birthday

Tasty Tuesday–Festive Feasts and Holiday Baking

Time for a last look back at the festive feasting season!

We started Thanksgiving week by baking…Christmas Funfetti cupcakes? There’s never a bad time for Funfetti!

Of course, the main attraction Thanksgiving week was the turkey dinner:

And seven pies!

We celebrated Nikolaustag with chicken Döner Kebab and gingerbread tiramisu:

The next special dinner was a week later, for Santa Lucia Day, featuring potato pancakes and kielbasa, with cranberry fluff for dessert…and let’s not forget the lussekattes for breakfast!

We had a gingerbread layer cake filled with gingerbread mousse and frosted with molasses cream cheese frosting on Christmas Eve:

And our favorite cherry coffee cake for breakfast on Christmas Day:

But the best meal of the year is the Christmas Day pick-out dinner!

For our “fancy” Christmas dinner, we had bolognese, breaded artichokes, and fresh baked Italian bread:

In keeping with the Italian theme, we had cannoli for dessert:

On New Year’s Eve, we had black bean soup and corn bread:

And our traditional hot chocolate bar, of course!

Our New Year’s Day dinner was enjoyed a day late…I made pork medallions and spaetzle:

And we had a Glühwein-Kuchen for dessert:

We also had a special “Lord of the Rings Day” celebration (on Tolkien’s birthday!), featuring one of the fanciest chicken recipes I make, and “Westfarthing Fairings” from the Recipes from the World of Tolkien cookbook:

For the last feast of the season, Ryan’s birthday dinner, (which also happens to be Epiphany), we had fry bread and chili:

And Boston Cream Pie for dessert:

We did lots of other baking along the way, including a pair of Italian Christmas cookies for Christmas school:

And all of our favorite fancy Christmas cookies…chocolate crinkles, linzer augen, chocolate peppermint, raspberry almond thumbprints, peppermint meltaways, and fig thumbprints:

With the addition of a few of the pudding cookies Bunny made, they created a beautiful Bunter Teller!

For our New Year’s Eve hot chocolate bar, we baked two kinds of hot chocolate cookies:

In addition to the Christmas cracker candy I usually make, we also tried a new recipe that had sliced almonds on top:

And on the last day of Christmas, we baked and decorated sugar and gingerbread cookies:

I made a couple of bonus pies along the way, too:

And a bevy of festive drinks, including standards like egg nog and wassail, and some frappe kits from Aldi:

And just as we made a special dessert at the beginning of Thanksgiving week, we ended Epiphany week with a carrot cake:

I think that’s it for festive feasts and holiday baking…I’m ready to close the Markel bakery for a bit!

A Feast for Epiphaday

Today is Epiphany, but it’s also Ryan’s birthday, and we had one last festive feast to celebrate!

I made chili for dinner, and making chili means also making fry bread to go with it:

And for dessert, I baked a Boston Cream Pie…it’s been years since I attempted this particular cake, and back then, I had a problem with the filling being too thin and running out of the cake. If anything, this time I over-thickened it, but it tasted good, and it stayed put!

The days have long since passed when I used to make baklava every year on Epiphany, and our church doesn’t have an extra service during the week, but I still wore my favorite star-shaped brooch from Erstwilder…it is the absolute perfect star for Epiphany!

I still have one more cake to bake yet this week, and then the festive feasting season will draw to a close!

21!

Today is Bunny’s 21st birthday!!!

We had a nice day at home watching some of Bunny’s favorite things. And we had her favorite dinner…stromboli with Sunchips and Brazilian lemonade.

And of course a bunny cake for dessert…this year, the model was the Pokémon Buneary, which fit perfectly with our Pokémon Summer theme!

I love celebrating my children on their birthdays, and adult children are especially fun to celebrate!

Mani Monday

My birthday was Saturday, so I wanted to do a mani featuring my birthstone polish, “The Price is Alexandrite,” from Holo Taco. I added a fun sprinkle of florals with “Garden Party Taco” over the top…it’s the perfect look for a June celebration!

46

Today is my 46th birthday!

I started the day by receiving a truly amazing gift from my family…I can’t wait to find the perfect place on the wall to hang it!

I decided that taking a “Hit the Bricks” tour on historic Main Street in St. Charles, MO, would be the perfect way to spend the day, because I would get to see something beautiful and interesting AND learn something, and I wasn’t disappointed!

I finally got to try the lavender Frappuccino using my Starbucks birthday reward…it was just as delicious as I imagined!

We had my favorite dinner, Reuben casserole, and since we also have Starbucks at home, I made a lavender matcha to go with it:

And Bunny made me an amazing tiramisu for my birthday dessert…I’ve come a long way since the years I used to make myself a tiramisu layer cake for my birthday!

It was unbelievably delicious!!!

Roald didn’t come to my birthday party this year, which was the cause of great sadness, but I set up a photo shoot so we could still get a birthday picture together…it’s tradition!

I also got to watch a few of my favorite movies today (one of them might have been a Christmas movie, and another might have starred Donald Duck), and generally feel very special…it was a great day!

18 (+8 Days)

Between Bunny’s college graduation (which was actually on Ladybug’s birthday), and the finals her brothers had this week, Ladybug chose to wait until today to celebrate her 18th birthday! I was impressed with how patient she was in waiting to open her gifts until today…I’m not sure I could have waited!

I made our favorite lavender matchas this afternoon:

I’m personally very lucky, because one of my favorite dinners (Reuben casserole) is also one of Ladybug’s favorites, and that’s what she choose to have tonight:

I also made what I think is the overall favorite celebratory drink in our house…Bayou Queen Punch from Entertaining with Disney…at least three of the Fab Five have requested it for at least one birthday!

And we had a banana cake with cream cheese frosting for dessert:

It was unfortunate not to be able to celebrate like we usually do on the actual day, but I’m glad we finally got to fete Ladybug’s very significant birthday!

The Final Teenager

Nine years (plus a few days) after celebrating our family’s first teenager, we are now celebrating our last…today is Chickadee’s 13th birthday! We had a fun day opening presents, watching movies, and celebrating the birthday girl!

For lunch, I made Chickadee’s favorite roast beef sandwiches, and we also had taro milk tea with boba:

Chickadee was really hoping our cherry tree would bloom in time for her birthday, and while it’s not at peak bloom quite yet, it has enough flowers to make her happy!

She requested taquitos for her birthday dinner, which is not something I actually know how to make from scratch, but fortunately she likes the frozen ones from the store! I also made “Midnight Magic Punch” from Entertaining with Disney.

And for dessert, a Funfetti cookie cake:

I’ll leave you with this quote from Fuller House, which is just as true today as it was when I shared it nine years ago, with the added knowledge that this really is the baby of the family we’re celebrating this time around:

“I can’t believe my baby is officially a teenager…everything is going to change…I’m the mother of a teenager!”