I made Dulce de Leche last week. Guys, it’s EASY! It takes a little time, but it’s super easy. Why oh why haven’t I done this before? Oh that’s right, because I didn’t have any reason to, until now. Now? What changed? Well… let’s start at the beginning.
Deb’s birthday was last Thursday. Every year on Memorial Day Weekend we find ourselves at the lake right around Deb’s birthday. We usually have a group dinner on Friday night, but Saturday night tends to be the BIG shindig. Then Sunday night we eat leftovers from the first two nights. It’s a lot of fun.
This year, plans stayed the same! I told everyone I was bringing the birthday cake. We also have another birthday that falls during Memorial Day Weekend, but I’ll focus on that cake later. Today, let’s talk about the Chocolate Dulce de Leche Cake because, oh. my. gosh. it’s amazing! (more…)
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that it was my husband’s birthday. Guys, his birthday present was friggin awesome, in my opinion anyway. Although, he was pretty keen on it too!
It seems like a million years ago I did that 101 in 1001 project. In fact, I did this sometime in the first years we were married. One of the goals I had was to make him a quilt out of his old army uniforms. And I slowly worked on it. Read that as I worked on it 1-2 days and then piled it away for another day.
Jump forward 5 years to about the beginning of October…. okay, back up to earlier this year first. When we were working on Abug’s quilt, I took hubby’s army uniforms to my grandma’s and told her we needed to make hubby’s quilt also. We used a couple pieces in Abug’s quilt and then it sat all spring/summer in grandma’s sewing room. So now we’re at the beginning of October and I went to grandma’s to can my fall green beans. I looked at her and said, OH CRAP, we were going to make hubby’s quilt and his birthday is in 4 weeks (or whatever the actual time frame was).
I knew that I was going to be busy the week of October 16th due to the Newton County Christmas for Kids Chili Cookoff and that I would be out of town the week of hubby’s birthday. So I told Grandma, if you can help, we’ll get this done for his birthday. She was ecstatic to help. Grandma’s are cool like that.
Choosing the Quilt Pattern
The first day we went to work, we had to decide what pattern to make. Grandma has a HUGE stack of pattern magazines and books. When I say huge, I’m not exaggerating and imagine HUGE! We debated this one and that one and tossed around ideas. Then I ran across this in the back of one of the magazines. The thing is… it wasn’t a pattern but more of an advertisement.
The more I got to looking at it, the more I realized we had done this type of star in Abug’s quilt, so I pulled that pattern out. I sat there and did calculations (yes, everyone trusted my mathematical skills…. scary I know) and away we went to making this quilt.
Today is my dear darling husband’s birthday. I knew I wasn’t going to have an opportunity to bake his birthday cake with Abug this week, so over the weekend she and I made his cake. I decided on making a chocolate cake topped with a peanut butter buttercream icing and mini Reese’s pieces. The chocolate cake I decided to use was my grandma’s recipe. Abug and I made the cake, I put it into the oven, baked it off, and that’s when it all fell apart, literally.
Today is my daddy’s birthday! Happy Birthday, daddy! I’m not sure though, that a birthday on a Monday is much fun. First off, I’m not sure of many people who like Monday’s… and secondly… read the first statement. Poor Monday does get a pretty bad rap… I wonder if people who Monday is their Saturday/Sunday hate Monday as bad as the rest of most of the world… Just a thought that has absolutely NOTHING to do with my daddy’s birthday.
Abug and I have spent a lot of the summer learning (her not me, I’ve been teaching) how to bake. I’ve kind of created a monster really. Whoops. She wakes up a lot of mornings and asks what we are going to bake today. Haha. So I knew that she needed to bake Papa a birthday cake. I set out to decide what kind of birthday cake we were going to bake him. Little did I know, she had her own agenda. I finally decided upon a Cinnamon Roll Cake, but she changed my plans.
Here we are, halfway through the next month and I still haven’t recapped/talked about my birthday.
I should tell you I hate birthdays. Not because I don’t like getting older. No, I’m fine with that. That means I’m still alive. I just hate the day. In more recent years I haven’t had good birthdays. It’s been forgotten by family and friends (not all, please don’t take offense if you remembered!!!). It gets treated like another day. It’s just not a big deal. And I guess I feel like it should be a big deal? I don’t know. Maybe I’m full of myself… ha.
When hubby and I got together, it seems like he gets week long birthday’s and I barely get a day. I guess I was a bit jealous of that. The reason he gets that is that if his birthday falls during the week, we’re supposed to get Tbug to celebrate, but that doesn’t always happen. So we celebrate on his birthday. I’ve thrown him surprise birthdays. Plus we’ve celebrated his real birthday on a weekend we had Tbug. Multiple times all of this has happened.
This year, my hubby decided to give me a week long birthday. This morning I saw a quote on Facebook:
I know good men still exist because I am lucky enough to have one.
A friend from college commented that she couldn’t help but think back to our Memoirs class and how much she learned about him. Maybe this is something I should have written about in class… Although I’m not far enough removed from it to use for a memoir.
Anyway, let’s quit procrastinating and let’s discuss
my birthday.
My birthday started out the weekend before my birthday, if you ask hubby. I had been wanting to eat at the Japanese Steakhouse for a while. He decided we were eating there and that was the start of my birthday.
What is more? I’m a year older. I really haven’t touched on my birthday yet. I’m sure more will come on that when I can find the right words… But until then, let’s review last year’s goals.
There really is a reason I don’t set goals. I think I’m afraid of failure. I never set a New Year’s Resolution. I take that back… I set one this year. This years resolution was to be happier. I thought I was doing well and then the other day my dad said if I was ever happy, he’d be shocked, as in he wouldn’t know what to do. I guess that’s another story for another day. Back to the
33 in my 33rd Year…
1. Pay off my car.
I did this. What? But I don’t drive a car. That’s right. This is the second vehicle I’ve paid off and almost immediatly sold. haha. The last one was my Mustang. We paid it off two days after I traded it in. This time around, at least we paid it off and I drove it around for another 3 months before we traded it off…
2. Break Abug’s mare, Little Pi, to ride
Fail. Not even close. I have found someone to break horses now, so maybe… but really we have her up for sale and would prefer to sell her and buy an already trained mare for Abug.
For about a month leading up to Abug’s birthday she begged and pleaded (okay, that’s a bit of an extreme but we are referring to a toddler here….) that she wanted cookies and a cake and cupcakes for her birthday. I promised her I would take care of her. Now, she was back and forth between cupcakes and cake, but the cookies… they were definitely a want.
She chose Princess Elena of Avalor theme for her party so the cookies were Princess Elena’s dress. I was quite pleased with how they turned out. At first, I wasn’t so sure but once they were done, I was pleased. This year I took cookies to the lake for her “lake birthday.”
A couple days before her birthday I decided on cupcakes in the shape of a Princess Elena dress to go along with the theme of the cookies. She prefers chocolate cake over vanilla although she isn’t really picky, so I went with chocolate cake into cupcakes. I made the yellow sash with a piece of ribbon. It was easier than trying to do it with icing and I was afraid a red sash wouldn’t stand out.
