Happy 1st Wedding Anniversary!

Wow, where did the year go? It is very hard to believe that just 12 months ago (and 4 days) The Boss and I were tying the knot!

While this post is a little late, it is not because I forgot. Packing up the house, moving over seas, and trying to settle in all while battling a language barrier has proven more time consuming than one first thought. Great examples of such battles are trying to get the electricity turned on, hot water running, and all of the toilets to flush… in French!

Now I don’t want you to think I am belittling the fact that we are celebrating our 1st wedding anniversary by comparing it’s importance to a toilet flushing or electricity, I just want to make sure you don’t think I’m a bad wife who forgot to mention this important date. During this busy time we have reflected a lot on our first year of marriage, and having to temporarily  “camp” in our new home is just one more thing we have learned to laugh about together this year.

I promise to only post a picture montage of our wedding once every 5 years. Technically I didn’t’ do much of a wedding post after the wedding as I was preoccupied enjoying the honeymoon! It will be interesting in the years to come to see home much we have changed! I hope you enjoy my trip down memory lane!

The Preparations:

“The First Look”:

*Due to the our decision to have our beachside wedding in the early evening (mostly to save our guests from the blazing afternoon sun), we had to get our wedding photos done before the ceremony. At first I was very against seeing The Boss before the ceremony, but in the end I think it took the edge off of everyone! So, to make our first “meeting” a little more special for The Boss and I, the wedding coordinator and photographer allotted a little extra time in between preparations and family photos for us to see each other alone.

Then it was time to get going! It was “Formal Wedding Portrait” time!

Okay, so we had a little fun before the “formal pictures”. Below is the wedding party in it’s entirety, sans mustaches, and a good looking bunch I might add!

The Ceremony:

This is it, if The Boss had any second thoughts he’d have to make a break for it now!

Above is my sister and I “Shot Put” high-fiving. It’s a long standing inside joke that we have, and it was just what I needed before she was the last to leave for the aisle with the flower girls!

Mission complete!

So that’s it. Another year come and gone in a flash!

Come back soon as I am hoping to be completely settled in Paris very soon, and I then I can wow you with some French inspired pastries!!

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Lilly Pulitzer Inspired Cookies

Last week an old friend from college got in touch about surprising a family member with “Happy Wedding Week” cookies. I had never heard of “Wedding Week” presents but I thought that it was a very nice idea, and having experience a stressful wedding week myself, I could appreciate sending a bride to be a little love!

Now you might be wondering how (or in my case who) does Lilly Pulitzer come into all of this? Well our Bride to Be is a huge fan of anything Lilly Pulitzer and loves pink! These were basically my instructions for the cookies. I had full creative privileges outside of these ideas! NICE! Now, I suppose I should figure out who Lilly is!

Turns out Lilly Pulitzer is a designer with an appetite for bright colors and large flowery prints! Here are a few samples of the different patterns I was considering.There were several disaster cookies in the making with these detailed prints, but don’t worry those “bad” cookies didn’t go to waste!

Finally I came to really like this one pattern that is featured on this springs dress line! I knew the Bride was a pink kinda gal so I just inverted and slightly changed the color scheme to satisfy the cookie request while keeping true to the pattern!

What do you think? Was I close? I also created a few green cookies just to break up the sea of pink. I don’t think I’ll get into too much trouble for that!

In the end I was really pleased with how the cookie design turned out! I hope the Bride can take a few moments through out the week and enjoy them too! And incase she’s reading, Happy Wedding week, enjoy every moment of it!

Thanks for reading!

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DIY Wedding Out of town Guests bags

Being at the beach this week has made me reflect on my wedding last July. We were married on the beach, and that was what I always wanted!

Right after the wedding I posted several posts about the wedding, mostly the wedding details. You can find them all here in “The Bird House”. I didn’t post all of the wedding details back in July only because I didn’t want you to burn out from reading wedding posts!

As you may know, I love creating desserts, but I also love taking care of all of the party planning details! One detail that I absolutely wanted (and so did the Boss) were “Out of Town Guest Bags”. These are traditionally left at the hotel for family and friends who may have traveled from out of town to the wedding. The bags contain things of convenience and/or snacks that one might forget to pack.

Since we had a destination wedding, essentially ALL of our guests were out of towners! I made one bag for each hotel room and stuffed it with more beach festive things. The bags in our case were more like “Thanks for making the trip” bags!

First I started off with buying the bags from Creative Packaging (I don’t have any connection with this company, I just have had zero problems with them, they are fast to ship and I have not found anyone cheaper!). Also, I bought a few cute ink stamps from the local craft store, and had left over 2” wide ribbon from another wedding project.

I stamped away and my Mom tied of the bows.

Then we did a run through with one bag to make sure the all of the goodies actually fit in the bag! Maybe I should have thought of this earlier, but it worked out just fine!

We only stuffed one bag because we had to travel with a lot of wedding stuff and it was WAY easier to pack the paper bags while folded up tight and stuff the other contents into boxes were they fit. My sister and I stuffed all of the bags in our hotel room as guests showed up during the week!

By now you must be wondering, “what did they put in the bags?” Well, we were staying at an all inclusive beach resort, and most guests were staying for 5 days or so. What would YOU want in a loot bag on the beach? I thought it was pretty straight forward:

* Reading material

* Snack food (be honest, you can’t get Swedish Fish at a resort in the Dominican on your own)

* SPF Lip Gloss

* Pool toys

* Pain killers (remember it was an all inclusive resort AND wedding week = lots of celebrating)

As our guests arrived, The Boss and I would make every effort we could to find them at check in or soon after and say hi and give them their welcome bag. Our guests LOVED getting a little something upon arrival, and even more so thought it was a great way to be welcomed and start their stay!

