Finally, the birthday day has arrived! No balloons or pink plates. Just a giant cupcake and a cute little dress. Wow. One year since I pushed out the 11 pound 3 ounce genius. Once you've pushed out that much mass, you never seem to quite forget.

I have SO enjoyed Miley. She has a super cute personality, she's laid back, and really adds depth to our family. The kids love having her to play with as well.

The biggest adjustment, is just adjusting. But, beyond that, I'm loving how the family has grown, and loving experimenting with pushing motherhood to the max. Miley has not yet had sugar and this cake was a sugar free experiment. I made it with xylitol, and just the word xylitol, keeps us all eating just a little less of it than if it were a sugar explosion. The top is whipped cream with a little stevia and vanilla. The first batch of (xylitol) icing I made was horrible. You hate to throw it away, but I could not think of one use for my big butterball xylitol mess, so I threw it down the drain. Xylitol is poisonous to dogs, so they were locked out of this party. Our dogs get fat when we have a highchair baby and then they thin out again after the fact.

I liked this cake, but for some reason, the middle took a LONG time to get done??? Not sure what happened on that, but the first day it tasted fresher and better than the second day. Anyway, would love to remiss the year, but I have another party to plan. Megan turns 6 next week, and I'm deciding all of the options for cake/dress right now. Would rather spend time sewing, than baking. I get so much more satisfaction from sewing, because it can be worn and enjoyed for a couple of years. Baking, not so much. Work work work, back hurts, sweat, throw out the butterball xylitol, work work work. Done. Eat it. It's gone.  There is SOME therapy in baking, but, it's gone in seconds....so I might buy a cake at Country Mart for Megan. Keep ya' posted.

Miley's First Birthday

Well, it's Miley's first birthday this Friday and I was on the hunt for the perfect first birthday cake. You would think after four kids, I would have a highlighted plan in a file somewhere for "first birthdays", but alas, no, I don't. Every time, I think, Oh, this isn't that big of a deal. We will invite no one and put a little party hat on their head with a number one and take a cute picture. Then, when it gets down to the wire, I start furiously knitting a crown with a number one on it, or making some crazy fun cupcake material outfit or whatever other hairbrained idea I get. This usually happens within one week of the day.

For Miley's birthday, I want to make her a special outfit, and in my head I had the "vision" of a cupcake for her, but that's just not going to be good enough, so I googled birthday ideas and found this GIANT cupcake pan (it's really a full sized cake in the shape of a cupcake). So cool. Not only did I find this giant pan, but I found instructions for making the cupcake look like it has a bright pink cupcake liner. I will blog my progress on this special day and keep you updated.