birthday

Tasty Tuesday–Festive Feasts and Holiday Baking

Now that Epiphany has come and gone, I guess the holiday season is officially over (I’m still not taking my Christmas tree down yet, though!). Let’s take a look back at the festive feasts and holiday baking we enjoyed during the holidays!

As I did last year, I kicked off Thanksgiving week by making pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies:

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we enjoyed our traditional feast:

And TEN pies (the bonus cookie butter pie was still in the freezer)!

We had chicken döner and gingerbread whoopie pies for our postponed St. Nicholas Day dinner:

And for Santa Lucia Day, we had lussekattes, potato pancakes and kielbasa (a day late), and white-chocolate cranberry cupcakes:

We didn’t have a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve, but we did have a carrot cake filled with gingerbread mousse:

For Christmas Day breakfast we had our favorite coffee cake:

And the best meal of the year, the pick-out dinner!

I think our M*A*S*H Day dinner counts as a festive feast, because Tony Packo’s was a Christmas gift.

On New Year’s Eve, we had fondue:

And the hot chocolate bar:

New Year’s Day was a full German feast of schnitzel and spaetzle and red cabbage:

With a Black Forest cake for dessert:

We had one more turkey dinner while we waited for the first snowstorm of the year:

And our traditional snow day dinner of French toast the next day:

Our festive feasts always end with Ryan’s birthday dinner…this year, we had chili and fry bread:

And a Frango Mint cake for dessert!

Of course there was plenty of cookie baking, starting with the French Christmas cookies we made in school:

And all of our favorite Christmas cookies!

It made for a beautiful Bunter Teller!

We also enjoyed Christmas Tree Cake treats all season long, including both standard and big cakes, donuts, and ice cream:

And a few festive drinks along the way…wassail and eggnog:

This has been a great season of feasting…now it’s time to give the kitchen a break! (Who am I kidding…I’m already planning the next cake I’m going to bake!)

Only Nineteen but His Mind is Older

Today we celebrated Moose’s 19th birthday!

It was a grey, rainy day, which was perfect for hanging out at home and watching TV. We did venture out to go out to dinner at Moose’s favorite restaurant, Red Robin.

He asked for the same kind of cake as he had last year…a chocolate cake with purple and orange stripes. This cake, however, had a fun surprise…I filled the center with m&ms!

It was a fun day celebrating Moose!

An Unbirthday Celebration

This year, Bunny had “a very merry (20th) unbirthday” a little early due to family travels. But having an unbirthday is still fun, especially when some of your gifts have an Alice in Wonderland theme!

Bunny has a pretty standard birthday dinner at this point…Bayou Queen Punch from Entertaining with Disney and Stromboli:

This year’s bunny cake was inspired by Genji from Animal Crossing…I wasn’t totally thrilled with the shade of brown I achieved for the ears, but at least he has a pretty simple face to copy!

Even though it was a dark, rainy day with lots of local flooding (it’s a good thing we hadn’t planned to go anywhere, because we really couldn’t have!), it was a very merry unbirthday celebration indeed!

Sartorial Saturday–The Perfect Birthday Dress

I have been waiting and waiting for my favorite dress from the Miss Candyfloss Viva Rita collection, the lovely checked Virtue-Violette, to be released, because I really wanted to wear it on my birthday. I was getting nervous, but as luck would have it, it was released this week, and somehow, even with international shipping, it arrived on Thursday, the day before my birthday, so I was able to wear it yesterday on our birthday trip to Ste. Genevieve, MO!

I love everything about this dress. It is my very favorite style of dress from Miss Candyfloss, with functional buttons all the way down the front, which makes it perfect for wearing unbuttoned from the waist with shorts underneath (I’m planning on wearing it that way very soon!). The colors in the checked pattern, which are blues and a gorgeous purple/pink, are my favorites. And between the lightweight fabric, the swing skirt, and the sleeveless bodice, it’s nice and cool for summer!

I accessorized with a stack of Splendette Duchess bangles, a Meteor Jewelry Company necklace, silver hoop earrings from Elizabeth Claire Taylor, and an Erstwilder brooch, plus a pair of blue hair flowers:

Here’s a closer look at my brooch. It’s not specifically a birthday cake, but as soon as I saw it earlier this year, I knew I wanted it to wear for birthdays, and it looks gorgeous with this dress!

