Actually, my real birthday isn’t for another week (Sunday May 10th, Mothers Day) but my week long b-day celebration got off to an epic start yesterday.

My fellow Taurus girlfriends and I, VegYogini (May 5th) of Huggerfood and Trina (May 2) of Your Vegan Mom pooled our resources and put together a mega Taurus birthday bash which we dubbed The Taurus Trifecta. We staged it at the fabulously cool & creepy Old Zoo in Griffith Park, invited a few of our closest friends, and had it catered with vegan hot dogs by The Frankenstand and mindblowing cupcakes by Vegan Bake Sale.

A swell and delicious time was had by all… too bad you missed it!

The master of vegan hot dogs sets up his stand in the shadow of the old bear enclosure. Those “toe tags” pictured top left are the cute tickets he designed which were handed out to our guests to redeem for hot dogs.

Those weren’t the only “buns in the oven” at our party :)

All the fixin’s.

My dog: “The Witch” beer brat with spicy brown mustard, fresh cilantro, sauerkraut and sweet relish.

More artistic hot doggery. The one on the left shows the other variety we offered, “The Franken”, a sundried tomato and basil, slighly sweet Italian frank.

Vegan Nachos! Your Vegan Mom made this incredible, slightly spicy cheese sauce. Unbelievable how much this tasted like the real thing. No, it tasted better than the real thing actually. I covered mine in hot jalapenos and took a visit to mouth-burning, cheesy heaven.

Chocolate Mousse Cake. A fantastic surprise from Brittany of Sick of Lettuce. This is a recipe from the Millennium cookbook though I’m willing to bet hers turned out even more beautiful than when they make it! Just look at that thing… truly a work of art.

Happy Birthday to us!

Oreo Cookie cupcakes by Vegan Bake Sale. Wow.

Strawberry Shortcake cupcakes by Vegan Bake Sale. Wow again!

Here’s the Chocolate Mousse cake covered with Brittany’s delicious raspberry goo.

Gigantor Lemon Poppyseed Cupcakes by JennShaggy… another delightful surprise.

Chocolate Chip cookies by VegYogini. Not a huge chocolate chip cookie fan but these might have just changed that for good.

Snickerdoodles by VegYogini. Yum!

What tasty fun! Thank you everyone who showed up, and extra special huge thanks to those who cooked, baked, brought extra tantalizing goodies, helped carry shit, helped to clean shit up, help to lift heavy hot dog carts up & down steep inclines, took pictures, sang us Happy Birthday, brought us awesome presents, or just plain ol’ came out and had a good time with us. Major kudos to Paul, Trina’s husband (Your Vegan Dad?) who not only helped by getting up way too early in the morning to secure the location, but who also did more than a lion’s share worth of transporting, carrying, cleaning, etc… You da man.

We were bummed to hear that Liz of Yo Soy! got into a minor car crash while looking for parking on the way to our party. Her doggie got tossed around in the car and had to be taken to the vet but from what I can tell both she and the dog are ok, thank goodness. Her car got smashed up and we never got to eat the (most certainly delicious) Dandies marshmallow cupcakes she made for us… how awful on all counts! Liz, we are so grateful for the effort you made to be there with us, and feel so bad that you and your sweet dog had to go through any of that. We enjoyed your cupcakes and your company in spirit and we’re so glad that it wasn’t worse. What’s a party without a little bit of drama, eh?

The best part is that I now get to pretend it’s my birthday for the next week and then get to celebrate it for real all over again next weekend. By the time this is over & done with you’ll all be so sick of hearing about my birthday… be glad it only happens once a year!