I'm No Domestic Goddess, but with an Afternoon of Tea comes Domesticity

Today is (was?) my birthday. And it was a good day. There's no sob story coming from me about my sixteenth birthday. I couldn't have asked for a better day. (Not the weather, but I was inside and it was cool out, so the rain doesn't matter.)

My birthday cake, which I was originally going to make, was the Devil's Food Cake with Mint-Chocolate Ganache from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, but my cousin Tiff wanted to make me a cake for my birthday, so I told her what I was going to make (definately a decadent treat) and she made it for me. And it was rich.

As for the tea itself, we had tea sandwiches (salmon, chive & cream cheese on white; prepared LMG curried chicken salad, and watercress on pumpernickel; cucumbers with lime, mint-chile butter, on thin white) that Mom made with a little help from Maddy and me, freshly baked scones, angel-food cake bites with lemon curd and raspberries that Granma helped assemble, and pea salad cups that Granma and Maddy put together for me.
It makes me feel like I almost didn't have to do anything. And it was relaxing, with all the help my family put in.

My aunt even made a gorgeous poster of a tea pot for a game of "put the lid on the teapot", a spinoff of "pin the tail on the donkey" that was a hit.

And now that I have a cart to go shopping, and an apron prettier than most of the clothes I own, I can go to the grocery store and venture to the kitchen with even fewer limits.