12th Birthday Cookies!

My oven broke about 3ish weeks ago. It literally just quit working one day, no clue why. Of course, the fact that it was probably 20 years old didn't help (no idea how old...but it looks pretty ancient). Really, it was a blessing. It's old. It didn't bake evenly. It didn't tell me when it was preheated (I got an oven thermometer so I could at least tell from that). We've wanted to replace it since we got married. It's just hard to convince ourselves that it was worth spending that kind of money when it DID still work. So, it breaking was unfortunate, especially cause the bread I tried making when it went kaput on me never got made :( However It gave us the reason to actually get the new one we've been talking about getting for a year and a half now. We looked online, read reviews, talked to my mom, and finally picked one. Of course, we picked one that they didn't have in the store, so I've been waiting patiently (sometimes not so patient) for a new one to arrive. Well guess what???? It comes TOMORROW!!! YAY! I'm so excited. I'm sure I'll post a picture at some point.

I'm telling you this, because, well, I write about baking and an oven is a pretty important thing for a baker. AND, cause it went kaput just a couple days before I had to bake some cookies for a friend's daughter's 12th birthday! uh oh...what to do? Thankfully, it wasn't an issue at all cause I have a friend who lives like 2 min. away and I was able to go and use her oven. So I made my dough, rolled out my cookies, put them on cookie sheets and drove them over to her house. Then, I baked them and drove back. fun stuff. It totally worked out and the cookies were a ton of fun to do.

I was given only a few instructions. The birthday girl's favorite color was blue and she wanted some butterflies and flowers, specifically roses. I had gotten some fun birthday type cutters that I wanted to use, so I chose variety to add in along with the butterflies and roses.

Pinterest...oh sweet pinterest.

I love Pinterest, really I do. But sometimes, people post some really stupid things. Like things that are ridiculous or untrue or just dumb. I sometimes want to comment and point things out, but I refrain. Unless the link is bad or something like that, I just say nothing. People are sill nice on pinterest (in comments, to each other), I don't want to be the one to change it. After all, it isn't facebook.

Disclosure-95% of the time I find something ridiculous, its cause I ventured away from my "friends" and into the sometimes scary "everything" category.

Birthday Pinwheel Cake!

I married into an awesome family. However, this awesome family has 3 June birthdays, all within about 5 days of each other (the birthdays are my MIL's, her sons,and my Sister in law who married into the family, in case you were wondering how they managed all those close birthdays). Really, who does that? It's like Christmas in June- people to buy for, lists to get, etc. Actually, it's kind of fun celebrating thing the all birthdays all at once. Thankfully, they are all willing to share, so we just do one birthday bash for all 3.

I knew I wanted to make a cake, but what to make for 3 people??? I had elaborate grand visions in my head, but thankfully reality intervened before I committed to anything in my mind. SO....I just picked a fun, summery cake that I'd been wanting to make for a while. Pinwheels and polkadots!

I got the idea for this cake from this blog here.

Happy June Birthdays!

A Spring Cake

A couple of week ago, I had a baking fail. Now, I don't know about you, but I hate that. Especially when it is something relatively simple that I've tried (and failed) at before. ugg! Maybe one day I'll tell that story. However, this post isn't about that, it's about the cake I made the day after that to make myself feel better. To be fair, I had been wanting to practice my buttercream frosting techniques and had been itching to make a cake anyways. The previous days failure just neccesitated the need to bake something and have it actually turn out. I'm certainly still learning the ins an outs of cake decorating (there's a ton to learn), but it was fun to practice.

So without further ado, here's my cake-