I found a great vintage sign that made the perfect backdrop for my look, too!

This beautiful dress made me feel like a princess on my birthday!

I still have a few pieces to share from this collection, but this was my last purchase for the season, which is always a little bittersweet to me, because I hate when things are over…but it will be time to look forward to the autumn/winter collection before you know it!

45

Today is my 45th birthday! I have to admit, I’m not liking 45 too much, if only because it rounds up to 50, and that makes me feel a little old. But, old or not, I had a fantastic day with my family!

I decided that today I wanted to go to Ste. Genevieve, MO, a town I’ve been meaning to visit for years. It was founded as a village in 1735, and was the first organized European settlement in what is now Missouri. It was transferred to Spain following the French and Indian War, but eventually the Louisiana Purchase made it part of the new United States.

We saw several old buildings, such as the Louis Bolduc House, which was built in the French Creole-style in the 1780s:

Even thought it was hot, we had a nice time walking around this historic district and stopping in some of the shops. Sadly, the Christmas store wasn’t open, but the sweet shop was, and Ladybug bought me a pineapple rock candy stick! We also stopped in the tea and spice shop, which smelled absolutely amazing. While we were in town, we stopped for ice cream at Sara’s Ice Cream as well….I had a strawberry cone, and it was really delicious!

I did try to give myself a heart attack on my birthday, though, because we had to drive across the Mississippi River at Chester, IL, on a bridge I really hate!

While we were in Chester, we saw the Popeye statue:

On the way home, we stopped at Starbucks so I could get my free birthday coffee…I love that they wrote a little note on the cup!

I celebrated my birthday in Animal Crossing, too…I was very sad that Roald didn’t come to my party, though.

Bunny, Ladybug, and Chickadee teamed up to make me a chocolate malt cake, and it was outstanding (we were all a little worried the candles were going to burn the house down, though…even though there were only 39 of them)!

It was a lovely day celebrating with my family!

A Very Ducky Birthday Cake

Today is Donald Duck’s 90th birthday! On this date in 1934, he made his debut in The Wise Little Hen. He was only intended to be a minor character…I sure am glad that didn’t last, because he’s one of my favorites!

I tried to come up with a whole themed dinner, but surprisingly, there isn’t a lot out there that screams “Donald Duck” (no, I was not going to make duck on his birthday!). So I settled on making a cake in his honor, inspired by the color palette Disneyland used for their 90th birthday tribute:

I had some fun with the interior of the cake, as well:

I was very happy with how it turned out, even if it didn’t match my original vision for it!

And we also toasted Donald with his favorite drink, strawberry soda:

I’ll leave you with my favorite musing about Donald Duck’s family, which I came up with almost six years ago:

“You know Donald Duck, right?

His mother’s name is Hortense. Maiden name: McDuck.
So…she could have hyphenated her name, and been Hortense McDuck-Duck, and that thought makes me happy.

Also, there is a Goose family in Donald Duck’s universe. Which means there is the possibility of a marriage resulting in an offspring with the last name McDuck-Duck-Goose. And that thought makes me almost delirious.”

17 (Going on 18)

Today is Ladybug’s 17th birthday! She got up extra early this morning so we could get a start on celebrating, especially opening presents, before Moose left for school!

I was so excited about our gift to her…she received her first dirndl!

A lot of her birthday ended up being Lilo and Stitch themed (with a good helping of Tron Legacy and Star Wars: The Bad Batch thrown in).

She asked for pineapple salsa from the Lilo and Stitch Cookbook for lunch:

She picked dinner recipes from cookbooks that reflect her various interests…honey lemonade from The Ultimate Final Fantasy XIV Online Cookbook, spinach salad with shallot vinaigrette from Destiny: The Official Cookbook, and 626 Experimental Fried Rice from the Lilo and Stitch Cookbook.

Her birthday cake, a guava celebration cake, was also from the Lilo and Stitch Cookbook:

We had a really fun day, and I loved having a chance to celebrate another year of this beautiful life for my daughter!