It’s hard to believe, but this is the 8th year of me turning my friend Amber’s birthday into a national freaking holiday.
Below are the links to the first seven years of the MBIP yearly Amber Birthday Extravaganzas!
Here’s the links to the past seven Amber Birthday Extravaganza posts:
1. Saturday Night Microwave Buffet @ Amber’s Birthday Party!
2. The First Annual Pizza Delivery Derby!
3. Dave Stovall As Elvis Presley and A Half A Dozen Birthday Cakes!
4. The Fourth Annual Amber Birthday Extravaganza @ W.E. Sullivan’s!
5. The Fifth Amber Birthday Extravaganza: The Bowling Edition @ St. Ann’s!
6. The Sixth Amber Monologues Birthday Party!
7. Seventh Edition Featuring Our Pandemic Road Trip!
It’s been seven years of birthday adventures to celebrate Amber’s anniversary on planet earth and now it’s time to start this 8th year birthday celebration!
Let the festivities begin!
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The Poster @ Technicraft
Chelsie Tamms from Lettering Works designed another poster for this year’s Amber Birthday Celebration.
Technicraft printed them and framed one of them for the party and here’s Stacey using it to shield herself from the MBIP Camera!
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Trefzger’s
As always, we had Trefzger’s bake up a specialty birthday cake for Amber.
And we also asked our favorite baking artist, Kayla to design and bake the cake for us. Kayla wasn’t working Saturday when we picked it up and Jen held the wonderful cake up for us. Kayla did magical and beautiful work on the cake, as she always does!
Through the magic of Photoshop we’ve also got Kayla holding up her genius piece of cake art for this year’s birthday celebration. Fabulous work as always, Kayla, thank you so much!
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the Party Starts @ MBIP World Headquarters!
This year’s party started out at MBIP World Headquarters with Jon, Birthday Girl Amber and Joe.
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Presents!
There’s Amber opening up this year’s presents.
She loved all of them and it was fun watching her open them all up! I’m really happy she liked all of them!
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Jim’s Steak House
Our friend Steve joined the party at Jim’s Steak House, the hub for this year’s 8th Amber Birthday Extravaganza!
There was a sign wishing Amber a Happy Birthday in the impressive lobby of Jim’s Steak House and we also had the framed poster on a table in the lobby near the bar.
Amber loved it and it was a nice surprise.
Our table is festive and birthday decorative with candles, birthday hats and Happy Fucking Birthday balloons!
The party has begun!
Terra was our pretty and friendly waitress and she took our drink orders.
Our meal is being planned by Jim’s Steak House owner Tim Comfort and Kristen Comfort helped coordinate this whole party, so I’d like to thank both of them.
There’s Alvernus who’s got water and pepper at the ready!
Here’s a shot of the dining room, Jim’s always reminds me of a New York Steak House and Kristin told me that her grandfather was inspired to start the family-owned steakhouse after a trip to New York’s Gallagher’s steak house. It all makes sense now!
The seasonal lit-up pumpkins are a nice touch!
I love the dark bar in Jim’s Steak House. There’s the highly polished wooden bar and Josh was performing bartending duties behind it.
There’s the quartet of beers on tap.
Now that Sky Harbor is no more, Jim’s is the last place in Peoria with a lively and fun piano bar.
That’s Ben and Kate providing the entertainment. They’re a fun and lively entertaining duo and you can read more about them right here.
I love all the photos in here and there’s two Peoria legends, Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison framed and hanging on the wall.
Jay Leno made a stop in here and my favorite photo in here is the autographed Warren Zevon photo.
I’ve never seen this Vic Burnett photo and for those of you that don’t know, he’s the weatherman who changed my life! He’ll be featured on the blog here in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned for that!
Meanwhile, back at the dining table, the food is starting to arrive!
We started off with a delicious and crisp salad.
Then the main Course arrived!
They prepared a dinner of a vegetable medley, garlic mashed potatoes and a sliced filet topped with steak Diane sauce. It looks like a fabulous meal! Let’s dig in!
Wow, what an exquisite meal this was! The garlic mashed potatoes were rich and smooth and the vegetable medley was a really tasty side dish.
But the star of the show was the steak!
These were tender, juicy and succulent filets and the steak Diane sauce brought out even more flavor.
The savory sauce had mushrooms and onions and this was such a fantastic and flavorful steak! A four star dinner for sure!
After dinner Terra presented Amber with the Trefzger’s cake designed and baked by Kayla. Amber loved it!
Here’s Amber blowing out the candle on the cake!
And here she is enjoying her birthday cake on the 8th Annual Amber Birthday Extravaganza!
Thanks to Chelsie Tamms at Lettering Works, Stacey at Technicraft, Kayla at Trefzger’s Bakery and to TIm, Kristin and Nick Comfort from Jim’s Steak House for helping me put this year’s party together!
Jim’s Steak House is a great place for a party and they even have a room off from the dining room that you can reserve for a bigger party or event. The contact information is below.
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Happy Birthday, Amber! I hope this is a great year for you!
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110 SW Jefferson Avenue
Peoria
309-673-5300
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Related Posts: The Seventh Annual Birthday Extravaganza, The Sixth Annual Amber Birthday Extravaganza!, Saturday Night Microwave Buffet @ Amber’s Birthday Party!, Saturday Night @ Amber’s Birthday Party...Plus...The First Annual Amber Birthday Pizza Delivery Derby!, Saturday Night @ The Third Annual Amber Birthday Extravaganza! Featuring Dave “Elvis” Stovall And A Half A Dozen Birthday Cakes, The Fourth Annual Amber Birthday Extravaganza and The Fifth Annual Amber Birthday Extravaganza.