Birthday Cakes

This year I've made a fair amount of birthday cakes and am proud to say that I made all of them from scratch, down to the decorating icing. No cake mixes in this house! First I made one of my bosses a cake in March (yellow cake, chocolate frosting), then I made my husband's cookies and cream cake in June (chocolate cake with cookies and cream frosting), then my mother-in-law's in September (yellow cake, chocolate frosting) and finally my mother's last weekend (chocolate cake, chocolate frosting). For all of these cakes, I used recipes from the awesome food blog Annie's Eats. The chocolate cake, chocolate frosting and cookies and cream frosting (doubled) came from this post. The yellow cake came from this post. For the colored decorating icing, I generally just make a small batch of a basic buttercream and tint it with the wonderful Wilton gel colors. For my mom's cake, where I decorated in lighter chocolote frosting, I just added more confectioner's sugar to the chocolate frosting until I was happy with the coloring. Here are a few pictures.

David's

Mom's

Mother-in-law's

Definitely give these recipes a shot if you're looking to do a cake from scratch. We thought they all turned out great!

DIY Decor

As this blog's name implies, it is for both style and food. I don't think the style has to be limited to fashion and can eclipse home decor and other parts of your life that you'd want to be stylish in. I love to decorate our home for the holidays and the seasons and prefer there always be a stylish arrangement on my dining room table (I'm southern...a formal dining room is a must!). This fall I saw a great DIY idea on a few blogs and decided to recreate it myself. I've always admired the lovely hurricane vases in the Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma home catalogs but did not admire their high price tags. The lovely Hayden hurricanes from Williams Sonoma, which most closely resemble my finished product, were upwards of $70 for a large hurricane! Mine cost me approximately $2 each!

Head to your local Dollar Tree and pick up a fluted top hurricane vase and a crystal candle stick. Then run to your local Michael's, AC Moore, or Target and pick up some clear Gorilla glue. Clean the bottom of your vase well and then wet it (per Gorilla glue instructions). Quickly apply a VERY thin layer of glue where you plan to attach your candlestick and attach (alternately, you can apply the glue to the rim of the candlestick). Make sure it appears level and place something on top to weight it down (I used stone coasters but a book would work).

Let dry at least 30 minutes and voila...your own hurricane vase. Gorilla glue expands quite a bit so you may need an exacto knife to trim any excess glue that squeezed out of the sides. Then fill with your favorite vase filler! For fall I went with leaves and candles and look forward to using ornaments or something along those lines for Christmas.

Have you done any great DIY projects lately? How do you decorate for the various seasons and holidays?