What a Life!

You know, every time I mentioned to another mother that I was doing a birthday party for my one-year-old, the immediate response always seemed to be, “Don’t make the cake! That’s too much trouble! Just buy one.” Or something like that. I must confess, I do not know why everyone says that. Perhaps they go all out on everything else and the cake – or even the food – is what pushes them over the edge.

Truth be known, I may not make a birthday cake like my mother. But, all things considered, the cake and the food are actually the parts I’m sorta good at.

Picking a theme and doing a thing around that? I couldn’t think of a theme if my life depended on it.

Decorating for a party? I hate decorating. Ugh!

Buying lots of gifts and wrapping them exquisitely? I’m really bad at wrapping gifts and making them look all fun and pretty. Really bad.

But picking good recipes and making good food? I can do that.

So yes, I made the cake. It’s one of the things about a birthday party I do best. You wanna eat good food at a birthday party? Come to my house. The rest of the stuff you think of when you think birthday party? Those are the things I skip.

And pictures? I can take pretty good pictures. They’re not technically perfect by any means, but the content is pretty good. You can see all of the birthday cake pictures here.

Actually, those were about the only pictures I took because that was the most exciting part. We only had two guests – Steve’s brother and their dad. There weren’t any gifts – everyone gave him money and we didn’t buy him any new toys because we can’t stand the thought of having any more toys in our house – we have enough toys, thank you.

So call me a bad mother if you wish. I made the cake myself, yes, I did. It was good too. It was The Best Chocolate Cake in the Whole Wide World from this cookbook. Seriously, I’m not making that up.

We had fried chicken (okay, it was frozen from the grocery store), mashed potatoes (which I’m famous for), green bean casserole (you can’t beat that), and baked beans (yeah, straight from the can, but I’m tellin’ you, I know what brand to buy). It was pretty good, y’all. You should have been there. Maybe next time.

And yeah, I’ll be makin’ cake again next time. It’s the part I do best.