Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Pale Mint, Poppy, and Gold!

I think I've finally really and truly come down to the main colors of the wedding.  I've been tinkering around with both the blue/green shade and the pink/red shade.  Gold was always just standard...had to be there!  I went from aqua all the way to a finite pale mint.  It's the best description I can come up with for now.  It's not a spearmint, it's not at all on a blue scale...it's a pale cloudy mint.  Then I fought with myself over the fucshia color that I started with...and it quickly become a poppy red.  I think the mint and poppy are elegant and classy together and has more of a vintage feel than aqua and fucshia did...and our venue is all about vintage!  Granted, I asked the "finance" (no, not fiance...finance...it's our new nickname) if he liked the colors...his answer, "whatever you like".  Good, good man, he is!  

This was the original picture from Style Me Pretty that inspired me with the color palette: fuschia and aqua.  


I've been pinning like a madman but I haven't found a color board or inspiration board that really captures all the colors well.  Usually there's one color that is missing.  So, I've put together my own color board using Wedding Wire.  

Photos by:


Wedding Wire has been such a helpful site thus far.  I can save all my vendors in a vendor area and even research reviews of vendors.  I have created many many inspiration boards just putting together color themes.  The check list is great, and my OCD self loves checking off all the items!  We can even create our own wedding website through Wedding Wire, although I haven't delved too far into that aspect of the site quite yet.  

I have been in craft mode lately and finished my first DIY project for the wedding.  I made flower pens in our wedding flowers of course, to be placed on the guest book table.  

Cute right!!?

Next DIY are going to be sparkly gold signs tied with pale mint ribbon that say "Mr" and "Mrs" for our head table! Inspiration was found from this awesome "Love" sign. 

More wedding updates to come! 

Monday, March 25, 2013

Just Cakey

I think there's a trend with the whole Cake Batter and Confetti/Funfetti Cake being made into things...well, other than cake.  So far, I haven't made anything with cake batter/confetti cake other than cake pops (which doesn't count as being creative)...so I hopped on board today.  

Mike asked me to make a dessert for a pizza party him and his coworkers are having.  Some of his co-workers are going to be bringing their kids, so I thought I should make it a little more fun! Mike had the idea of brownies and then throwing some sprinkles on top which jogged my inspiration.  I've wanted to try this recipe, Funfetti Cookies from Confection's From the Cody Kitchen.  This was the perfect time to try it out.  
However, I wanted to incorporate chocolate chips...you gotta have some chocolate in there!  And I didn't exactly have a Confetti or Funfetti cake mix...so I ended up using a white cake mix and stealing (shhh don't tell) the "confettis" from a Pillsbury Confetti Icing jar :-/  and throwing it into the mix.  I know I'm going to regret that later when I'm looking for some confetti icing.  
  Getting crazy, I know!  Other than that...oh and using Xanthum Gum in exchange for the cornstarch...I followed her recipe.  
I'm thinking the kids are going to enjoy these fluffy creations tomorrow! 
I however, had the smallest of tastes as I was bad and ate three Reese's cups for dinner.  Yes, dinner.  I'm hoping my 4 mile run afterwards burned it off and then some.  I ate like a horse today! 

Off to watch the Shark's Game. Not very excited about the Murray trade...so I've gotta go find myself a new favorite.  Happy Monday all :-) 

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Feb. Showers bring March Flowers?

Yay, it's Spring time and the weather is actually being cooperative lately.  I hear though that it's not the same in much of the midwest and further East.  I have been maximizing my vitamin D time and getting outside! I'm currently training for the American River Parkway Half Marathon that is in another month so I've been trying to get outside more and off my treadmill.  However, we just recently acquired a treadmill and I must say, it is a dream come true!! 

The one thing I loved so much about living in apartment complexes in Foster City and in Folsom was that they came with great onsite exercise facilities.  I actually trained for my first half marathon entirely on a treadmill.  So I've been utilizing the convenience of our new treadmill!! Mike and I are also running the Run Rocklin 5 and 12k in a couple weeks with a couple of our friends so he's been getting his run on too!  

I ran tons of errands today.  When I've got lots of random things to get and a whole bunch of places to go, it's best for me to go by myself.  I linger as long as I want, take my sweet time, and stock up on tons of things I don't need ;-)  My trip started out at Ulta.  I was in the market for some waterproof mascara.  I wanted to try out Tarte's "lights, camera, splashes" 4-in-1 mascara as I'll be needing some heavy duty flood proof stuff for our wedding.  
And I also picked up Tarte's Maracuja Lip Gloss in "Blushing Bride" (I know, how ironic) to test out.  I'll report back on my findings!

With Spring in the air, I've started to make lists for wedding crafts.  I know, Spring has nothing to do with wedding crafts, but since it IS wedding season, I'm getting in the mood to start checking off some of my projects from my DIY list.  Project 1: Flower Pens! 

