Cooking for Rowan's Birthday

It's been far too long since I've posted, but the last few weeks have been crazy with Rowan studying for quals for a month, then taking two weeks of exams, and now the aftermath (ie, doing nothing). In the middle of all this craziness, Rowan's birthday came up. Being unemployed as I am, it didn't feel right to me to buy any expensive gifts, but I am fairly handy with baking, and am slowly becoming a better cook, so I decided to put together a culinary delight as a birthday present. It started out with cinnamon rolls. A fairly simple thing to bake and I always enjoy kneading the dough. They turned out wonderfully, and though you can't taste them, I hope the pictures help to convey just how delicious they were. For the main course, Rowan asked for scallops and bacon in a white sauce over pasta. This one was a little more tricky, but the local grocer had some nice frozen scallops and I found a recipe for a white wine sauce to go with scallops, and then just added some bacon. Again, pictures are included below, and as you can see, Ong-Bak was really really into the scallops. The dessert was a thick, moist chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I made the cake completely from scratch (no packages of cake mix for me). By all accounts, it was an excellent cake, it took the two of us almost a week to get through it, but it was superb. Finally, Rowan's family had some flowers delivered for Rowan's birthday. Strangely, by the end of the day these flower had still not arrived. Serena (Rowan's mum, for those that don't know), called up the company and it was discovered that the flowers were left in some flower bed outside of the manager's office. I didn't even know we had a manager's office! The next day the flower company called me and explained where they delivered the flowers. It was out front of the apartment outside a set of stairs that lead to the basement of the apartment. They were sheltered by some plants, and were still in good condition, so all was well. Anyways, should be more updates soon!