Laugh. Love. Learn.

For Tanner’s first birthday, we wanted to choose a unique theme…so we chose Bumble Bees! Just to clarify, they are NOT yellow jackets. Cake #1 contains six layers of dark chocolate cake with yellow buttercream icing in between the layers.

Here’s a picture of the layers in process…it was a fun surprise when we cut into it. The cake was at least 8 inches tall, and the sides were completely covered in mini-chocolate chips.

Cake #2 is a beehive cake! It’s made of vanilla poundcake with a royal-icing-type glaze on top.

Here’s a close-up of the bumble bees….lemon jelly beans with black icing stripes. (p.s. i cheated and got black icing here…the rest is from scratch, but black icing is just too much trouble to mess with.) The next picture is of Oreo bumble bees…

Vanilla sugar cookie bumble bees…
and peanut butter bumble bees, which were totally a hit!

Here’s a close up of the peanut-butter bees, followed by the Bumble Bee Treat Bags…Graham Cracker Bees, Honeycomb, Yellow M&Ms, and Chocolate Jelly Beans.

I also decorated the flower arrangements with these fun pipe-cleaner bumble bees…dusted with glitter and suspended with floral wire.

Our Bee-Day party so fly. Ha Ha.
We have the cutest bee ever!

One of my friends likes me to share my cooking disasters so she feels more “normal.” So, in the name of authenticity, check this out. Today I planned to make 3 cakes.
Cake A: Made a lemon pound cake from scratch. Fresh lemon zest, fresh squeezed juice…etc. It was about 5 minutes from done and we had to leave. We were already late to an activity. Surely the hot pan would continue cooking the cake a little, right? Wrong. Cake A wasn’t done in the center. Cake A is in the trash.
Cake B: 6-layer chocolate cake from scratch. I figured I’d just make that one and let it cool overnight. Got all the way down the recipe…to the buttermilk. We have no buttermilk. Publix is closed, and we live in the boonies.
Cake C: Vanilla pound cake from scratch. Calls for 3 cups of sugar. Which is great, but I only have two after wasting all my sugar on failed Cake A and stalled Cake B.
Cake A, take Two: Not enough baking powder left. Or vanilla.
Score? 0 for 3. Yep, that’s ZERO for three.
How’s that for productivity?

So if you’re bored at 7am tomorrow, send me a tweet. Cause I’ll be standing outside the door at Publix waiting on them to open. It’s always fun to watch your excessive pre-planning crumble in your face. And remember…next time you screw something up in the kitchen, think, “hey! at least I didn’t screw this up as bad as Rebecca did that time!”

i never knew i liked coconut. in fact, i used to think it was kind of chewy and strangely textured. but apparently i’ve been missing out my whole life.
introducing lusciousness, enveloped by crimson ridges…

reason number 4,728 to be friends with these fine folks.

I’ve always wanted my kids to have rockstar, color-coordinated, fairytale rooms. You know, the kind that only exist on the pages of the Pottery Barn catalog. But it’s never quite come together. In preparation for our move to Braselton, Katelynn requested that we “play Extreme Home Makeover.” We love watching that show together, so Nick and I figured we’d try to make her dream come true. Here’s our best attempt. I’m thrilled with the results! Enjoy!

The following are details some people might wonder…
The pink polka dots are 12-inch vinyl stickers from Lowe’s.
The letters are wooden; I bought them at Hobby Lobby.
The chandelier and lava lamp are also from Lowe’s.

The bedding, rug, and curtains are from Target.
The bean bag and pillow are from Pottery Barn.
The vase and faux stargazer lilies are from Pier One Imports.
The bead board is 5 feet tall and it’s wooden.
Nick cut it, painted it, and installed it, along with the trim. He’s the bomb carpenter.

And the wall hanging is one of my most recent imitations.
I wanted this one from Pottery Barn but I’m too cheap to buy it, so I made something similar.

and i mentioned before, my big little brother is a college graduate!!!
i’m so proud of him for finishing on time, in spite of changing majors and having to take 4 Spanish classes in a row… (which were partly fulfilled by his butterfly adventure in Costa Rica.) anyways, check out this handsome grown-up posing with his all-time-favorite dessert: cookie cake..

next year he’s interning at 12 Stone Church while attending seminary in Atlanta. i’m so proud of him.

My sweet friend Morgana is headed to Guatemala today. I would love it if you would pray for her safety with me, and for the effectiveness of the team of missionaries with whom she’s going. She doesn’t know any of the people she’s going with, so you can also pray that awkwardness is minimalized….that’s just like Morgan, though: She doesn’t think twice about hoping on a plane with total strangers if it means she has a chance to tell people about Jesus.

