Birthday

3-Layer Microwave Cake (Happy Birthday Momma!)

Yes, you read this correctly! This 3-layer cake was made in the microwave. Mind blown! haha.

So a blog I like to follow called Bigger Bolder Baking (mentioned a time or two) said you could make a 3-layer cake in the microwave. Now if you know anything about me… of course I’m going to have to try that out.

Once upon a time for Christmas, my mom bought me a silicon baking set… but at the time I didn’t really care for it and never figured I’d use it ever again, so of course I got rid of it eventually. To me, it was just taking up space in the cabinet. And this time frame was like when I was still in high school or just first into college. Like a long time ago. By the way, I think I’m hanging out with my 15-year-old too much… like has been said like way too many like times. haha! Yes, sometimes we count how many times she uses that word in a sentence. 1 sentence. I think the record was 6 so far. One. Sentence. Let that sink in a minute.

Anyway… I had to go online and get new silicon baking pans because obviously metal ones and a microwave aren’t friends. Also, just for future reference… a metal bread tie and a microwave aren’t friends either.

3-Layer Microwave Cake

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Tiramisu Birthday Cake with Chocolate Tiramisu Truffles

When my husband and I started dating, he was living in Kentucky or was it Tennessee? It was right on the border and he called it Tuckasee. Technically he lived in Clarksville, Kentucky. He was working at the army base Ft. Campbell.

Not long after we started dating, just a couple months, he decided to move home. If you’ve been around these parts you’ll know we went to high school together. I actually fall in that 18% of people who marry someone from their graduating class. So here we were, he moved home in October. My mom and I found tickets to see Dracula at the Ballet and we bought them. Turns out, we bought them for November 1st that year. Does anyone know what November 1st is? It’s my husband’s birthday. Yup, I missed my husband’s first birthday together.

Hey, he wasn’t here for mine… haha. Mine was in the middle of the week and he was back in Kentucky. My mom offered him her ticket but he refused. And now he hasn’t let me live down missing that birthday since. But this year he was traveling for work on his birthday. I’m here to tell you though… I didn’t forget his birthday. I made him a Tiramisu Birthday Cake with Homemade Tiramisu Truffles. THEN, I took it to dive club meeting and we all ate it and celebrated without him. I wasn’t going to get accused of forgetting his birthday, again.

 Tiramisu Cake with Homemade Chocolate Tiramisu Truffles

Chocolate Tiramisu Truffles

Here while back, we bought my little helper a hammer of her own. She has rules that it has to stay in mommy’s tool bag until she is told she can pull it out. Unfortunately, we got her the hammer and she hasn’t had a chance to use it… Bummer! It’s almost like giving a kid candy and saying don’t eat it. (more…)

Wonder Woman Cupcake Cake

I didn’t leave you hanging! I told you yesterday with the Wonder Woman Cookies that I had a Wonder Woman Cupcake Cake post coming up and here it is! Yey, go me, go me, it’s my birthday, we’re going to party like it’s my birthday.

Please tell me you kind of know the song I was just referencing. I mean I totally botched it up and all but please tell me I’m not THAT old. I was singing that around a kid here recently. By kid, she’s an early teen. I think maybe 8th or 9th grade this year. She looked at me straight-faced and said, it’s not my birthday. Yes, yes I know… it’s a song. Sigh. I tried then to explain the song and yeah, it was lost on deaf ears I think. Sad day! I’m the “old” person in the room. In my life, I usually am the youngest of the group of people I run around with. I’m kind of used to it…

But… let’s not focus on that… let’s focus on the fact that I made a Wonder Woman Birthday Cupcake Cake for my friend Jody’s daughter. Oh who by the way, Jody is younger than me. WHAT? Yup, I show my age there too, but I’m only a couple years older… I think ;). Shhhhh, don’t tell, please! (more…)

Loaded Peanut Butter Layer Cake

I’m not done with birthday’s this month! I swear, people come into your life and make quite the impact and the birthday cake above was made for one of those very people. In 2013 hubby and I met some people who have made quite the impact in our life. One of those people was Grady. And Grady’s birthday was on the 7th… that was Sunday. Now, on Sunday he was at his home away from home… Chiefs Stadium. The Chiefs were playing the Jacksonville Jaguars. By the way, we won! Go Chiefs!

We weren’t there because we gave up our season tickets this year. Since we weren’t there I made it a point to make Grady’s birthday cake for Dive Club Meeting last Thursday night. This was one of those cakes I debated over. Debated and debated. Grady likes Peanut Butter, but Deb had me worried I couldn’t make a Peanut Butter cake because it would be so dry. So I debated between a chocolate cake with peanut butter icing and a peanut butter cake. Back and forth, to and fro… I debated and debated and finally decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and make a Loaded Peanut Butter Layer Cake. It was a peanut butter cake with peanut butter icing, peanut butter ganache, finished off with peanut butter chips. (more…)

Cinnamon Roll Birthday Cake

Guys, I truly believe this! My dad’s birthday is today. In all the world I couldn’t have asked for a better daddy! I know a lot of people say that, but gosh it’s true. I’m sitting here writing this while watching last night’s Dancing with the Stars which was a turning point in all their lives. I don’t know if the tears streaming down my face are because of my daddy or those stories… Truthfully it could be both. My daddy is the absolute best daddy a girl could have. I’ve always been a daddy’s girl. And I just want to wish my daddy the absolute best day he could possibly have.

So as most of you know… or maybe you don’t so I’ll tell you now… I’ve spent this year falling back in love with making cakes. Beautiful cakes. Cakes for every occasion I can. So of course, my dad’s birthday would be no different. I went through a lot of different recipes trying to find the absolute BEST recipe for my dad. That’s when I stumbled across a recipe for a Birthday Cinnamon Roll Cake. WHAT? I should inform you now that my dad loves cinnamon rolls so it’s perfect, right? (more…)

For Her Birthday

I think I want to be everyone else in my little family. They get birthday celebrations that last a week long or longer. Last year was the first time that happened to me…

But anyway, enough about me… So baby girl loves Unicorns these days. Obviously. We had a Unicorn themed birthday party complete with unicorn cake, unicorn macarons, and unicorn cupcakes (but don’t forget the Ultimate Birthday Cake too!). Plus unicorn toys, including the one above. That is a Barbie with a Unicorn. I should mention, she also likes Barbie!

Let’s not forget that she also got a bicycle. We held some of her birthday presents from her party just for her to open on her birthday. She also got a sewing machine and a Unicorn Blowup pool toy.

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The Birthday Party

This sweet little girl is 4 today. 4. How did that happen? I seriously don’t know. It seems like just 4 years went by in the blink of an eye. I’m sooooo proud of how she’s turned out and some days she leaves me shaking my head wondering how her mind got where it got!

Only having her sister around certain times and with trying to plan a birthday party around our hectic at times schedule, we actually wound up celebrating her birthday 2 weeks early. Hey, a girl is allowed to celebrate her birthday for a month, right? I think so!!

The Birthday Party

I knew the theme was going to be Unicorn’s since sometime last fall. It’s random. It’s so totally her! I did some research online looking for party decorations. I started to order offline but then went to town to Party City to see what they had. They had everything I wanted and I could walk away with it in hand so I went ahead and changed up the unicorn pattern a little and bam, we were set! (more…)

Army Quilt – Finished

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.

Celebrating Abe advertisement for quilt

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.

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