As any good Prettier Party followers know – last year Vassar gave me www.theprettierparty.com for my birthday – ingenious! I wasn’t quite sure how he was going to top that but year’s presents were just as brilliant.
I haven’t had a day that I wanted to relive over and over and OVER again for a while now. But this week, I can’t help but wish to be whisked away again and again to the Inn at Castle Hill, where I spent Saturday luxuriously celebrating my birthday. A huge thank you to Vassar because literally everything was absolutely perfect.
The Inn sits on the same property as the Crane Estate in Ipswich and was once inhabited by the Crane family while they renovated the mansion. The first floor has been maintained to appear as though the house once was with a plethora of window seats and reading nooks, traditional furniture and a glowing fireplace. The sun-filled dining room is set for about twenty guests and the pantry (filled with gourmet teas, coffees and cookies) is accessible 24 hours for guests. Hello, unlimited freshly baked cookies? Yes, friends, that is heaven.
Then we arrived at our room, the Higinbotham Room, which was perched on the third floor of the house over looking the marsh and the ocean with three window seats, a cozy day bed and quite possibly the greatest discovery of my life, a sumptuous, over-stuffed king-sized bed. In case you are not aware, an amazing nights sleep is a rare occurrence in my life, one that I spend entirely far too much time attempting to obtain and on Saturday, I had the most fulfilling nights sleep for months (!!!!).
Note to self, must purchase a king sized bed immediately. Do not pass go, do not collect golden retriever puppy, just replicate that bed (and squeeze it into my teeny North End pad).
Later on Saturday night we found ourselves in the adorable town of Newburyport for the most divine dinner at 10 Center Street. Surrounded by fireplaces, we sat under thick exposed ceiling beams and savored their fall menu. I had the fall squash soup & beet, frisee, apricot, feta salad topped with a garlic vinaigrette – yum.
Add to all of that upcoming vegetarian cooking classes, a subscription to my guilty pleasure (US Weekly), a farm fresh sunny-side-up breakfast and a morning stroll around the estate – it might just have been the best birthday yet.
