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Just in case you didn’t already know, today is Anna’s 30th birthday, woohoo! HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIG SIS! It’s quite the milestone to hit the big three-oh and certainly very exciting! Live it up today and treat yourself special because it’s your big day. Wish I could be there, but you know I’m there in spirit! Love you! I’ll always be the Pippa to your Kate 
Tags: 30th, birthday, Kate Middleton, Pippa Middleton, royal, wedding
As promised, I’m reporting back about my quest to bake the most perfect chocolate birthday cake! And I’m pleased to say that I think it was a success! I baked the cake on Saturday morning and I’m borderline ashamed to say that I was up at 8:00am because I was that excited to try out this cake recipe. Someone needs a life. But without further ado, I promise not to bore you, here’s my cake baking adventure. And if you do find this boring, well at least you have lots of pictures of yumminess
The first step to any great recipe….great ingredients! Look at all this yummy stuff! Thankfully I had most of the ingredients in the baking section of my pantry (don’t make fun of me) but I did have to purchase the yummy Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate bars and cocoa powder, which I had no problem doing.
Silly me, I got so into the recipe and getting everything just right that I forgot to take any pictures of the mixing process for the cake. But, here they are after putting them in the oven. Mmmmm, looking good!
All finished baking, now time to cool! Make sure you let these cakes cool for at least an hour before turning them out of the pan. I learned the hard way that no matter how thickly you butter and flour the baking pans, a little sticking is going to happen. You can see my new kitchen mural in the background too, more on that later.
Now time for the chocolate buttercream frosting, and yes this was ALL homemade. I melted the delicious Ghirardelli chocolate squares over a double boiler….
…and then combined it with my buttercream mixture to make the most beautiful chocolate buttercream frosting ever
And then once everything was all said and done, I slapped that frosting all over the cakes and voila! Happy Birthday!
I HIGHLY recommend this recipe from Food Network! It was delicious, not too chocolatey with lovely subtle hints of coffee layered within. Get the recipe here! Bon Appetit!
Tags: birthday, cake, chocolate, Food Network
Jeff’s 24th birthday is on Monday, (my little Haley Joel’s growing up!), but we’re planning to celebrate this weekend. We’re kind of weird about birthdays, we don’t really go all out and get each other presents. In fact, I think the past 2 years we really haven’t done birthday presents at all, hmm. But what we lack in presents, we make up for in good food! Jeff and I are such foodies, and NYC definitely does a great job feeding that obsession, no pun intended. Instead of giving tangible gifts for birthdays, we usually go out to a nice dinner at a new restaurant we haven’t tried yet. Or sometimes, Jeff’s cool and instead of going out to dinner, he lets me get super adventurous in the kitchen and test out new recipes with new, sometimes expensive, but very yummy ingredients. And that’s what we’re doing this weekend for Jeff’s birthday! I know that sounds crazy, but I absolutely love spending hours in the kitchen baking and cooking. It’s therapeutic. I wouldn’t consider myself a great cook, I’m still learning. But making mistakes in the kitchen is part of the process of becoming a better cook!
After work today, I spent close to 2 hours in the grocery store on my quest for ingredients for this weekend’s dinner. I love perusing the aisles and learning about the different brands of ingredients I can use for a recipe, and it’s always fun when you find a good deal too! But why did I spend 2 hours in the grocery store today? Well, a good 30 minutes of it was spent looking for things for grilled steaks and a new potato recipe that I’m super jazzed about, but the remaining hour and a half was spent in the baking aisle. I freaking love the baking aisle. Even in my semi-low stocked grocery store, there’s still plenty of baking goodies to read and discover (I once spent almost 4 hours in Whole Foods, that place is like heaven to me, but I hardly ever buy anything because it’s so darn expensive…sigh, one day).
But anyway, back to baking. Jeff’s not really into sweet things, (other than me….ooh bam!), but he has a soft side for chocolate cake. Specifically chocolate cake with chocolate frosting….that’s my boy! So, I spent quite a few evenings this week surfing the interwebs for the most perfect chocolate cake recipe and by golly I do believe I’ve found it. Ina Garten’s Grandmother’s Chocolate Cake (recipe can be found on foodnetwork.com). It’s the perfect combination of crazy amounts of chocolate along with other rich flavors to enhance the chocolate flavor (ie: coffee!).
Long story short, I’m baking this bad boy tomorrow and I’ll do a full blog post about the process….I know you’re quivering in anticipation. But humor me here, I’m really excited. And If I could, you know I would give you all a piece
Tags: birthday, Chocolate Cake, Grocery Store, Jeff
Yay, I’m 25 today! I can’t believe I’m actually typing that number. Time flies! I’m a quarter of a century, woot woot!
