Katie had a birthday!

I love birthdays.  Is it your birthday?  Your half-birthday?  Let's celebrate!  I'll bring the cake! 

I have had a [small...okay, huge] obsession with birthdays as long as I can remember.  Growing up, my parents made a really big deal about our birthday.  Not the present, but the day itself.  Your birthday was your day, the day that was all about celebrating how special you were!  This is something that has stuck with me as I've gotten older; each of my friends' birthdays is a day that, more than any other day, I try to let them know how much they mean to me, how blessed I am to have them as a friend, and how special I think they are!  I sincerely hope that they know I am thankful for them everyday, but know that I am guilty of not expressing that enough. 

Thus, the birthday extravaganza. 

I know, I know, call me obsessed, overzealous, and out-of-control, but come your birthday, there will be a party, and I will be making you a cake.  And telling you happy birthday.  Starting about a week in advance ...

My sweet friend Katie had a birthday Saturday.  She was out of town last weekend, so we opted to hold off on her big celebration until Wednesday (our first test was Tuesday).  She chose Bosco's for her belated birthday dinner.  Her request for cake was vanilla cupcakes with strawberry frosting; they were her request last year and were the hands-down favorites from all of our celebrations. 

me, the beautiful birthday girl Katie, and her pretty pink cupcakes

(if you have ever met Katie, you know that pink frosting with sprinkles was RIGHT up her alley!)

We had a wonderful time laughing, catching up, and eating lots of delicious food.  We laughed about clinic stories, the joys of [finally!] being D4s, stresses, and professors.  Then a department chair stuck his head in our little room and waved.  Oops.  (Good thing we didn't say anything about him! Lesson - your momma was right, you NEVER know who is listening!)

Leslie, Ashley, me, Katie, and Nishel

(as you can see, we cleaned our plates!)

Katie and Nina

(Poor girls, they were doing lab work until after six.  Are you jealous?  I'm not!)

Jeni and Clair

After we ate, we enjoyed our cupcakes and Katie opened her gift:

Yep, those are cat potholders and a "blond" scrubbrush!  Katie just moved into her own apartment last year and has been having fun stocking her kitchen!  Jeni did a great job finding things that screamed "Katie".

To mix things up a little from last year, I made this year's cupcakes vanilla with a strawberry filling and buttercream frosting.  This picture is so ugly since the filling smeared, but I was wanting to dig in and didn't want to pause to take another one!

Oooh, the deliciousness.  One day I will be super-saavy and take pictures of my baking like my friend Kendall.  Until then, I'll just direct you to the recipes.  The cupcake batter was  "Ultimate Vanilla Cake" from last year's March issue of Southern Living.  Both the filling and buttercream came from Nick Malgieri's book Perfect Cakes.  (I wasn't able to find those recipes online, but I believe the book is about $25 and has a lot of delicious recipes - a good investment if you want to start baking from scratch.)

Ashley was so excited that she wanted a picture with hers.

Oh, so much fun!  I am already looking forward to our next celebration.

Happy birthday, dear Katie!