The Diamond Years

I am very blessed to have both sets of grandparents still living and happily married. I even have cutesy names for them: Meemaw & Peepaw and Dee Dee & PaPa. This past month we celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary; back to back weekends. The 60th year is considered to be the Diamond anniversary and I'm pretty sure I know why. Diamond comes from the Greek word for invincible, they are one of the hardest materials on the planet, they make excellent abrasives and when polished will shine. Marriage is hard and often abrasive. Most people may think that abrasive is bad, but not always. Some of the best marriages I have witnessed are characterized by the couples ability to "sharpen" one another, A.K.A.: they challenge one another and cause rough edges to be sanded away. Marriage is full of joy, love and respect. When a husband loves his wife as Christ loves the church and a wife respects her husband as the head of their home, they shine with a light that is reflective of Christ's love for us. My grandparents have lived this out in front of me, things have very rarely been easy but their relationships have shown just how deep the Fathers love is for us. So, it's fitting that this is the Diamond year. I was honored that my grandparents asked me to use my gifts to celebrate their anniversaries. I'm not fond of doing large stacked cakes (and these are my first to ever do), but in this case, it was a joy!

7 layers of chocolate cake and Oreo mousse covered in chocolate ganache.

7 layers of Vanilla cake with blackberry preserve filling covered in buttercream.

3 layers of Vanilla cake with strawberry cheesecake filling, covered in buttercream.

No, I'm not a slacker

I'm sure most of you think that I haven't been blogging because I haven't had anything to blog about. But actually it's completely the opposite. My job is crazy during the summer and I travel a lot so I don't have a lot of time to bake, but this year I baked nearly as much as I do in the Fall. I just didn't sleep at all. Here are just a few pictures from the summer baking adventures.

A dinosaur Cake for my friends 19th birthday! She loves Dinosaurs. And Orange Creamsicle cupcakes, orange cake with vanilla and orange swirl frosting! My new favorite.



A lepoard cupcake tower for my lovely room mates birthday. It was really fun to make the tower and customize it to her specific tastes. The cupcakes were red velvet with cream cheese frosting and handmade spots.



I hosted my own birthday party, a pink picnic! It was really fun, we ate chicken salad, fresh fruit and cupcake cones and drank my favorite Passionfruit Tea from Starbucks! And we watched a favorite movie of mine (The Goonies), in the park. Everyone kept coming by and asking what "event" was going on. We just told them to join in the fun. Isn't summer grand....I'll be posting more soon!