It's not over yet...

I don't know if this is a general Cuban birthday custom or if it was just peculiar to our family, but on your birthday, you would display your opened gifts on your bed all day. I always liked that. You know, it made me feel special and celebrated and somehow made my birthday feel like an important milestone.  Even if there was no party, seeing the gifts displayed together always gave me the feeling that today is something special. In fact, I continue to follow the tradition with my kids.

How it works is that on your birthday as you receive and open gifts, you immediately place them on your bed (which was beautifully and perfectly made, at least for this day!) in a wonderful display of abundance and celebration of your family's generosity. Isn't that cool? Plus it gave you a ready-made birthday show-and-tell venue which added a bit of theatricality to the day. "This is from ........"

I continued to enjoy the Birthday Bed Display myself until I got married. It's a little trickier because well (ahem) I share a bed now.  But because I still like the tradition of keeping birthday gifts on display, I went with another option - the hutch.

Check out my birthday stash! (and guess who's going to be having an Andy Garcia/Ocean's 11, 12, & 13 film festival VERY soon, but that's not important right now. =D)

Anyway, except for the tulips (thanks, Michelle!) my birthday gifts are still on display on my hutch.
I know. I'm not being lazy or anything (which of course, is entirely possible, but not true in this case) it's just that I'm still trying to drag out this birthday celebration thing for the entire month...

.....which means I get to celebrate for one more day. ;-)