My Birthday

On April 24th I had a tea party for my birthday. I invited eleven girls close to my age to have tea and to make hats for young children to donate to the Stanford Children's Hospital. We started out by either crocheting or knitting the hats. After about an hour we had tea, sandwiches, cake, ice cream and scones. We then went outside and I opened the presents. All of the gifts were very special and reflected the givers. The gifts included a bird feeder, Michael's gift card, a cute drawing of a girl, a handmade skirt and a tea cup.After that we worked on the hats for another hour, during which everyone made a lot of progress. Two people each finished a whole hat during the party, one hat was a light brown beanie and the other a pink and purple beanie. All the other hats which were started looked beautiful. I would include pictures from the party, but the camera broke before I uploaded the pictures. One of my friends took pictures during the party, so hopefully I will be able to post them later.

Lauren Ashley

Delicacy Disasters

Today was busy cooking for my birthday party. We were planning to make cake, ice cream, scones, sandwiches, chocolate covered strawberries and candied orange peel. I am inviting eleven girls to my party so I thought that this would be enough. We had a pre-made devil's food cake mix which we used. The cake turned out round and smooth on top, until my two year old brother Stephen decided to taste it. A bite sized chunk was taken straight out of the top.

The ice cream just got finished. It usually turns out the consistency of Wendy's frosties, probably better to drink through a straw than to eat with a spoon. I thought that scalding the milk would make it freeze better, but alas, it turned out the same as usual. I accidentally let the oranges simmer too long in sugar water and they burned. The chocolate for the strawberries was supposed to melt in a double boiler, but we do not have one. The chocolate ended up cooking instead of melting and was too lumpy.

Fortunately the cake and ice cream are edible. I cannot imagine what could possibly go wrong with making sandwiches and I have made scones before with little difficulty so I hope they turn out fine.

Lauren Ashley