How I Am Celebrating 40

I am turning 40 in a few weeks.

You are going to hear more about it because I have a lot to say about it, ha ha. And I will be doing that in posts here and there over the coming weeks.

Forty is a big deal in this stage of life. I feel like you spend your 20s figuring out career and relationships, you spend your 30s figuring out parenting and marriage and how to create a foundation for this life you want to live and then in your 40s…you start living it.

I am here to start living it.

So when it came to figuring out how to celebrate it in a way that felt a) fun but b) true to what makes me happy at this stage in life, I was committed to doing it right. I thought about a big trip but it felt overly indulgent and we already have a big trip planned for later in the year so it didn’t make sense. I thought about spending a bunch of money on a fancy, Pinterest-style dinner for 20 of my closest friends in a raw space where I would oversee every detail from the flowers to the candles to the signature drink. And then realized overseeing all those details would be exhausting. I thought about booking a hotel room and finding a club that plays 90s hip hop exclusively and dancing the night away like I did on my 18th birthday. But it turns out I am no longer 18 and probably couldn’t hang for more than an hour or two in a club of any size.

So I decided on a series of small celebrations instead. A week or so of intimate outings and get-togethers with people that I love, doing things that I love, to fill my heart with love.

I am hosting 16 of my friends for dinner at my favorite local pizza place where the table will be long and piled high with my favorite food, bottles of red wine and hopefully a little Tom Petty playing in the background. I am having a special birthday dinner with my parents, husband and kids in a fancy new restaurant I’ve been wanting to try where we will dress up for the night and drink special cocktails and hopefully have to Uber home. And then my husband and I are sneaking off to Napa for a weekend alone of eating, drinking and looking back on 20+ years of birthday celebrations together and (hopefully, ha!) another 20+ ahead of us. I am also booking myself various solo spa treatments and coffee dates and shopping trips throughout just to treat myself. And I have a girls’ weekend planned for a month later with some fellow turning 40 girlfriends that I simply adore.

Sounds pretty perfect, right? I am really excited about how it is shaping up. I thought about it for so long and debated so many ideas and in the end, my favorite things with my favorite people just made the most sense. The big milestones in life are yours to celebrate and it turns out, I like to celebrate them in small ways at this stage in life. As long as pizza is involved.

So happy almost 40 to me. x

*image above via Las Alcobas Napa Valley, which we will be calling home for a few days.