The Camo Cake

Last weekend my husband turned 25, and as is tradition, I had to make him an awesome cake! (see Last year and the year before).
This year he asked for chocolate, extra chocolately. One of the things that would make me a bad food blogger (if I were one) is that once I find a recipe that I like, I stick to it. But since this was a birthday cake I knew I couldn't use my old faithful Black Magic Cake recipe, and I opted to go with this Dark Chocolate cake that I had bookmarked awhile back.
I did use my old trusty Ganache, butter cream and fondant recipes, though.
I wanted to make this cake camo because, as some of you know, DH is a big bird hunting fan, and, like any good redneck, has a green truck, a brown dog, and lots of camo. (He doesn't wear it in public though, only for hunting! I'm thankful for the little things :)


This cake was *really* tasty. Now choosing which chocolate cake to make is going to be hard!

I love my office

So, as many of you know, I am considered an "administrative professional" and Wednesday was administrative professionals day. Well, pretty much everyone in my office completely forgot (including me!), except for my student assistant Jaci, who placed this on my desk that afternoon:
Awww!

Anyways, today I came in to find a package from my supervisor Karen wrapped on my desk (along with a box of Jujyfruits, she knows me so well!):
How adorable are these pink and black tools in their adorable case?! I'm super excited.

I've had a paper piercer on my wishlist for quite awhile now, so I'm most excited about . Maybe having some pretty new tools will get me back in my craft room!

I have awesome coworkers :)

Something Different

Aside from being Mini Eggs season (3 bags down, so far), Spring is when my yard really starts to come alive. The yard was the one thing that really sold us this house, and we LOVE it. It's a little worse for the wear since we got Bill, but the two of them (the yard and Bill) are starting to get used to each other, and I'm really happy with how it's looking now! I'm not gonna lie, though, that first year when Bill was a puppy the yard wept for it's future :) We had to remove most of the plants because he had a tendency to eat them, and some are poisonous to curious puppies.yeah, I have a creepy lawn gnome. He was less creepy when he was new...but oh well. Oh, and he's got brothers.

Anyways, we've been working (playing) in my yard all weekend, so I thought I would share some of the prettiness with you! I did also make a card (yes, just one lol) this weekend, but I'll save it for another post.

Looks like I need to get some slug poison around my tulips, the slugs are really going to town :(

Have a great week!

Birds nest cupcakes

Anyone that knows me knows that Spring is Mini Eggs season for me. I don't care about anything else, but mini eggs.


On Thursday we finally got our oven fixed after a few weeks of it being non operational, so I had to celebrate with cupcakes! I had seen these cute cupcakes at a local shop where the baker had made tiny chicks out of mini eggs and put them on a nest of toasted coconut. Now, I didn't have the patience for the faces, but I thought eggs in a nest would be just as cute!
So, here are my recreations! They were super cute and tasty, and I'm beyond thrilled to have an oven again ;)

Those cupcake liners are from Paula Deen and they say "A balanced diet is a cupcake in each hand", lol! My mom bought them for me and I was excited to get a chance to use them.

I finally filled up my cupcake stand that I got for Christmas!

p.s. if anyone is local and wants to know the name of the business I got this idea from, shoot me an email or leave me a comment, and I'll email it to you! While I'd love to support her, I don't like to share with the interwebs exactly where I live~