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Hello! I know I haven’t been posting very much this month, but I promise that it’s for good reason and you’ll soon know why.

My friend, Ximena, had a birthday on Saturday and I had an appointment at her shop on Sunday. She is the vegetarian tattoo artist and shop owner (vegan tattoos!) who also made the nom! buttons, and she is a serious cat lover. I used recipes from Damn Tasty! to make her a kitty birthday cake, fit for the feline-friendly.

The chocolate cake recipe from the Black Forest Cake, covered with Peanut Butter Frosting and I did some detailing with melted chocolate. Everyone wins when you make a cake where you need to cut out elements of it- they get the cake and you get to eat the scraps. The result was this cute, playful cake that was a cinch to make. Yum!

I presented it to her at my appointment to get some long-awaited tattoos. These have been several years in the making: my bees!

On my left shoulder:

And on my right:

These pictures were taken less than 24 hours after, so I’m still a little pink and swollen. Don’t them look great?! They turned out even better than I expected, Ximena just rocks.

Why the bees? Well, there are a couple of reasons. One, I just like bees. I think they are beautiful and their complex language is so fascinating. An important thing about bees is their contribution to agriculture around the world. Bees are responsible for much of the pollination needed for our crops to grow, but the bees are dying. This is a real concern because it is affecting food crops worldwide and no one can figure out why the colonies are dying off. Everything from watermelon, broccoli, to my furry friend the kiwi, they all rely on bees to grow, so this decline has far-reaching effects. In the past few years this problem has been attracting more attention, but the mystery is still there. Bees are just as important as the water, sun and soil used to grow crops. So, with that in mind, I pay homage to these amazing little creatures, so essential to our world.

Thanks to the bees, I was able to make this delicious salad:

Mixed baby greens, spinach, cucumber, baby heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers and some sliced up carrots, the perfect spring time lunch salad!

I hope spring is in the air for you all. I can see some bees buzzing around the blooming tree outside my window right now.