Birthday Goodies

So my very first birthday ever may not have been that fun of an experience, as you may be able to imagine.  But all of them since then have been pretty sweet.  They include unnecessary but much appreciated gifts and distractions that help to ease the pain of growing old.  My birthday was about a month ago, but up until recently, I have continued to receive lovely birthday benefits from lovely people.  I guess the older you get, the more and longer people need to distract you.  Mission accomplished!

 On my actual birthday, I went over to Kira and Austin’s and, together with the Perrys, we made a delicious birthday cake.  I have been liking Red Velvet cake a lot lately, so my first inclination was to make that.  But when I thought about it, I didn’t really want red.  So we made a Green Velvet Cake.  It’s the same—but green! We followed an online recipe, but for some reason after the cake had been baked, it formed all these weird pores. It ended up looking look a giant moldy sponge. 

 

We continued anyway and started making the frosting.  While we were doing so, Austin thought it would be a good idea to put a banana in the frosting to make banana flavored frosting.  Since I had forgotten to bring butter, it was super sugary to begin with.  So we tried it.  The frosting ended up looking like the stuff you soak bread in when you’re making French Toast.  Either that or clotted mucus.

 

And the overall finished product looked thusly:

 Despite the look, it actually tasted quite good.  That was just a bonus, though, as I wouldn’t have wanted/expected the whole process to go any differently.  :)  Exhibition A of why I love my friends.

Exhibition B came a few weeks later.  All throughout my birthday week, my ex-roommate Mark had been asking me what I was going to do for my birthday.  It was kind of a hectic week, seeing as how classes were starting and most people were getting moved in, etc.  I had toyed with the idea of getting a group of people together just to chill and whatnot, but I’ve never been big on throwing birthday parties for myself.  So I didn’t.  Deal with it.  A week or so after my birthday, Mark called me up and he said that since I didn’t do anything, he wanted to invite me over for a special birthday dinner with him and his wife.  I thought this was very sweet of little Marky, so I agreed.  The day arrived and when I showed up, Mark had invited over a select group of my closest friends to surprise me.  I seriously had no idea.  I am a dumb-dumb.  But I prefer it that way.  It was awesome to see most of my favorite people together and  I very much enjoyed it and Mark got me fuzzy bunny slippers.  He knows me so well.

Ah birthday adventures.   Anyways.  Here is a montage of my birthday lute.  I made out with a pretty sweet haul, wouldn’t you agree?