so inviting

At long last the invitations have gone out!! It was a grueling process...but so worth it :) I designed the invitations myself (taking a bunch of inspiration from the various projects on Pinterest). Fortunately for me I have a wonderful friend who was able to print the invitations for me since the card stock I used was way too heavy for my at home printer (sidenote: I totally had to buy a new printer anyway because I needed to print my envelopes...whomp, whomp!) But in any case, I typed all my information cards up and added those to the mix.

Then I saw this wonderful tutorial on how to make doily envelopes. Unfortunately, for the size of my invites (5x7) the only doilies that work were the 9" square ones, which at the time were really hard to find! The site I found them on no longer seems to carry them, so scour the internet. 

I also opted to use old postage and match those accordingly. In order to keep to one color scheme it seemed that I would have to pay 3-5 times the value of the actual stamp. If you can afford it...I highly recommend searching etsy since they have amazing options...but for those whose piggy banks are a little smaller, I recommend going through ebay and ordering big lots of stamps. I ordered two lots or $80 and $60. Don't get me wrong, I ended up with about $20 in postage that I was unable to use for my invitations, but I can use them on any other letters I send out. Rent check gets the kwanza stamp :) My landlords don't care!But by keeping the stamp stories to different colors I was able to use all of the postage I got in these huge lots and still keep them cute. Here are some of my favorites from each color family:

Finally here are the finished products. Including the whole invitation suite and our response cards. TADA!

Color Me married

Choosing a color palette for a wedding can be a tedious task...unless you've been planning your wedding for 5 years, like no one imparticular.... (totally me). I knew from the very beginning that I wanted corals and greys and shiny metallics. While I have been extremely fortunate to not be forced into crazy bridesmaids dresses, I understand that most are. That is why I adapted my"WEAR ANYTHING YOU WANT AS LONG AS IT FITS INTO THIS COLOR STORY" theory (sidenote: which in the end proved to be a lot harder on everyone...so we just ended up choosing any dress from jcrew in grey :/). But I digress- I made this little notecard to go in my bridesmaid's boxes (post to come soon). It was basically just to show a mood of color for the wedding as well as give them swatches to choose from. On the front I put pictures I loved:

And on the back I put a little swatch of each color with an explanation that they could choose whichever dress they wanted.

It ended up coming out really cute even though they were not actually utilized. Either way they looked awesome in the box and got my vision across very easily. I would highly recommend them for anyone who is planning on having mix and match dresses. After all a picture is worth a thousand words and when I said blush color everyone looked at me like I said salamander :)

I haven't had anything yet, so how can I have some more of nothing? (Smore Cookies)

If there is one thing that Dan loves in this world...it's not me, it's cookies! Dan can eat an entire batch of cookies by himself and not think twice (or gain a pound :/ lucky). So when it comes to Christmas time I constantly find myself trying to think out of the box on new cookies to make. I always do my staple of mint chocolate chip (recipe and finished product coming soon) and this year I added smores cookies and caramel filled apple cider cookies. The smores were a hit! The apple cider ones, a little too hard to enjoy. But here is the smores cookies recipe I used.

S’mores Cookies:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, soft

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 and 1/2 cups mini chocolate chips

1 and 3/4 cups AP flour

1 cup graham cracker crumbs (about 6-8 full sheets of crackers in the food processor works, too!)

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 and 1/2 cups marshmallows

2 Hershey bars (milk chocolate), chopped 

1.  Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  (or skip until ready to bake them)

2.  Mix on medium with your electric mixer the butter and sugars until light and fluffy.  

3.  Add eggs one at a time.  Scrape the bowl afterwards to make sure everything is incorporated.

4.  Add vanilla and mix until combined.

5.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry stuff: flour, graham cracker crumbs, salt and baking soda.

6.  Mix flour into the batter and beat until just incorporated.

7.  Stir in the mini chocolate chips.

8.  Chill bowl or move to step 9.

9.  Scoop the cookie dough with a medium cookie scoop (about 1 and 1/2-2 Tb. of dough) onto a cookie sheet. 

10.  Bake 7-8 minutes.  Pull them out of the oven and immediately put on marshmallows and milk chocolate.

Note: When you pull the cookies out of the oven they should almost look raw. If you leave them to cool on the metal cookie sheet they actually continue to cook, therefore if you pull them out when they are already looking done, they will end up being overcooked.