Michael's was my stop for my DIY project. I was looking for white and red anemone's.  I should backup and explain that our wedding color palette is pale mint, poppy (or red Anemone), with touches of gold and black/white.  
Kinda like this color board found here...
When discussing the florals with our florist from Design with Florae, Anemone's were big on my list as well as Peonies, Ranunculus, Fringed Tulips, and those awesome pod like things that look minty green.  Poppy pods?  I wanted to copy these florals for an arrangement on the guest 
book table.  I made some floral pens for my maid of honor's bridal shower awhile ago and I loved the way they turned out.  I thought I'd recreate the idea for us.  

I sat outside in the backyard today and went to town making pens.  I used 5 Anemone stalks, 2 red Ranunculus, and 2 red Peonies for 9 pens in total.  I also bought green floral tape and used a cute vase I had from Valentine's Day that worked perfectly.  And of course, I completed the look with some gold and mint ribbon.  
Source: Meredith on Pinterest

I'm very happy with the result! Now I have to figure out, an actual guestbook, a matting to surround a photo of us, or something like this?


What have you guys seen or done at your own weddings?

Monday, March 4, 2013

Little "Pizza" My Heart

So today marks 3 years that Mikey and I have been together! Yay us! I love any chance to celebrate even though we are engaged and we will have a wedding anniversary soon enough...we are celebrating our three years together anyway!
I try to be creative and think of things Mike loves (usually involving food) to make for our celebrations.  He's not one for the store bought stuff so I like to think outside the box!

What's become sort of a tradition each year is bringing out our mini chocolate fountain that Mikey gave me for our first year celebration.  He surprised me with everything you could ever want to dip into chocolate on a plate...maximum chocolate gluttony!!!  I've continued to bring it out each year.  Strawberries for dipping this year!
Mikey looooves pizza.  It's probably one of his favorite foods.  He could eat it at least once a week and never tire of it, of that I'm sure.  Papa John's has been at the top of his list lately so much so that he gets cravings for it (sounds like a pregnant women ;-) 

I went on my trusty Pinterest to find a good recipe.  At first, I wasn't necessarily going to make everything from scratch, but then I figured...if I want it to taste exactly like Papa John's I'm gonna need to make everything right down to the tomato puree in the tomato sauce.  

I used all the copy cat recipes from Food.com.  I started with the dough (recipe here) in the early morning.  Even though the recipe only states for the dough to rise for 15 minutes, I allowed mine to rise almost the entire day, probably a good 6 hours.  I thought I hadn't gotten the dough right as mine was kind of sticky in the end, but it was just the right texture out of the oven!  So don't fret if yours is sticky.
  
The dough recipe makes two pizzas!

With any Papa John's Pizza you have to have LOADS of their garlic sauce.  I went ahead and made the garlic sauce (recipe here) way in advance because it was super easy and could be refrigerated and then heated up before dinner.

The most time consuming part of the pizza making process was making the actual tomato sauce from scratch.  I now appreciate tomato sauce a bit more after today.  I used this tutorial on making tomato puree as I had everything to make it and didn't have a can of it.  So it came down to "scratching" it! Yup, I just came up with that ;-)

Let me tell you, there is something about fresh tomato sauce! It's heavenly and I'm not a fan of tomato sauce.  I boiled 5 tomatoes for 15 minutes (the skins fall off in the process which is rather nice), then roasted them with garlic powder, olive oil, and salt at 350 degrees for 2 hours (mine was more like 1.5 hours).  Then I pureed the tomatoes in a blender.  

Then, I used another copy cat Papa John's recipe for the sauce (recipe here) and it was FANtastic!  I'm not sure I would call it like Papa John's though, because Papa John's sauce to me is tangy and hearty whereas my final product was more light and airy and more garlicy flavor.  

I might have made one of my favorite pizzas!! The dough makes two 12" round pizzas...however, I only had 9" rounds so my pizzas must've been a little doughier (which I prefer).  For Mikey's pizza I used mozzarella, pepperoni, and sprinkled sausage on half.  

Before
And After...

Mine was plain cheese...half mozzarella and half pepper jack!
Ta-dah!

What a hit in my book! I think Mikey appreciated the doughy-ness too.  He likes a deep dish just like me even though that's not really what I was going for but it was definitely pillow like.  So glad for some leftovers tomorrow!
Man, I'm beat...making things from scratch ("scratching it") is hard work.  And I'll reiterate that I'm not a cook at all.  Although I loved the final product that went in my mouth, I can't do this cooking thing every day.  Not to mention the mess I made in the kitchen...here's to cleaning up!
And of course many more years and celebrations to come with my one and only!!
~ Happy Anniversary ~