The weekend of birthday celebrations continued today!
Chickadee started the morning off at church, where the congregation sang “Happy Birthday” to her after the service!
When we got home, she opened her presents:
For breakfast, she wanted the coffee cake we always have on Christmas, with a twist…this time, I made it with strawberries instead of cherries.
She requested “Brinner” (breakfast for dinner) for her birthday dinner, featuring Mickey waffles, scrambled eggs, sausage, a delicious fruit salad, and strawberry milk tea with popping boba:
And she picked a chocolate chip cookie cake for her birthday…the decorations were inspired by the colors of the Honmoon in KPop Demon Hunters.
I had such a fun time celebrating my youngest (who isn’t that terribly young anymore!) today!
Turkey’s 23rd birthday was earlier this week, but we celebrated it today. I was really happy with how his angel food cake turned out, and the fresh strawberries I got for it were amazingly good, especially considering the time of year!
Moose pointed out to me that as I am currently 46, Turkey will be half my age until my next birthday!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
