The Narrowed Lens: Cake and Art for a 3rd Anniversary

I love our wedding anniversary and make a really big deal about celebrating, but I usually do it from an enchanted little corner of South Carolina called Hilton Head Island. It's fabulous! We never go on our actual anniversary though, because prices drop the following week for most condos. I should have thought about that when I was planning our wedding.

When we get there we walk up and down at the beach, hang out at the pool, watch movies or cable in the room, ride bikes, eat at nice restaurants, and just generally have a wonderful, relaxing, highlight-of-my-year kind of time. I don't know what I would do without this little ray of beachy sunshine that brightens an otherwise ordinary patch of September...

Oh wait; yeah I do.

As I've just discovered, my alternative to vacationing at HHI is watching 101 Dalmatians on my busted couch and eating fish sticks and pumpkin cake, which I made yesterday. And while pumpkin cake is delicious, and while I do enjoy an old Disney cartoon, somehow—and I know it's crazy—my sentimental heart is really just aching to walk up and down my favorite getaway paradise. I found myself wanting to be there so badly that I practically begged Todd to take me. The conversation(s) may have gone something like this:

"Toddy, can we please go to Hilton Head for our anniversary?"

"I'd love to take you there for our anniversary."

"So we can go?!"

"Hmm...no."

Can you believe how cold and unfeeling he is about this? Has he no soul? Well, I didn't want to embrace defeat too quickly and thought I'd attempt getting to him from another angle (uh, as a side note here, one does not "get to" Todd...he's an absolute impenetrable rock. All the time): our favorite restaurant on HHI is a place called The Kingfisher, and I know he likes it just as much as I do. Perhaps my first attempt was a bit to obviously..."me" focused. I might fare better with an appeal to his stomach.

"I want to go to Kingfisher for my anniversary."

"I don't think that's going to work."

"Oh, too expensive? Well in that case we can just go to Moe's" (another of our HHI regular stops).

"Well, after the cost of the plane tickets, the dinner price is kind of inconsequential."

That's Todd-ish for "no," in case you couldn't tell. So, there you have it. Apparently, our living in Africa is a really big deal.

So pumpkin cake and artwork it is! Here's to three wonderful years with my favorite person in the world whom I do still love, despite his refusal to buy me a plane ticket for a long weekend in South Carolina. Practicality and down-to-earth-ism, thy name is Todd ;)

Here's the pumpkin cake, made with one of my precious imported cans of pumpkin! For the recipe, visit this link.

And, here's the art. These are sketches that Todd did digitally over real images that we have of the two of us. I keep begging him to draw me a wedding picture, but this will do in the meantime ;)