bountiful boutonnieres

So, one thing that has always nagged at the back of my brain throughout my career as a wedding planner is the issue of the boutonniere ... a floral decoration meant to be worn by men. Firstly, let's clear up the spelling - the number one question when trying to google for funky boutonniere inspirations: One "T," two "N"s. And the "I" goes before the "e". Ok, so here's my dilemma - sometimes a dainty little rose just doesn't match our ruggedly handsome grooms. He needs something a little more unique, a little more...sporty? The inspirations seem meager on the net, but I've picked some of my favourite boutonnieres of all time, and will continue to post as I find more!

Image 1 & 2 from Martha Stewart Weddings (incidently the word boutonniere comes from the french word bouton, which means button - i love buttons - could image 2 be any more perfect?!), and third image from the super great magazine Bride and Bloom.

Label Maker Winner

The winner for the label maker giveaway is....

jen who said, "fingers crossed!I keep paper under control by only touching the mail once--pay it, toss it, or file it immediately."

Jen email me your contact info. (I couldn't find it) by this Friday, and I'll pass it along.

Thanks everyone for your great organizational tips. I will put together a post in the future with all of that smart information. Thank you DYMO for this fantastic giveaway!

ps. I used random.org to select the winner.

(image from here)

Labor Day Weekend

We had a nice relaxing weekend and although the stormy weather wasn't exactly what we would have liked, playing games and watching movies in the charming cottage full of family and friends was nice too. This is my first time to Bear Lake -- it is beautiful and blue, known as the 'Caribbean of the Rockies'. The area is also famous for growing raspberries and they have the best raspberry shakes I've ever had. I can't wait until we go again.

Fake cooking - green beans with tofu

I love cooking (obviously) but that doesn't mean there aren't nights where, due to lack of time or sheer exhaustion, I want to be in and out of the kitchen in 15 minutes without doing a whole bunch of chopping and washing dishes. I reserve my fake cooking recipes for those nights. Fake cooking is slightly more involved than heating up a frozen pizza (which I also do, but I probably wouldn't post about it because there isn't much to say) but significantly less involved than creating a whole meal from scratch.

Most of my favorite fake cooking meals revolve around the frozen food section at Trader Joe's. I am a lifelong fan of TJ's, even if they were a slightly sketchy, slightly upgraded liquor store when I was a child. Even back then, they had an awesome cookie section and I loved their packaging. Fast forward 20 years and I am addicted to their frozen meals (okay, I am still in love with their cookies).

When they came out with their Prig Khing Green Beans I fell hard, even though the first time I cooked them I nearly choked from the spicy sauce fumes emanating from the wok. They actually don't taste as spicy as they smell while you are cooking them, so don't freak out when this happens to you.



But green beans are not a meal on their own, in my opinion, no matter how delicious the sauce. I cook everything as directed, except I usually add additional frozen plain green beans (up to a whole bag extra) because there is a lot of sauce. While the beans are cooking, I chop up a block of tofu and dice a small handful of peanuts. I toss most of the peanuts with the green beans once they are fully cooked and then add the tofu and sprinkle some peanuts on top for garnish (classy, right?). I like the contrast of the cold, smooth tofu pieces with the hot green beans, but if you aren't into that you could gently toss everything together at the end and let it heat up a bit. If you aren't a tofu fan, this is probably the safest option.



It's not vegetarian (sorry, Kris) because there is a bit of shrimp paste in the prepared sauce, but it is good for you. I usually get three to four main dish servings out of this, with the addition of extra green beans and tofu, and it comes out to about 245 calories per serving if you split it in four servings, 370 if you split it in three (estimate includes 1 tbsp of olive oil, as called for on the package, plus extra green beans, 1 package of medium firm tofu and 1 serving of peanuts), with some good protein.

Can you tell I'm trying to be a little more healthy after my long weekend? Let's just say that I ate three slices of (pink champagne flavored!) wedding cake on Saturday and then made trips to the cupcake shop on both Sunday and Monday, in addition to baking that evilly delicious caramel cake. Ouch. I'm on cake detox for a while.

