I've got two birthdays coming up. My first and third are only two days apart on their birthdays. I really can't even remember what we did for DS2's 1st birthday, other than I think we traveled home sometime around that day and he got a cake at Great Grandma's house. That was adorable, but this year I really have my heart set on making their cakes. My mom always made all of my cakes when I was young, some of them were pretty hard 3-D character cakes (before cake baking was cool). So to me, it's just very "mommish" to bake the kids cakes, yet I haven't done so for the past several years. The year before that, of course, I was in the hospital giving birth to our third, so Sis didn't even get a party, really. I remember I went into labor the night we were celebrating her birthday with ribs, fries, and cupcakes. I couldn't really stomach anything, because 'this was it' with the contractions.

So, I'm pretty excited this year to do two cakes for two kids on the same weekend. For Sis, I am doing a dark chocolate (still need to find a recipe on King Arthur Flour I like) with real raspberry butter cream frosting. YUMMER!!! And for the little guy's second birthday, I am making him a "Moon Cake". He loves, loves the moon. Every night that we can, we find it outside and he exclaims breathlessly, "MOO!!". It comes out, "moo" but we know what he means. I'm going to bake two rounds with vanilla cake batter, and banana butter cream frosting - cut into a large waxing moon shape. Can't wait to make that little guy a Moon Cake, he's a total sweet-face!!

photo: www.sxc.hu/cybersb