:: My Birthday, The Cupcake Edition ::

These cupcakes, made from this recipe and frosted with this buttercream, were a definite highlight of my birthday.  And a highlight of today, for that matter, since I'm still sick and there are still leftovers.

Brian and I made them together.  I love to bake and he kind of hates it (I think he hates how long everything takes and how picky you have to be about measuring and stuff -- nowhere near the kind of experimentation and fun he loves so much in his cooking life) but he insisted on being in charge of my birthday treat as he usually is so I was relegated to the role of helper.

We made everything on Sunday night, the night before my birthday, because he had to work on Monday and we knew that making, baking, cooling, and frosting a dozen cupcakes would take longer than we wanted to spend doing it on my actual special day.  But perhaps needless to say, given the way yesterday went, something went awry and we ended up having to remake the frosting again last night.

Honestly, it sort of cheered me up.

That and presents.  Which I loved.  All of them.  And you, you know who I mean, yours was my favorite.  You know the one?  With the?  Yeah, and the?  Yeah, that one was my favorite.  But don't tell anyone else.

And of course there were a couple of gifts from me to me.  I don't know if other people do this or not, I guess now that I think of it I might be somewhat alone in giving myself birthday presents, but it's not really what you might be thinking.

The first one was the skirt I posted a picture of last week -- the work in progress with all of the pleats.  I made it as a birthday present to myself and was going to wear it out on Saturday when Brian and I went out on the town, but it was snowing.  So then I was going to wear it yesterday but it was still cold and I was sick and so instead I wore my maternity sweatshirt.

Not nearly as cute.  As you can see here:



Wearing the horrible, no good, very bad sweatshirt instead of the super cute, barely looks homemade, dontchajustloveit skirt also means I don't have a picture of the final skirt to share.  When I couldn't wear it out I just couldn't muster the energy to put it on solely for picture taking.  But I know you, you're patient.  I appreciate that about you.

The other present I gave myself is the registration fee for a race, still TBD.  I don't enjoy running (OK, I sort of hate it) but I have always enjoyed training for and participating in specific events.  In the past I've done 5Ks, 10Ks, a sprint-distance triathlon, 3-day 60-mile walks, and a 5-day 424-mile bike ride.  But I haven't done any of that in years.  The next birthday in my future is the big three-oh so I thought a little post-baby pre-30 race-y something might be just what I need this year.