Caramel Cake (from Maya via Martha)

I love Martha Stewart recipes. I know people sometimes have trouble with them, and I think I've just gotten lucky with my picks so far, but they always seem to turn out well (with the exception of the time a coconut cake overflowed in my oven and caused a small fire, but I'm pretty sure that was my fault for assuming that I could use an 8 inch cake pan instead of a 9 inch - turns out you should pour out some of the batter if you are going to do this. The cake was still delicious though, once I got the fire put out and managed to get it baked).

I've been eyeing this recipe for caramel cake, and with a coworker's birthday this week, I finally have an excuse to try it out. It's from Maya Angelou's cookbook, and the recipe is up on Martha's site.


I always butter and flour the cake pans before starting anything else

The recipe looks a little intimidating, because it has multiple parts. You first have to make the caramel syrup, which is just melted sugar added to water. I noticed that many of the reviewers commented on the thinness of the syrup, so I took one person's suggestion and melted the sugar on its own and then added just 1 cup of water. Well, my caramel syrup was still pretty much the consistency of water, but it tasted good. I think next time I'll use a more standard recipe for caramel, and add cream instead of water.


Adding the caramel "syrup" to the batter

The cake batter tasted delicious, and so did the nibbles of cake that I scraped out of the pan. I was less impressed with the frosting, which is really just a basic buttercream (powdered sugar + butter + cream). I didn't have cream, so I used 1% milk. I'm sure my frosting would have been richer with the cream, but it would probably still be a little boring. Disclaimer: I'm not a huge fan of plain buttercream. If you are, you will probably love this frosting.



You're supposed to drizzle the caramel over the top of the cake, but my watery caramel just dripped all over it, so I ended up spreading it out instead, which was not as visually appealing.



Overall I think this was a success, so I'll chalk one more up to Martha. I don't know what was up with the caramel consistency, but I ran with it and it turned out okay anyways. I just have one complaint - why does a woman who owns a media empire still have a website that drives me nuts? It's slow, the links are broken, the search feature kind of sucks. Seriously, Martha, sack up and get it fixed so that I can enjoy gawking over your domestic mastery without annoying interruptions.

Wedding weekend

So the wedding was lovely, which was no surprise. Mercy just glowed with joy, and she was absolutely serene. My favorite highlight of the day? Cruising around strip malls looking for a nail salon willing to take the six of us (including the bride) who didn't manage to get our nails done ahead of time. Good thing there were a lot of strip malls and every single one had a nail salon. We were rejected 4 times before we found a place with a french manicure genius who managed to crank out mani-pedis on the six of us in a mere 45 minutes. I stand in awe of her skills.

And now I can share a couple of the projects I've been working on without worrying about spoiling any surprises.

First up, bridal party shirts. We wanted something to wear while getting ready, so I made a design in Illustrator, ordered some American Apparel v-necks (deep enough that we could pull them off without messing up our hair) and used iron on transfers.



The make up and hair stylists loved them, because I also put each girl's name on the front, which made it easy to call us over for touch ups. Here they are all wrapped up and ready to be handed out.



And the slightly more involved project...little butterflies for the centerpieces! Mercy's location was a lovely old estate, and she wanted a simple garden party effect. I designed several different types of butterflies in Illustrator, had them cut out of thin acrylic on the laser cutter (this is where having an architect for a boyfriend really pays off) and then spray painted them two different shades of pink, with hints of champagne.


Spray painting the lighter pink ones


Showing the scale (keep in mind that my fingers are somewhat freakishly long)

And here are a few of them in action, in the centerpieces designed by Kris. The tables looked magical, with the lights flickering for the whole evening.


Clusters of different vases, each wrapped with different fabrics - so simple and stunning

Other than that, I didn't take a single picture of the evening because I was too busy enjoying it all. Now I have to wait impatiently for the professional photos to come back. The wedding was wonderful, and I feel so lucky to still have my girlfriends from high school in my life - we are all so different, but once you get everyone in the same room you can actually feel the love. Long term friendships are pretty sweet.

Happy Labor Day!

I'll post about the beautiful wedding I attended a little bit later, but in the meantime, here's what I've been up to...



A morning in bed, deliberating over a new wall paint color (inspired by this darling bowl that D made for me in college) while sipping tea and admiring newly framed art.



A lovely birthday celebration with my two best friends and sweets from here.

Hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend!