Tag Archives: Life

Happy Birthday Amanda

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I want to wish the happiest of days to my best friend. Happy birthday, Amanda! {Last year, I made Amanda pumpkin s’mores cupcakes for her birthday – to view that post, click here!} It’s hard to believe that in the last year, since your last birthday, we have gone wedding dress shopping, picked out your wedding flowers, celebrated your bridal shower, made wedding cupcakes, cookies and your wedding cake(!) and now, for this birthday, you’re Mrs. Nielsen! In the last year, we’ve discussed moving, jobs, apartments, missing our families, what we want to be when we grow up, all the details of your perfect wedding day(!) – I can’t wait to see where we are and what we are talking about in one more year. 🙂 To the bestest lifelong friend – who actually knows how to cheer me up when life’s got me down, who makes me feel not only good, but GREAT, about my life decisions, who is a beautiful example of a human full of love, hard work, loyalty and kindness, and who can even spend an entire evening, from 600 miles away, laughing at pictures of fat cats with me – have the greatest day! {Here are a few photos of us from her beautiful wedding day – all photographs by the wonderful Jessica Vogelsang Photography!}

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Longwood Gardens: Part One

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I’m going to keep the words brief today because there are many, many photos to follow. There are so many photos that I’m going to share some photos today and some tomorrow. Today’s post is not a food post – today I’m going to share a little life/photography with you. 

Last week, my parents came to Philly for a visit! On Friday, my mom and I went to Longwood Gardens. The most I can say is that if you are ever in the Philly area, go to Longwood Gardens. To say that we enjoyed it would be an understatement. We determined that yes, even the boys would enjoy it. We will be making a trip back soon. It’s hard to describe the experience with words, you just need to see it:

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 {Come back tomorrow for more!}

Celebrating with Cake

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Lately, I’ve had a lot to celebrate, and I did so with this cake.

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This cake helped me celebrate:

Another full year of my life.
A weekend spent with my family.
Greg and I’s first batch of homemade beer (more on that later!).
Another full year spent with Greg.
Six full, happy months at an apartment and job that are both loved.
 Almost one full year of The Dreaming Foodie!
And everyday, I’m celebrating being one day closer to spring!

I don’t make cakes often, but I’ve decided that when I do, they are going to count. Just like the cake I made to celebrate the new year, much thought and time went into this one. I took parts of this recipe, from Sweetapolita, for vanilla cake with homemade blackberry filling. I followed the vanilla cake recipe exactly, followed the blackberry filling recipe exactly, and made the vanilla frosting but used regular sugar and added a vanilla bean. Warning though, if you use regular cane sugar in frosting, the frosting will be crunchy! Although it sounds delicious, I left the vanilla mascarpone filling out for reasons of simplicity.

I simply made two 5-inch vanilla cakes, let them cool, topped one with both vanilla frosting and blackberry filling, placed the other cake on top, and spread vanilla frosting roughly all around.

This cake was so delicious, but was made better by the people who I shared it with. Isn’t that the best? It’s so great to celebrate with cake.

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