Stephanie is probably one of my oldest & closest friends from my childhood.  We met as middle & high schoolers & have stayed close ever since.  I am so grateful for her friendship, her advice, her love & her family’s presence in my life.  She is truly a blessing.

Stephanie recently showed me her talent for making cakes & cookies when she planned her daughter’s first birthday.  When I saw the phenomenal job she did with Madi’s party, I asked her if she’d be willing to make a creation for Brooke’s birthday, too.  I gave her an idea & she wowed me with the rest!  This girl has some amazing talent…take a look.

By the way, these treats not only looked good, they tasted good too!  I had to make myself stop eating those darling monkey cookies…Yum!

Today we celebrated Brooke’s 3rd birthday with our friends & family.  This little lovely is Maddie, our neighbor.  I was cracking up at how much she loved this cupcake – especially the icing!

My attempt at a Snow White birthday cake.

I took my camera to the high school girls bible study that I help lead last night, hoping to get my photo of the day.  I see these girls every Wednesday night and hadn’t blogged about them yet, so I thought I’d give it a try.  While we were waiting to start, I had Kelsey help me with trying to capture motion.  Kelsey takes photography in high school, so between the two of us we thought we could make it work.  We tried with this little jet plane.  First we tried having Kelsey roll the jet across the counter.  I couldn’t get the settings just right, so next we tried having the jet stay still & me moving the camera from left to right.  The above photo is what we came up with.  Pretty fun I think, even if it is out of focus.

And this next photo is a bonus!  Last night was also Trish’s birthday (she helps lead the study too) so the girls made her a birthday cake.  As you can see I didn’t expose for the cake, just the sweet faces that made it….

Photo:  John Waire Photo.  John is another local photographer…Baltimore I think…that I found through Twitter.  I really enjoyed his post today about his daughter Mady’s puddle jumping adventures.  Not too many words, but the photos spoke volumes.  I can totally relate.  And one of my girls has the same Hello Kitty rain boots!  Great work, John!

Our first born has officially turned four!  We celebrated by torturing ourselves and having TWO birthday parties!  One for little friends, and one for family members.  Maybe we should just buy a bigger house rather than host two parties???

For Emma’s little friends party, we had a puppet show.  I wasn’t the best puppeteer, but we managed.  Luckily preschoolers and toddlers aren’t too tough.  Brooke did interrupt the show by taking my puppet off my hand, but other than that little fiasco, things went great.  Then the kiddos made paper bag puppets and played with the puppet theater.  By the way, this puppet theater belonged to my sister-in-law, Emily, and her siblings when they were little, so it’s pretty well loved!

After, we ate cake!  Here are some of Emma’s party pictures.  And, if you want to know some good gifts for a four-year-old girl, email me!  Our family and friends found the greatest presents!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I did not make this super cute cake or cupcakes.  I took this year off from baking and went with my mom’s advice and got this cake at Shopper’s in Annapolis.  It was a great deal, and even better cake!