Wedding Invitations

Alright, so last week I talked about our save the dates, which we sent a year in advance. We decided to send out the formal invitations at the six month mark.

Keeping with the dessert theme, I knew I wanted to do another piece based on photography. Something bright and cheery and related to the wedding venue a bit. And what's a French restaurant without macarons? We picked these ones up from Butter Avenue and started the project when we returned home.

I took out some of my favourite props: a cake stand, a cocotte, ramekins, a beautiful teal plate, and our marble lazy Susan. I laid them out on a sheet of parchment paper on the floor and played around the the arrangement.

Then, positioned the macarons on the edge and filled the containers with sprinkles. I left our two heart sprinkles on the plate thinking that it would be super cute to go along with the text.

Time to take shots from above. The bird-eye view works really well and I was able to try different heights by standing on the floor and the chair. The one above is pulled back so you can see behind-the-scenes.

A close up worked best because it gave me more room to include all the information on that small plate and the rest of the cake stand and marble platter wouldn't look too sparse.

There you have it! After fiddling with PicMonkey again to test out the text placement, we had our final invitation. I had about five versions of it until Howard and I both agreed on this one.

Again, we sent these out electronically instead of having them printed and mailed. We used the free wedding website that The Knot offers to create ours and e-mailed it to all the guests. It was a great way to share all of the information in once place!

Save the Dates

So begins my weekly series about our wedding. I'll be bringing us back to a year ago when we started planning for the big day. And how quickly time flies, we've been married for a month now! The day flew by and so did the honeymoon, I'm wish we were still lounging by the pool right now.

To start it off, the first thing we had to create were the Save the Dates. We sent ours out a year in advance because there was a travel component to it. While we would have loved to do a destination wedding, we knew that there was a chance that key people wouldn't be able to make it. So to incorporate the "destination" part, we opened up what would be considered our honeymoon to be a week long after party.

We sent out the save the dates electronically and to create it, I was inspired by the scripted icing that I spotted on Pinterest. This looked like a delicious way to announce our wedding date!

I whipped up a small batch of royal icing, took out a sheet of parchment paper, and lightly penciled in the cursive words. With shaky hands, I piped out it out in one try! Not bad! But looking back, I wish I made the icing a bit firmer as the loops in the h and e started to blur in. Or at least tried it again on another piece of parchment.

The next step was to decorate around the parchment paper. I poured some dragees into a cocotte (I recommend a funnel, they bounced everywhere). Took out some white coloured heart and star sprinkles and positioned the leftover royal icing and piping bag in the corners.

The next step was the most fun - snapping as many overhead photos as possible. Standing on a chair, I took photos of various angles and positions of the items laid out on my counter top. Then went through them on the computer before choosing one and doing some edits on the brightness.

The text was then added on using PicMonkey (still my favourite online photo editing). At this point, we hadn't decided on a venue in Toronto or a resort in Jamaica yet, so we left the details pretty vague.

But there you have it! We sent these out and even printed a few for family and friends to stick on their fridge.

Bike and Birds Bridal Shower Cupcakes

Terra, a typesetter at work is getting married at the end of summer and her department organized a wonderful bridal shower for her. Erin, her partner, used to work at our company before she decided to become a freelance editor. The both of them are hardworking, lovely people - I couldn't be happier for them!

When I was given the choice to make cupcakes for their party or forever be known as "evil cupcake girl" by the whole department, I knew I had to make them - I wanted to make them.

I got a look at their wedding invitation and pulled design elements from it. First, the tandem bicycle seemed pretty important to me. They also had ribbons, hearts, and starts which I included along the bike path.

Next, there were birds, branches, and leaves on another part of their invitation that I tried to imitate. I liked how each set was their own theme and I was pretty pleased with how they turned out!

I received amazing thank you notes from Terra, Erin, and some of their colleagues in the department. Absolutely the most rewarding and the best part of every successful cupcake delivery!!!

Congratulations to Terra and Erin!

Mario and Luigi Cupcakes

I have always wanted to do Mario-themed cupcakes after seeing the ones on hello naomi (she makes brilliant and super cute cupcakes). It was quite perfect for the long weekend. My brother came home and we played Mario Party 8 on the Wii. I never made it to the star. Fail. I have really bad luck in that game.

So here we have Mario and Luigi!

Mario is an Italian plumber who lives in the Mushroom Kingdom and Luigi is his younger brother.

Here is the star my character never reached. *Sniff Sniff*

However, I did get a bonus star in the end... for landing on the most green spaces that would send me flying back to start.

Boo-ha-ha! My brother was playing as Boo and he won.

I say boo-urns to that!

I made this set for Bev's godson, I hope he had a fantastic 12th birthday party!

Scorpio Birthday Cupcakes

Keeping with this month's Scorpio horoscopes, we created the Scorpio symbol, among stars on royal blue frosting. We hope there are many good things in store for you!

1. Blue Scorpio symbols and yellow stars made from fondant - drying on icing sugar.

2. Blue birthday message plaques made from gum paste.

3. Fresh Devil's Food cupcakes from the oven.

4. Royal blue vanilla buttercream frosting with yellow fondant stars. I even have a matching glass cup!

5. Fondant Scorpio symbols on the cupcakes.

6. A dozen Scorpio birthday cupcakes ready to go! We hope you have a great birthday!