SOOOO my co-worker and friend, Ashley was having a birthday and I figured, why get her a store-bought cake when I could make one especially for her?  Her favorite cake is yellow with chocolate frosting, and fortunately, I stumbled across this.  Smitten Kitchen's "Best Birthday Cake".  I used her exact recipe, so I won't post it here, but it turned out amazing...especially the frosting, which wasn't too sweet but had an incredible flavor!  So anyway, the pictures below are just the process, but it turned out fabulous and I highly recommend this recipe!

Hey y'all, it's been awhile!  Last week and this week have been very exciting and busy!  I had my birthday last Thursday, our housewarming party on Saturday and today is my One Year Blogiversary!!!  I can't believe that a year ago, I started this little old blog and began this awesome journey.  I've met so many incredible people and have made some great friends (some who I've even met in real life!)  I've loved it so much and I wish I was making something awesome to celebrate, but I have been dying to show y'all what I made for the housewarming and the cake I did for my birthday, so I think I'll share that instead... I hope that's okay with y'all :)

First I'll talk about the housewarming things I put together, and then I'll move in to the birthday cake! 

So we all know that I love Pinterest.  Like love, love, love it.  I have about 65 boards and 6500 pins (eeek I'm out of control!)  Anyway, Matt and I decided to have a housewarming to celebrate moving in to our new place.  So, of course, I took this as an opportunity to make a new board.  Now, I didn't make everything on that board, but I let it inspire me, and I definitely felt like I succeeded in making that board come to life!  It ended up being a lot of work, but thankfully I had my friend Kristen in town to help me make all this stuff!  Here are some of the highlights... I'll add captions to describe them and give some instructions.