Birthday Girl

Yesterday was my friend Brenda's birthday...I won't tell how old she now is, but if you look at the cake further down you might get a clue ;)

I told her she HAD to come visit us after her son GP took her out for dinner, for what else, cake and ice-cream. There is a lot more to the story and how it all came about is rather quite funny, but perhaps Brenda will tell that tale on her blog...big hint there Brenda!

It was such a glorious day that we decided to eat outside. First came the cake - I just did a French Vanilla box cake, but made the buttercream frosting and put a good deal of lemon zest and juice in it. Can I say it was quite delicious?!! In the middle I put a layer of frosting and raspberry jam, but ran out of jam, so it was half jam and half grape jelly! Hey, sometimes you just make do with what you have, right?!! Then I put some coconut on top and there you have it - a french vanilla, lemon butter-cream, coconut, raspberry jam, grape jelly cake! But it was GOOD!! Really!
Now do you see how old she is?! My daughter looked at the candle arrangement and said, "Mum, is Brenda 77?" "No dear." "99?" "No dear - not quite that old."

Then it was onto the card and present. 2 of Brenda's favorite things happen to be pumpkins and the color orange. Luckily, these two things happen to work very well together! The kids made a card, each drawing their own version of a pumpkin....

And here is the birthday girl opening her present...
Woo Hoo!! Yet another monogram initial! And there is a very funny story about that...Brenda, you tell it! This time it got the special treatment with the addition of pumpkins and binding. But oh the torture of getting it done. I had started to quilt this thing, and had quilted the letter and one of the pumpkins, when I turned it over only to see that I had the backing on inside-out! It took me an hour to unpick what I had done, and I think I cursed continuously that entire hour! But it finally got finished, and I learnt a good lesson. Always check that your backing is the right way out before you start to quilt it!

It was a great night with family and good friends.