Tags: 25, birthday, someecards
I ordered 2500 balloons for your party! 100 for every year you’ve been alive!
Weeeee!
I kid. I kid.
Yes, another doggy post. Sorry people, we both have spoiled dog-babies.
I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since my last Jack birthday post. We stuck with the same theme as last year and ordered him his own In N Out cheeseburger. Got him some chewy treats, and grandpa bought him a stuffed doggy toy. We also sprang for a new doggy raincoat that he’ll model later during the rainy season.
Here are a few pics of the birthday celebration in the park:
The family!
The birthday boy!
Enjoying a delicious In N Out burgey then meeting new friends.
Modelin’
PRESENTS!!!!
In case you can’t read it:
1. SHOCK – At how cheap your friends are. (Nah)
2. DENIAL – Your butt can get any bigger. (It won’t!)
3. BARGAINING – Over which young celebrity you’d most like to change places with. (KStew)
4. DEPRESSION – At the number of candles on your cake. (29 – a small bonfire)
5. ACCEPTANCE – Of one too many free drinks. (more like 9 too many)
Tags: birthday, Seltzer Goods
This year the hubby came through again for my birthday. He never fails to surprise me. I got a delicious chocolate cake, a delicious dinner to one of our favorite restaurants, Range. (if you live int he Bay Area and haven’t been- go!) And he bought me some stuff from Anthropologie- he knows me so well I didn’t even tell him what to get – I like to make him pick out stuff for the challenge of it. Plus he actually has good taste in clothes. He picked out the polka-peppered dress from Anthro all by himself! I’d actually been eying it for weeks but figured I didn’t need it so I didn’t get it. He said when he saw it it was “so Anna” – “it has dots like you like and it’s red, white and blue. AND it was on sale.” He knows how much I like “dots.” And it’s true, he nailed it. I love the dress (note the incredibly excited photo below).
Pardon the way I look- I was wearing no makeup.
He got me some more cute things like Converse shoes I’ve been wanting forever and a cute top. But one of my favorite things he got was this birthday card from Seltzer Goods.
He knows I’m “a creative type” and will appreciate a funky card and none of that Thomas Kinkade bullsh*t. Poor thing. See what he has to live with?
And lastly, a little trip down memory lane, with all the shopping shenanigans Randy has put up with for my birthdays and holidays.
Birthday 2006: I point at a store and tell him “you can buy me anything in there and I’ll like it.” And so he did. He goes, buys a cute skirt and gives it to me. He then proceeds to tell me that the sales lady told him it was “fashion-forward” and that I’d like it. LOL. Fashion-forward eh? Well then I must have it!
Birthday 2009: Randy enters Anthropologie alone for the first time ever. He locates the sales rack and starts picking out clothes and texting photos of them to Karen to get her opinion. After an hour of this, he leaves with a top, some capris and a dress – or so he thinks. I open my gifts and love everything, but notice this “dress” is awfully see-through. He swears it’s a dress and found it on a rack with other “dresses.” I think “that’s odd, i’ve never noticed this dress before and I thought I knew every dress that was on sale at Anthro.” I then decide to search under “nightgowns” – yep, there it was. But i don’t blame him, most of their nighties could totally pass as dresses. I chose to keep it and wear it as a dress anyway – with a slip.
Christmas 2009: Another Anthro dress to wear for New Years Eve! Again, he does good. I love it. He said he liked it too “it looks like it has teeth!” Um, ok honey, glad you like me wearing dresses with teeth? Grrr.
Random Friday sale at Banana Republic: Randy has the day off and calls me to tell me he’s picking up some stuff at Banana, do I want anything? I tell him I need jeans and describe to him what kind I like. “Dark blue, slim fit, low waist, size 2. Got it?” “Yes!” He calls me back to tell me “some woman just grabbed the last pair! I’m following her right now to see if she puts them down. Shit! She just went in the dressing room. I don’t know why she thinks she can wear a size 2. She is definitely not a size 2.” I tell him not to worry about it and we hang up. 5 minutes later “Okay the woman left the dressing room without the jeans, I just asked someone to go back in there to see if the jeans were in there, and I got ‘em!” Me: “Sweet! Way to stalk the shoppers and be persistent! I’ve taught you well.”
So there are some of my favorite “Randy goes shopping for Anna” stories. That’s why I love him – he puts up with my shenanigans and makes birthdays great!
Tags: Anthropologie, Banana Republic, birthday, Seltzer Goods
Four score and twenty years ago, God created this fine specimen.
Thank You God.
Tags: birthday, Robert Pattinson, RPattz, Twilight
