Birthday Cake!

Do you bake your own birthday cakes?

I do!

Or sometimes the Hubs will buy a ice cream cake cause they love those

but I love white cake with white buttercream - always have!

So this year Hubs said "I want to help!"

So we baked my birthday cake together *smiles*

I've been wanting to try a ruffled cake!

It was easy peasy!

Use your rose tip & go back & forth all the way up in a narrow swatch then do that over and over and over again till you're all the way around your cake. Pipe a border on top to cover the edge and you've got a pretty, sweet, feminine, girly cake!

Birthday Weekend

Do ya'll do this... Have a decorating frenzy in your home when you know company's coming? This is what I did on my birthday last Friday after I got home from the doctor's office. A bunch of last minute arranging and trying to make things look pretty. A challenge for me! Of all the rooms in my home, my dining room takes my money and attention. I just love it. So it's probably never going to be officially finished as I'm constantly changing things around. Here's my dining table, see my black wicker plate chargers? Actually those are paper plate holders from Garden Clearance at Hobby Lobby. As well as that pointy thing in the middle. See my birds? Dollar Tree spray painted white... Don't you just love the ideas you get out here in blogland? I know I do!

Brace yourself, another challenge area for me is my mantel. I don't have a fireplace but I do have a collection of mantels. Sometime I'll show you the antique one in my Master. This one a friend gave me for helping them move, it weighs a ton! Some day when the house is paid off I want to have the chimney restored and a firebox put in. But for now I use black fabric.

Almost everything in the picture is from Hobby Lobby! On the left side I have two more floor standing wrought iron candle holders. Forgive my satellite clock I use it when I'm on the treadmill that you just see the edge of in the bottom right corner. The greenery basket has some twigs added to it by me and the black candle holders were from Walmart holiday clearance years ago. I found out I'm supposed to use the same sized candles on them, oops! I didn't know so I'll eventually get around to buying new ones. Would you believe I paid less than $9 for that black mantel clock? Hate me!

Here's a closer picture of my dear OLD friend and me, I'm on the left. We're both wearing some aprons I made since our guys were grilling, makes sense for us to wear them huh?

And we were doing the goofy thing of taking pictures of each other at the same time. You can see a little more of my dining room here. She's tied the apron on and promptly said she that's what she wanted for Christmas from me ~ an apron!

Next time I'll show ya'll pictures of the vintage loot I scored for my birthday, we went shopping earlier that day and I got to pick out some great to me treasures.

Today is...

My birthday was spent waking up at 5 am so I could drive 45 minutes to my doctor's office for my annual exam without my much needed cup of coffee with cream! After that bit of unpleasantness I decided I deserved a treat...

So I went and got one of these!

Now my poor darling husband will be working quite late, such is the nature of the business he's in so no celebrations today, instead we'll celebrate tomorrow with a cook out and cake that I'm going to bake. Yes, I bake my own cakes but there's a reason for that. In another life I was a "pro" at all things culinary. My family circle is small, there's just the 3 of us plus our recent 4th addition of dear son's fiancée so my friends also serve duty as my family. One of my high school friends miraculously lives within a 3 or 4 hour drive depending on who is driving! She's coming up for the weekend along with her husband, this is my third birthday in a row we've spent together. I can't tell you how much that means to me. I am blessed we live so close to each other, YES, 3 or 4 hours is close and let me explain how this is so. We both grew up in Kansas! I moved to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains years ago after husband and I got out of service and they moved to Charleston SC area when her husband retired from service. Pretty amazing for two girls from the Heartland to reconnect years later within driving distance.

Here we are last year, we split the difference and met in the middle at Columbia SC for a day spent in museums with our husbands, I totally loved it! She's the one on the left, it's a lousy picture but we're going to fix that this year. AND (insert drum roll here please) I'm much thinner this year! I've lost 70 pounds! Hmmm, maybe I'll skip the cake... 'cause I'm sure loving my weight loss.

AND, it boggles the mind there could be more but she said she's decided to make my gift this year so I'm going to have to wait for it. I adore handmade gifts, I think they are the bestest ever so this news was thrilling to say the least and I'll wait happily for it. She's a pretty busy chickie with little time for crafting so I was rather surprised by her announcement and it means all the more to me knowing how valuable her time is.

So that's my big day or rather big weekend, a little birthday, some house guests, a bit of celebration! I know this was a rather personal post from me but I'll resume with my usual bits of messy fluff blogging next post, I promise!