Craziest Month of the Year and Birthday Cake

Wow, December is an insane month.  My birthday is the 3rd.  This year my mom and step dad came into town.  The night of my birthday they took me, my husband and my sister out to dinner at my favorite restaurant, Gloria's.  Hubby got me a dragonfly pendant that is gorgeous and I love it!  The next day we spent most of the day in the kitchen finishing my cake, making cupcakes, lots of frosting, turkey meatballs, red gravy, pasta and biscuits.  Pasta was the only thing that wasn't from scratch.  Fortunately, there was wine to help us out.  I was so busy that I didn't even get a picture of my cake or the cupcakes before I headed out the door to my party.  At my party there was laser tag, pool, shuffle board, air hockey, balloon sculptures, drinks and FRIENDS!  I can easily say this was the best party I've ever had!

my dragonfly and flower balloon hat at my party

After my birthday weekend my brother in law stuck around for a few days.  He and hubby love playing WoW and they spent 3 days straight playing the new update, one at the desk, one at the kitchen table.  I cooked then cleaned then cooked then cleaned (lather, rinse, repeat).  Sadly, I didn't get pics of the chocolate lava cookies I made for them.  They were incredible.  I'll have to make them again soon so I can share them with you.

Next I declared that I was on strike for 2 days.  I think I only went in my kitchen to pour myself glasses of water.

Then there were the 150 cake balls I made.  120 were for a party at a club and the rest were for hubby's work.  Hubby's coworkers also got peppermint bark, oatmeal cookies, toffee and snickerdoodles.  THEN we packed up and headed home to New Orleans for a long Christmas weekend.  INSANITY!

Don't worry, I have pics of most of it and I'll be making a post for each.

In the meantime, enjoy my half finished birthday cake.  Every year I hope someone will buy or make me a devil's food cake with cream cheese frosting.  This year I just decided to do it myself.  It was amazing, everything I hoped it would be.  I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's Devil's Food recipe and I modified a cream cheese frosting recipe I found on the back of a cake flour box.  This was the only pic I got of it .... while it was still in the "gianormous oreo cookie" phase.