A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

Nick and I had an amazing start to birthday week!
We went to Sea View Saturday night, had a hearty breakfast of potatoes, sausage, and a poached egg salad.


After we cleaned up, we got in the car and made our way to Mendocino.
We stopped at Glass Beach, where the weather was gorgeous, warm and sunny. While admiring the beach we discovered our camera was broken so unfortunately, we are unable to show you how magical it was. From Glass Beach, we drove to Ricochet Ridge Ranch, where Nick treated me to a ten mile beach ride. We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day, and part of the ride was through the forest where we were able to snatch blackberries as we rode by.
My horse was a retired race horse who was still very competitive and didn't like it when Nick's horse tried to walk in front of him. Throughout the whole ride I had the most ridiculous grin from ear to ear. I really felt wrapped in love, it was such a beautiful day, such an amazing experience, and such a special and thoughtful birthday gift. Experiences are so much better then things.
After our ride it was time for dinner, so we got a bite in Mendocino, and headed home. We had to stop twice on our way home, once to climb onto the roof of our car to admire all the stars we can't see living in town, and once to admire the giant orange moon low on the horizon. Perfection.
Yesterday, I was gearing up for today, cleaned the house a little and making a carrot birthday cake, sorry no pictures, but it was delicious,
(the recipe is adapted from Smitten Kitchen):
Carrot Cake:
2 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ginger (I used fresh but you can use ground)
2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups canola oil
4 large eggs
3 cups grated carrots
1 cups coarsely chopped walnuts
1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350°F.
Whisk flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger in medium bowl to blend.
Whisk sugar and oil in large bowl until well blended. Whisk in eggs. Add flour mixture and stir until blended. Stir in carrots, walnuts and raisins.

Butter and flour two 9-inch-diameter cake pans (I don't have any two cake pans that are the same size so I did a slightly smaller cake for the top layer). Divide the batter between the prepared pans, and bake the layers for about 40 minutes each, or until a tester inserted into center comes out clean. Cool cakes in pans 15 minutes. Turn out onto racks. Cool cakes completely. And frost with cream cheese frosting.

Frosting:
16 oz. cream cheese, softened
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
Beat all the ingredients until fluffy. Chill the frosting for 10 to 20 minutes, until it has set up enough to spread smoothly.
I have frosting left over so I am going to fold in some whipped cream and use that to fill my birthday cream puffs!
I am feeling particularly blessed this birthday, thank you all for the love, support, and sweet wishes.
AND bear with us as we may have either very few or very crude pictures, until we figure out what is wrong with our camera, or we get a new one.

LOVE