Grandma's birthday

Tonight we celebrated my grandmother's 83rd birthday. She is such an amazing woman.

This is a picture of 3 generations of my family. Zadie baby was only one week old when this was taken-time flies. My beautiful grandmother is holding her.

I volunteered to make the cake for grandma's birthday bash and I of course chose to make my Granny Thomas's (grandma's mom) famous cake- 'Granny Cake'. I am going to share this old family recipe with you and I will probably hear about it from my grandma in the morning. Not that she will be mad that I shared it, I just gave her all kinds of trouble when she added 'our secret family recipe'  to the church cookbook one year so I have it coming to me! ;) Anywho, before I begin I just want you to know that this cake has no calories, or fat, or any other horrible thing you can think of that may clog your arteries or add inches to your thighs. This recipe if free of everything that may make you feel guilty because it is a family recipe. It holds dear memories of days spent at my great grandmother's house, and nights sharing the leftovers with the girls in my dorm at college. I remember helping my grandma make this as a little girl. SEE, all that good out ways any bad in this recipe and I am passing those memories to you so that you can enjoy this protein filled cake guilt free!

Granny Cake

Ingredients:
3 cups sugar
1 1/2 cup butter flavored Crisco
9 eggs (We all need some protein right!?)
3 cups flour
3 cap fulls of imitation vanilla butter and nut flavor

Directions:
Cream the sugar and Crisco together. Add the eggs one at time, mixing well after each. Stir in the flour and the flavor. Pour into a greased bunt pan and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 5 minutes.

Did you feel your arteries clogging just by reading this recipe? :) We eat pretty healthy at my house but when it comes to desert I just can not get into the healthy substitutions. My rule is to only eat one serving and to go running the next morning. ;) I am telling you, this cake is WELL worth the calories. I promise.

I got this from my grandma. I am not sure what I am going to do when it runs out! I need to start looking for it.

MMMMMM.......

This is what I brought home. I call that a success!

This is also the grandmother who taught me to sew and took time to make crafts with me when I was a little girl. So in honor of all those great memories, I decided to make her birthday card. I got the idea from Pintrest of course!

Isn't it cute! it is from the blog October Afternoon. I was having sewing machine problems again so mine did not turn out quite as cute as I was imagining but I still really liked it! I'll show you what I did.

I picked a 'calm' piece of scrapbook paper and cut it to a standard card size.

I sewed a scrap piece of brown fabric to the front of the card. It was meant to be imperfect. I am not THAT bad at sewing straight!

I picked two different pieces of fabric (only one is pictured) folded them in half and stitched loops and circles all over them.

I cut a stem and leaves out of one piece of fabric and I cut the flower out of the other fabric. I sewed a button in the middle of the flower and then I hot glued the entire thing to the card. Then I found a sweet flower quote online, wrote it on strips of paper, and then I hand stitched them to the card.

Finally I added our personalized note inside and the card was complete! I thought it turned out pretty cute, but I was definitely not being a perfectionist. Sometimes life is just more fun when you love the imperfections. 

Before I sign out tonight I have a little teaser for you...

While I was working inside Brent was working on a project for me outside. It has something to do with that sad empty wall. You will have to come back tomorrow to see the transformation!
P.S. Isn't Luna just the cutest thing! I love that puppy.
~Happy wondering