So even if your guests aren’t traveling to a destination wedding or even cross country, maybe you should think of having a little surprise for them upon arrival. It doesn’t have to be an entire treat bag, maybe just a snack bag of Swedish Fish with a tag that says “We’re glad you are here”.

So there you have it. “Out of Town Guest Bags” they are so simple yet so meaningful. What do you think? Would you have liked to receive a little something upon arrival to your last wedding?

Have a great weekend everyone! See you Monday.

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National Capital Area Cake Show: Wedding Cake Reveal

I think it is time to show off one of my favorite accomplishments to date!

The first ever Bertie’s Bakery wedding cake! When I signed up for the cake show this year I wanted to force myself to take the opportunity to create a wedding cake. As most of you know, a lot of my cakes are very animated and take on a bit of character. I wanted to also show that I could do something elegant and classic for a bride (in case a bride-to-be ever comes along looking for a cake!).

I was so excited to get going on this cake that I had too many ideas on how the design should look. In the end I reeled myself back and created a very classic lace and pearls design. What girl doesn’t love pink, pearls, and lace? To top it off over two dozen roses!

I was really pleased with how the cake turned out, and I was actually really surprised by how much I really loved making the sugar roses. I had never made sugar roses before, how hard could it be?

Before the cake show I was on the phone with my dad explaining the process of creating the rose. I couldn’t help but explain how every rose is different. The color, number of petals, and the curl of each petal all differed slightly, and that was what I enjoyed the most. There was almost something very “zen” about creating each individual rose.

So finally came the weekend and it was judgment time.

A 1st place blue ribbon! Wow! I was stoked! I did take some criticism on the color of the leafs incorporated within the roses. The judge felt that a deeper leaf green would have been a better choice. I knew going in that would be said. In my mind there is a difference in making “show cakes” and “current cakes”. Personally I don’t always need a perfect real life replica of flowers on my cakes. If the flowers were all ivory or all pink, then yes I would agree a pop of green would be nice. However in this case I wanted the leaves to be supporting, but not stand out. They were there and added another dimension to the roses, but they didn’t take away or distract your eye from the color flow of pink and ivory. Either way, I did make the conscious choice to create that color scheme, so I was ready and willing to receive the feedback.

Very proud of my Blue Ribbon 1st place win, I took my cake home :)

Now…anyone out there getting married?

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Sneak Peek: Cake Show

I’ve been a busy bee here at the bakery. Oddly enough it feels like everything that I’ve been working on can’t be revealed yet. If you’re wondering what in the world I am talking about, I’ll remind you that I am entered in this weekend’s National Capital Area Cake Show, and I was crazy enough to enter in three different categories! I am entering a “Novelty Cake”, a “Wedding Cake”, and a set of “Decorated Cookies”.

While I don’t want to reveal all of the cakes and cookies just yet, I thought I might leave you with a brain teaser of what I’ve been working on! You’ll notice that flowers are a main theme!

That’s it, that’s all you’re going to get out of me!

If you live in the Northern Virginal/ Metro area and you enjoy cake and cupcakes in the least you should definitely make the effort to come out to the show! There are always Food Network starts roaming around, really fabulous cake and sugar creations, ANNND most importantly, there is a people’s choice award that all visitors to the show can vote on! Come find your favorite!

You can find more information about this weekend’s cake show times and location HERE.

And you can read about my big win at the cake show last year HERE!

Now I have to get back to work! Wish me luck!  :)

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A Vintage Anniversary Cake

Well it has been a seriously busy summer, and unfortunately I haven’t been able to make as many cakes as I had hoped. As busy as I may have been, there was however, one cake that has been on my calendar all summer; a cake I was not going to miss out on!

Adding to the craziness of the summer, The Boss and I will have attended 5 weddings! This past weekend was no exception. We had a wedding on The Boss’s side, and we knew we’d be attending this one since the spring. What was nice about the date of this wedding weekend was that it also coordinated with The Boss’s parents anniversary! I knew I would have to take the opportunity to surprise my new “In-Laws” (wow, weird to say that) with a special anniversary cake.

A few weeks ago, through a very sly e-mail, The Boss casually reminisced with his mom over the weddings so far this year and poked the question “What were your wedding colors anyways?”. I knew I wanted to make a very ivory/ antique like cake for his parents, but I also wanted a little pop of color- ideally their wedding colors. When the answer came back “there was blue involved”, I knew I had a winner and I was going to incorporate a lot of faded blue and silver colors in with the ivory. In the end I was really pleased with how the different shades played off against each other, I think I achieved a really vintage style with this cake.

All of the buttons were hand painted, and the center tier had an impression rolled into it that accented and coordinated with the detailing that was in the boarder that encircled each tier of the cake.

The above picture shows the impression of the middle tier and the impression detail on the boarder. What you will also notice is that the bottom tier was an octagon, and in an attempt to showcase the symmetrical design of the cake, there was one cameo button placed on each “flat” of the octagon all the way around the bottom tier of the cake.

The cake stood 10’’ tall and was a perfect fit as my carry on luggage (in a cake box of course!). It fit snuggly under the seat in front of me. Other than a few raised eyebrows while going through the security scanner/ x-ray monitor at Regan National Airport, the cake traveled really well! The Boss’s parents were really surprised and everyone seemed to think it was cool!

Hopefully you like the cake too! If you have any cake themes, ideas, or challenges that you would like to throw my way I’d love to hear from you. Hope everyone had a great long weekend… is it Friday yet?

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