Its Bells birthday, so that means she came home at 9:30 PM last night to smoke pouring out of the oven.

Wait, lets start over.

Today’s Bells birthday! 

I’m a bit of a sucker for birthdays in a kinda weird way.  I don’t care for my own, because I don’t like the attention, but I love celebrating other peoples.  I try to do this (particularly for Bell)  by racking my brain to come up with some kind of token to let them know how important they are. 

I’m not one to try to go buy random gifts , which works in this case because Bell goes out of her way not to want things.  What doesn’t work is that I still obsess secretly with trying to find or make an awesome something that’ll make her eyes light up.

This year, I had inspiration a little early, two weeks ago – a baby hand mold. 

Alas.  Execution was not equal to inspiration.  After three hours of baking at 200 degrees, it was still soft, and Bell was due home in 20 minutes.  I cranked the oven to 300…

And forgot about it…

That brings us right back to the beginning, people, with smoke pouring out of the oven, and the realization that I need to leave SOME things to professionals.

Like arts and crafts.

Happy birthday Bell!  I love you with all of my heart!

And I’ll clean up the kitchen when I get home…

A quick aside to my family, standing around scoffing at the idea that despite my profession of birthday excitement all they ever get is a text message on their birthday…

…touche.