The Birthday Girl!

Our sweet Olivia turns 1 today! And we had a great birthday brunch with family yesterday!










Daddy's turn!




Not sure what we think of those balloons...


...but the presents are pretty fun!


Olivia is still on a no-wheat, no-dairy, no-egg diet, so I made her this yummy rice crispy treat flower "cake" using vegan "butter". It actually tasted just like regular rice crispies; you'd never know the difference.


The rest of us enjoyed a yummy brunch, thanks to everyone chipping in with a dish!

Some New Stuff

Well, in the past few months, we've had...

A birthday-- Patrick turned 2 in May. This cake was sort of a big deal. I had told Patrick that I was making him a cake (a week before his birthday) so that's all I heard about for a week. It was a homemade 4 layer yellow cake with banana slices and banana pudding in between the layers, iced with homemade fudge frosting. Then, the day of his birthday, we woke up to puking. Pretty soon, we all had it, and I actually ended up in the ER. Needless to say, the cake did not get eaten. It went into the freezer and came back out a week later. At this point, Patrick had been waiting 2 whole weeks to eat this glorious cake. So when he finished opening presents and I said the word "cake", a high-pitched screech unlike anything I have ever heard from him suddenly came blaring out of his mouth as he scampered as fast as his little bare-feet-on-tile would allow into the kitchen. "Caaaaaaaaaake!!!!" LOL


Some new projects-- including this dress for Olivia from one of Anna Maria Horner's pattern books...


...as well as this one.






...A sweet doll for Olivia named "Maisie" from the More Softies Only A Mother Could Love book...


...and these little treasures...




...which now belong to this precious munchkin on the right-- a new cousin! This little guy is actually my first cousin.


...and even the beginnings of potty training. I think that roll of toilet paper has been rolled and unrolled several times. And yes, I realize the potty is pink. It was all they had. I don't think he minds :)


... and just for fun-- some cuteness!














And that about sums up our life for the last few months! Hmmm... maybe I should get this kid some clothes...

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are celebrating Thanksgiving twice this year. Once with Luke's family on Thursday, and again with my family on Friday. So I made two tarts today: Chocolate banana for Turkey Day No. 1 and Chocolate Pear for Turkey Day No. 2. Both recipes came from Once Upon A Tart.

And what could be sweeter than a pair of chocolate tarts?

Only this precious little face.

Miss Olivia says, "Have a happy holiday, everyone!"

Spiced Lemon Cake

More nesting this week. I've moved on to baking.

Yum!

Happy Birthday Patrick!

We celebrated Patrick's first birthday with a BBQ with both of our families. I made these fun cupcakes with a Martha Stewart cake recipe and some good old Duncan Hines frosting. I added a little bit of green food coloring to the frosting and piped it on. The cute cupcake papers and animal toppers came from Williams-Sonoma.

Patrick experienced bubbles for the first time...

...as well as hot dogs.

He had a blast opening presents, especially once he figured out that underneath all that useless paper were new toys for him to play with. The first one went rather slow, but after that, he was grabbing for the next present, one after another.

Taking his new fire engine for a test drive.

This was the first time he had ever had anything remotely sweet like this. I think he liked it.

And then came the look of, "Mom!... Why did you let me eat that???" Haha, he was definitely wired the rest of the day. Good thing birthdays only come once a year.