Abuela's birthday

Yesterday was Abuela's birthday, and we had birthday fun all week. Monday we took her to the Micosukee Casino in town. She just loves playing the slots. Then, yesterday we took her out to dinner at her fave BBQ place in town, Shorty's. We also got her some great gifts including a new purse (she's a bit of a purse fiend) and a telenovela she wanted on DVD (which she has been binge watching like nobody's business). It's great just to be able to spend the day with her and relax.

I know everyone thinks their grandma is awesome, but mine takes the cake. She's my partner-in-crime, my roomie, my personal fashion designer, and makes a mean congri de frijoles negros (rice with black beans).

Here's to the happiest of birthdays Abuela! Felicidades!

Quadrito square cake

I was baking again this weekend. It was another co-worker's birthday, so I made him a cake. I decided on a cake this time, instead of my usual cupcakes, to go along with his nickname "Quadrito" (which means little square), so square cake it was.

I borrowed my Mom's square cake pan and made a Funfetti cake with classic vanilla buttercream. I had to mix it up a little, so I used some chocolate buttercream as a filling in between the cake layers. Here's a tip, to get your frosting to look uniform on the outside and not show your filling on the outside, pipe or just spread on a little of the outside frosting on the edges of your cake, then spread on the filling inside of the frosting "edges." When you frost the rest of the cake with the outside frosting you won't be able to see what the delicious filling is.

See, you can't even tell there's yummy chocolate on the inside. Now this vanilla buttercream was just too plain, so I decided to try out the "sprinkle stencil" technique.

I printed and cut out a "Q" on a piece of paper and placed it on the frosted cake. Now came the messy part, I put sprinkles on the top of the cake, all over the top of the cake. I pressed them in so they would really stick. Then I removed the paper Q to reveal the buttercream Q. Success! (Well except for cleaning up sprinkles for a half an hour...)

The cake was a hit. Quadrito was totally shocked and suprised by his homemade birthday cake, and best of all it was delicious. Sometimes the simplest cakes are the yummiest.

What's your favorite cake flavor?

Disney birthday fun!

My awesome nephew, Xander, turned 6 last week, and I had to go up to Orlando to see him and help celebrate. Along with his Mom and Dad (and sister, Veronica) we decided to take X to Disney for the day. X's Aunt Rachel and cousin Alice joined us for all of the fun too.

Since we were celebrating X's special day, we went to a character lunch at the Crystal Palace. X got to meet Eeyore, Piglet, Tigger and Winnie the Pooh!

Rachel and Kris had to get a picture with Eeyore too.

We had to get the obligatory mouse ear pictures of the kids. (And I was lucky enough to get all of them smiling!)

The day was great, but once the sun started to set it started to get chilly out, so we bundled up before walking around some more and checking out the new Fantasyland.

The new Fantasyland is so pretty at night all lit up. Xander is totally as strong as Gaston.

We stayed late to catch the Main Street Electrical Parade. Now I haven't seen the parade in years, and it was totally nostalgic and awesome watching it with X. He loved checking out who was coming on the next float.

I've gotta say it was an awesome day spending the time with Xander in Disney World for his birthday and spending time with Veronica and Alice too. Xander told me he had so much fun. We might have to go again soon, especially since we all got annual passes.

Crazy About Damaris

Last week was one of my good friend, Damaris's, birthday, so of course we had to celebrate. Friday night we headed out to dinner at a new place on Brickell, Crazy About You. The place was very eclectic and they had great food too, plus it's right on the water. With Damaris's love for the ocean, we knew this would be the perfect spot to celebrate with her.

The entrance of the restaurant had this cute little area. The live, laugh, love was definitely a wish for the birthday girl and something we all want to keep in mind all year long.

We surprised Damaris with a Pandora bracelet and a few charms for her birthday. She had been wanting one and was totally shocked to start her collection.
 

After dinner, drinks and dessert, we walked around the back of the building to walk by the bay and take some pictures. We got a little goofy and took waaay too many pictures on all of our phones and my camera.

We all had a great time celebrating this time with Damaris. And she was happy to spend this time with us.

As always with these girls, it was an awesome night and we had tons of fun and lots of laughs.

Holiday celebration 2012

Work has been pretty crazy lately, but my friends and I finally got a bit of a chance to relax and have some fun at the holiday party last week.

We chatted with everyone, enjoyed a drink and then danced out all the stress. We had a great time, but it would have been even better if it hadn't been on a Wednesday. A mid-week party made the rest of the week at work drag by!

Yoanna's surprise birthday party

My friend Yoanna was tunring the big 4-0 a couple of weeks ago, so her sister, Janet, asked us to help plan a suprise party for her.

We all work in the same place, so we had to be extra sneaky with the planning around the office, but luckily it came off without a hitch.

The party was at Janet's house, by her gorgeous pool. We went with black and purple for the decor, which looked really elegant at night. And I just loved the lights over the pool.

 

Yoanna didn't suspect a thing and was in total shock! She thought she was just going to a nice restaurant for dinner, but came right into her party.

We had an awesome time putting all of this together and celebrating Yoyo.

 

I have so much fun with these girls. We spent the night sipping on cosmos and lychee martinis and danced the night away.

We definitely decided we have to plan another party soon. We have the DJ and the bartender, all we need now is the occassion.

My birthday celebration

I finally celebrated my birthday on Tuesday. With some of my work friends, we headed over to Strike, a bowling alley, to have some drinks and bowl a few games. We actually left work at a decent hour and and some other friends met up with us over there too.

The four musketeers were down one, cause Karina wasn't feeling well, but we sent her pics throughout the night, so it was like she was there with us.

I haven't bowled in years, but it was so much fun. Unfortunately, I didn't win any games, Yoanna swept all of them!

My bff Melissa even stopped by for a bit after her class. It was great to have (almost) all of my girls there to help me celebrate.

After all of the craziness at the office this week I really needed this stress reliever. And I was so happy to finally be celebrating my birthday, albeit a little late.

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope everyone is had a great Mother's Day weekend. Mine has been pretty jam packed.

On Saturday, we had our family Mother's Day lunch. We took the "old ladies" to Benny's Seafood Restaruant. It's a Puerto Rican restaurant that was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

It was a HUGE group of us at the restaurant, and thankfully our waitress was patient in dealing with all these crazy ladies.

We all dug into the typical Puerto Rican dishes, like the alcapurrias and mofongo. It was so delicious. Nothing better than fried pork and plantains!

Then on Sunday, I made dinner for Mom and Abuela (and Pop and Rich and Ang too). I used a few of the printables from Amanda's Parties To Go at the table.

Here's Mom waiting to dig in!

I made salad, turkey meatloaf, roasted asparagus, baked smashed potatoes and bread. It was super yummy. Grandma and Mom loved it and Rich really loved the potatoes.

And Mom brought a flan for dessert. I'm not really a fan of flan, but grandma is and everyone else has a little piece too.

It was a great weekend with Mom and Grandma. I hope all of you had a great weekend with your moms and showed them all the love.