Graduation was an amazing, beautiful, exciting and bittersweet day. To follow up with my last blog post, I did not need my epi-pens on graduation day. Special thanks to the assistant principal who carried them onto the field for me!

The day of graduation I decided to not eat the school breakfast, which in my last blog post I said I would eat the breakfast, so change of plans. I was too nervous and excited to eat anything, so I had a plain piece of white toast before leaving for school. During the breakfast I watched everyone else eat which was completely fine by me. After that we took photos and then got ready for the ceremony to begin.

I handed off my epi-pens about a full hour before we even started the ceremony. And then after the ceremony my parents found the assistant principal and got the epi-pens back from her. Then I reunited with my parents and headed home.

Before reaching home we stopped at the bakery I work at to pick up a graduation cake. It was a lemon cake with raspberry jam filling and vanilla buttercream. This cake is the first bakery cake I have ever had with my name on it. Even though the bakery is not nut free, when my mom ordered the cake she reminded them about my allergies and they knew to avoid nuts and cross contact. The cake was also a surprise for me, my mom had told me she was getting me a cake, but I didn't know what it was going to look like or anything. It is the most beautiful and delicious cake I have ever had.

A few days after graduation my family hosted a graduation party at our home. We invited our family and friends. A few of our family members are also allergic to nuts like me, so they could eat all of the food. Some were also allergic to strawberries so we kept the strawberries separate from the rest of the fruit salad. We also served vegetables for those who were vegetarians. We basically had a build your own sandwich station, so we had different kinds of seed free breads, meats, cheeses and even pickles. For appetizers we hot pretzels, chips, and popcorn. For sides we had pasta salad and potato salad. Then later in the party we had pizza from our local safe pizza place. For desserts my mom, my sister and I had made homemade chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies and mini cupcakes.

The sugar cookies were our very first attempt at icing sugar cookies now that we have meringue powder to make the royal icing. They were cute, not the prettiest, but they tasted yummy so that's what counts in this situation. Our mini cupcakes looked really good compared to the last time we made them. The first house party we had a few years ago for my sweet sixteen, the mini cupcakes just had a blob of buttercream on them. This time I piped the buttercream on to make stars and rosettes and they looked much better. We had vanilla, chocolate and strawberry cupcakes all with vanilla buttercream. Those allergic to strawberries had to avoid the strawberry ones and the next house party we are not going to make those.

The graduation party was very fun and I was glad everyone who came had safe food to eat. We also had fun talking, crafting and gaming. As I like to say, it's not all about the food, its about having fun and it was very fun.

I still cannot believe that graduation is over. The time went so fast and I am so thankful for all of the high school memories. I am excited for the new adventures and memories to come!

#graduation #2017 #epipens #meringuepowder #work #highschool #breakfast #minicupcakes