Caramel Apple Goodness

There's nothing quite like a nice piece of warm apple cake after dinner with a scoop of ice cream. But how many times have we seen the same apple pie or apple cobbler; a big mess of deliciousness. Where's the presentation and the sophistication? While on pinterest I stumbled across this recipe and decided that it looked too beautiful to pass up. Funny, because it looked great (check!), tasted amazing (check!) and was so easy (check!). How could I pass this up!

Apple Upside Down Cake:

Topping
2 medium apples
4 tablespoons butter
3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
2 tablespoons thawed apple juice concentrate
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup light corn syrup

Cake
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
2 tablespoons thawed apple juice concentrate
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups All-Purpose Flour
1 large apple, peeled and finely chopped
3/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts, optional

Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9″ round cake pan at least 2″ deep. Line the bottom with parchment, and grease the parchment.
2) Slice the top, including the stem, off one of the apples and set it aside before peeling and slicing the rest of the apples into 1/4″ thick wedges.
3) Place the apple top, stem side down, in the middle of the pan, and overlap the rest of the apple wedges in a ring around it.
4) Prepare the topping by heating the butter, sugar, apple juice concentrate, cinnamon, and corn syrup together over low heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.
5) Pour 1/2 cup of the syrup mixture into the prepared pan, and set the rest aside.
6) To make the cake: Beat the oil, brown sugar, apple juice concentrate, eggs, spices, and salt together for 2 minutes at medium speed
7) Mix the flour with the baking soda, and stir it into the batter.
8) Add the chopped apple and nuts, and mix until just blended.
9) Drop scoops of the batter atop the apples in the pan, gently spreading to cover.
10) Bake the cake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted near the center comes out clean.
11) Remove the cake from the oven, and run a thin spatula around the edge to loosen.
12) Let the cake cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn it out onto a serving plate, bottom side up. Scrape out any sauce that remains in the pan, and spread it over the cake.
13) Reheat the reserved topping. If butter starts to separate as you reheat, add water by the teaspoon and stir until the butter rejoins the rest of the sauce.
14) Pour the sauce over the cake. Serve cake warm or at room temperature, with whipped cream or ice cream if desired.

ENJOY!

Quick and Delicious Dessertness

Confession- I have never been one for chocolate (please hold all gasps to yourself). Perhaps it all stems from my aversion to milk, because milk always comes with something chocolatey and delicious, no? But to no avail, my heart melts for fruity pies and cheesecake, particularly cheesecake covered in fruit. But the deliciousness of a homemade cheesecake (unless it is my nutella one which is the only exception) it never seems to measure up to the amount of time or degree of difficulty that it takes to make. That is why this recipe that I found on pinterest, but comes from here, is absolutely amazing. All of the delicious cheesecake flavor with none of the waterbaths!

Cherry Cheesecake Dip:
 1 box Jello No-Bake Cheesecake mix
1 Cup milk
1 Container of Cool Whip
Graham crackers and/or teddy grahams.


1. Prepare Jello No-Bake Cheesecake mix as directed on box (you can put away the crust mix...ya wont need it!)
2. Stir in one container of Cool Whip
3. Chill in fridge for 2 hours or overnight.
4. Top with a can of cherry pie filling
5. Serve with graham crackers and/or teddy grahams.


ENJOY!

Some wedding booth props DIY

So the new trend right now is photo booths. I have planned on this from the moment I knew they were a possibility...but to complete the dream I needed the right props. This included the standard felt mustaches, bow ties, lips and of course your run of the mill bride and groom glasses. So I think "hey! These can't be too expensive...i only need a few right?" WRONG! I always check Etsy as my first option because I would rather give an artist my money than a corporation (this is just my personal belief), plus I am an avid DIY-er so I like to encourage those whom do it as well. Whatever the case...it worked out to be wayyyyy more expensive than I expected. In any case, I drew up some fun shapes on the computer and bought stiffened felt (must be stiffened) for about 25 cents a sheet. I then taped on the stencils and cut them out. After they were cut out I hot glued dowels ( about $4 for a pack of 12 at Michaels) to the back and VOILA...they were done!

I just wanted to share my quick DIY project that cost me about $10 to make about 20 props and would have cost about $35 for 8 on Etsy! Here is the finished product: