own little tradition and it makes me so happy. Their roses are unmatched. They are always so beautiful.