Birthday

I don't know where the past 3 years have gone. My little girl is definitely not a baby anymore. I am amazed with how much she knows, how great her personality is, and how much I love her. She has beautiful brown eyes, a contagious smile, and she is my best little buddy. Her birthday this year was extra fun because she actually knew what was going on and was really excited for it.

We decided to keep things simple this year. I made a birthday banner for her first birthday that I still really like, which I hung that up in the kitchen. It was super easy to make. I wanted a pennant type banner, so I cut triangles out of cute scrapbook paper. Because we had just moved in our house, my vinyl cutter wasn't set up yet, so I printed out letters in a font that I liked, traced them onto the leftover scrapbook paper, and then glued them onto the triangles. To make it really easy, I stapled the triangles to a piece of ribbon, and had a cute birthday banner that has actually held up really well.

I have seen so many cool cakes online, and really wanted to make one in the shape of a number three. Lucky for me, the week before her birthday, I saw this one on Pinterest and from reading the blog, knew how to tackle it. That cake was completely covered in M&M's, which I wasn't sure if I wanted to try or not, but I showed the cake to Little Bug and she said that she definitely wanted the M&M cake. I baked two bundt cakes using this recipe, and then cut out the parts that I didn't want and arranged them into a three shape. I frosted it with chocolate buttercream frosting, and after getting the first few rows of M&M's on, decided that it was way too tedious putting them on. So, I opted to have rainbow stripes instead, which I actually really like the way that it turned out. It tasted good too, and we didn't even have any leftovers.

We spent an evening at a park, eating cake and ice cream, playing, and hanging out with family. The weather was perfect, the company was fantastic, and it was a really nice day.

-Mandi