T Stands for Celebrating All Weekend

Hi everyone. It's the first T day of March. I hope everyone had a great start to the new month. I can't believe we're in the third month of 2024 already.

My post is a bit long today-warning you and apologizing in advance.

Last week there was  spring, a lot of mud and wintery cold in New Hampshire.  

It's not very pretty outside right now at all. 😒 

I did buy some daffodils at Trader Joe's the other day so at least they brightened up inside.

I never managed to get to the ocean to walk last week, but I did a bit of baking. This next photo is also my first ticket to T over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog this week. You can see my Diet Coke. It takes me 2-3 days to get through a bottle this size.

I was making myself a birthday cake because my daughter and her husband came last Friday evening for an early  celebration. This cake was a new recipe for me, and I tried 2 new things in cake baking with this recipe. First of all I have never made a cake with self-rising flour. Self-rising flour is something that for years you could barely find here in the parts of New England where I've lived. Now that I can easily find it, I was ready to try it.

The other thing I tried was using freeze-dried  powdered strawberries.  When I opened the package they smelled great, and they did make the cake taste like strawberries.  I think when I use them again I will add a bit of red food coloring just because I think some people (like my husband) expect strawberries to be red. I know smell affects taste, but I think color can and does also.

Before we had birthday cake, we went out for Mexican food. I haven't had Mexican food for a long time, and it was yummy (but I forgot to take a photo). With dinner I had a margarita too. That's drink number 2.

The photo in this angle makes my margarita look gigantic. It was the same size as my daughter's which you can also see in the photo. And you can see the water I drank after my margarita was finished.

We were too tired Friday night to have my birthday cake  so the next best thing was to have it for breakfast on Saturday. 😮

The layers go (from top of the cake to bottom) strawberry, vanilla and then chocolate. There was homemade whipped cream and red berry jam in between each layer.  Some of it squeezed out when the cake got carried upstairs from the garage. I had it in a cooler out there because  the whipped cream it needed to be kept cold, and since I didn't have room in the fridge, a cooler in the garage was the next best thing.

Here's me with  morning hair ready to blow out the candles.

I actually celebrated all weekend.  😏

 This past weekend my husband and I also went out tractor shopping. The hubby has been stashing money away for many years (we all are sick of hearing him tell us he wants a tractor), and finally he found a used one that worked for his budget and what he wanted.

Yes that's me on the tractor at the dealer. It's the first time I've ever driven one. I'm actually excited he finally found one because I have a few projects I want to work on. A little more practice with the bucket, and I'll be ready to use it myself. ❤

Since he bought the tractor in Maine, we headed a little further east to go visit his Mom. She was not having a great day, but her assisted living is near one of our favorite pizza places. After our visit we went and had pizza for a late lunch. This diet Pepsi is another drink ticket for T day, even though I forgot to take a photo with most of the pizza.

Since this post is getting long, I'll end it here. 

I'm hoping everyone has a great T day and first full week of March.