I had a really good V-Day. My Valentine met me at the train with a bouquet of red tulips, cooked me a yummy dinner with lots of mushrooms and popped open a nice bottle of 1988 Chateau Latour that once belonged to Anna Wintour. So good!

Getting a year older feels less bad when you’re company of loved ones… and wine.

My man had chosen Public as the site of my birthday celebrations.

It’s a great little place on Elizabeth Street in Soho. The decor is inspired by municipal buildings from the 1930s and they have a Michelin Star.

My aunt and uncle are here from Sweden and were nice enough to treat me to this gorgeous dinner. Lucky birthday girl…

There was kangaroo on the menu, but we did not have that. Instead, I had amazing scallops and a beet gnudi (pronounced “nudie” — which seemed very funny at the time) pasta.

Delicious fried oysters, which I did not order either but snuck a taste of. It also just happened to be the most photogenic dish.

We had bubbly, white and red — all my favorite kinds of wines.

At the end of the meal I got this cute little box of chocolates — nice birthday perk.

What do you do when your birthday is on a Monday? Go to the Monday Room! Which happens to be in the same space as Public.

It’s cozy and they have scotch and menus made from cow skins — which was kind of sad — I couldn’t stop petting ours.

There is also a nice wine tasting menu, but we opted instead for a glass each before we hopped in a cab back home, across the Williamsburg Bridge.

Public is on 210 Elizabeth Street.

On top of that, we had had no time to cook a turkey or do any of that Thanksgiving stuff, so we went out for a very non-traditional meal at Aurora in Williamsburg. Very good, but we were all pooped, me from the stress of a four-hour traffic jam (three there + one hour on the way back, when I scared my Swedes by cutting through two lanes of traffic to get in the EZ Pass lane before the Holland Tunnel), they from good-old jet lag. After a refreshing stroll home, we slept very well. Turkey coma indeed — even though I didn’t eat any, I blame the bird!

Bad iPhone pics because I was so beat I forgot to put the memory card in the camera…

On a cold night, there’s nothing better than a cozy dinner in a dimly lit restaurant.

I think it’s nice to try and go out for a romantic dinner at least once a week.

This time, we chose cute French place Juliette. I love all the red accents in the interior. This girl in the bar fit in very well.

I was seriously craving moules frites and these were very satisfying but definitely not as good as the ones at my fave French place Bar Tabac.

I love when they stick cute little notes in with your bill. Kind of makes you feel better about paying.

All wined and dined, we walked home slowly in the cold night, stopping by a party for a friend who had finished the marathon earlier in the day. Perfect Sunday date night.

Friday night, I went to a dinner party at the Art Director’s club. It was really the afterparty for The Feast Conference. I could not attend but followed it via livestreaming all day. The theme for the dinner was fall.

There was lots of yummy food by local purveyors. Really good fish, bread, cheeses and, served inside those tiny orange pumpkins, the best pumpkin soup I’ve ever had.

There was banjos, laughs and dancing.

And a pretty Mezcal table.

The people who had donated the food were very excited to talk about it, none more so that the wine guys, who jumped up onto a table.

Each table had colored pencils, for brainstorming worldchanging ideas. We did mostly girly doodles, but who says love can’t change the world?

At ten, it was time to go home. All week, I had waited for the moment when I would be home, in my bed, knowing I could just sleep in and not have to get up early the next morning. It was divine.