Speaking of Jesus, I am so thankful to Him for Morgan’s friendship. Morgan is quite possibly the most selfless, consistent, authentic, loving, faithful person I know. She’s the kind of person who every parent wants their child to become friends with…which is probably why she has a gazillion friends. She’s always helping somebody make a cake, keeping someone’s kid, helping mentor high school girls, throwing baby & wedding showers, writing scripts for The Vine…she’s the kind of friend who volunteers to hand-wash every piece of china you own when you move into a new house. But my favorite thing about Morgan is her passion for Jesus and for His Word. She is truly burdened for people who don’t live in relationship with Him and she genuinely wants to know His specific plan & calling for her life. She might end up in Africa, or she might end up in a bakery somewhere, but wherever she is she’ll be chasing hard after Jesus and whatever He wants her to do for the Kingdom.

Thank you for praying for Morgan this week.

p.s. If my wildest dreams come true and I happen upon a million dollars, Morgan and I will have the most kick-tail bakery ever. We’d make cakes all day, and get crazy-excited about things like high quality vanilla and new tips for our decorator icing kits. We’d feed hungry people with the profits and hire all of our friends, just like Duff did on Charm City Cakes. It’d be so incredibly rockstar…. Anyone know of any grants for bakery ministry start-ups?

i have the best friends in the world. seriously, i’m not easy to surprise, but this weekend some of my favorite people got all ace of cakes on me. normal people might think, “eh, a cake,” but you’re talking to someone mesmerized by the Food Network, so…it’s a big deal. when a surprise involves smoked critters and rockstar cakes, my excitement is difficult to contain! check this out. i love pastel M&Ms… (but i didn’t know anyone realized that!!! )

mmm beefy. isn’t that gorgeous? notice the caramelization on the edges…

Tanner stuck her fingers in my cake! sneaky fox. how can you say no to those eyes?

i’m just so blessed to have such loving, generous, thoughtful people to do life with…
*thank you*

To celebrate our one year anniversary, our worship pastor, Gregg Hampton, made this video. It’s completely amazing. We saw something similar at the Innovate Conference, and I’m so proud of Gregg for figuring out how to do it… Be amazed:

one of my favorite people lacks baking confidence.
i’m afraid i’ve contributed to this insecurity by producing some rockstar cakes, but i keep telling her you have to factor in my twenty years of baking experience. (wow, i’m old.) anyways, i’ve decided the best way to encourage her is to be transparent about my failures. today, i failed.
this looks pretty, huh? carrot cake. it was my gran’s favorite. i tried like 12 recipes before i invented my own. and i’ve made this recipe at least 20 times.

ha ha that was just one side of it. the other side fell. we’re talking major structural failure. fault lines, crumbling, sliding, no defined icing separations between the layers…just a bad day. and my hand mixer broke. so i had to mix the icing by hand, which was interesting.

i decided to just remove that part altogether. maybe my mom and my aunt will eat it.

it tastes amazing. but it appears to have been constructed by a four year old. oh well…keeps ya humble, i suppose.

there is a reason my brilliant daughter aspires to be a Publix cashier when she grows up…
if i won the lottery (which i never will, because i don’t buy tickets…if i have a dollar i’m buying an unsweetened tea with 2 inches of lemonade from chick-fil-a) i’d work at Publix. i’d make up my own job, too. can you imagine if you got to work in the produce department and cut the fruit for the fruit salad all day long? i love cutting fruit. cutting board, rachael ray knife, watermelons, pineapples, honeydew…pretty colors…it’s like art. so that’d be the first half of my day. the second half of my day i’d work in the bakery, decorating cakes. seriously, can you think of a possibly more awesome job? the only thing better would be somehow leveraging cake-decorating for Jesus, which i have actually managed to do on a couple of occasions. for example, when i chaperoned a choir tour a couple of years ago, i got to make a strawberry cake large enough for 65 teenagers to celebrate a kid’s 16th birthday.
when strawberry cakes = serving Jesus, awesomeness has arrived.
but alas, i cannot work for Publix. so until i win the lottery, feeding my friends will have to do.

Happy Birthday, Liz! (you know, yesterday.)
Check out this fun picture from…about 1994. We’re getting old.

and, in case you were wondering, i’m encouraging Katelynn to go to business school and become the CEO at Publix. i figured it’ll be difficult to motivate her through a post-secondary degree for the prospect of 7 bucks an hour.