Chocolate Dr. Pepper Cake

Last week was my husband's 40th birthday party. Big stuff, right? Happy birthday, hunny!

Every year, I ask him to choose what kind of birthday cake he would like. 

Seriously, he picks the best cakes... even though they usually are really time consuming to make. 

He's worth it! 

After taking a stroll through my "Let Them Eat Cake" board on Pinterest, he chose this cake. 

He's been a lover of Dr. Pepper for a long time.

It turned out to be a wonderful, moist chocolate cake with just a hint of Dr. Pepper flavour.

This was one of the simpler cakes he's chosen for his birthday, but so very yummy!

Paint Dipped Votive Holders

Happy Monday!

How was your weekend? Mine was mostly good. Our little girl had the flu on Saturday, but rested a lot & got better quickly. I ended up staying home from church with her on Sunday just to make sure she didn't have any more episodes. :) Because we were home & she was resting, I hung out in my craft room for a good portion of the weekend. I pulled up my Pinterest boards & did a whole bunch of little projects. It was great to be so productive!

Here's one of the projects I did. I actually just saw a picture & did my own thing to come up with the end result, so I did a little tutorial so you can follow along if you want to try making some of your own paint dipped votive holders.

Insta Friday #6

It was a busy week here in the Richardson household. My husband, James, turns 40 today (Happy birthday, sweetheart!) & I seemed to have a bunch of prep work to get ready for the big day.

But let's start at the beginning.

Last weekend, I baked up one of our favourites - Chai-spiced loaf - for our church's coffee bar. 

Our church friends seemed to really enjoy it! Yay!

I also worked on a fun card order for a sweet lady.

Fantasyland Layout {Echo Park}

It's been a few weeks since I shared a scrapbook layout. This is one that I did for our Disney album from our trip last summer. 

Fantasyland was one of our favourite parts of the whole Disneyland park. It was our very first stop on our very first morning.

Chewy Ginger Cookies

Does anyone else love the cookbooks that are collections of recipes from a church, business, or organization? Aren't they the best? They're always chock full of treasures that quickly become family favourites.

The recipe I have to share with you today is from one such cookbook. It's from the cookbook that my high school put out back when I was still in school... way back when. :)

My mom bought me a copy of the cookbook at the time to have for when I "grew up & moved out". 

When my husband & I got married & set up house, I was suddenly plunged into the duties of cook & baker. My mom had taught me some, but I learned mostly from experience.

In that first year of marriage, I tried so many new recipes - searching for our own family favourites. This recipe was one of those & has been a favourite ever since. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!