Holidays 2010

Thanksgiving and Christmas seem to have come and gone so quickly this year. It's hard to believe that we're entering into 2011! Here are some food highlights from this holiday season.

Happy New Year! :)


Thanksgiving






Christmas

Strawberry Shortcake

First attempt at a Strawberry Shortcake...it's a sponge cake with fresh strawberries, strawberry jam and fresh whip cream...although next time, I'll opt for a basic yellow cake instead of the sponge cake

Birthday Cupcakes

Some cupcakes I made for a co-worker's boyfriend's birthday...a "new" twist on birthday cake!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Ganache and a Vanilla Rum Frosting




And

Lemon Cream Cupcakes with a Cream Cheese filling and Lemon Frosting with homemade candied lemon rind





Anyone craving some baked goodies? I'll make it if you'll eat em! :)

Kirk & Arlene's Wedding

This past weekend I had the pleasure of coordinating Kirk and Arlene's wedding in Mountain View. The Ceremony was at the Rengstorff House and the reception was at Michael's @ Shoreline.

It was a beautiful day for an outdoor ceremony, and the weather was perfect...it wasn't too hot for a July wedding.

Here's how the ceremony decorations came out

The centerpieces were simple but elegant orchid plants.


Congrats to the bride and groom!



Thanks for helping me out Anna!

Cake Pops!

For those of you who don't know what a cake pop is, think bite sized pieces of cake, mixed with frosting, rolled into a ball and put on a stick! They're the new baking trend and really great for party favors!

I've been taking HR classes to get my certification, and had a project in one of my classes to create a company, so I had strongly influenced my group into creating a baking company and for that I decided to make red velvet cake pops with vanilla frosting dipped in white chocolate.




Below are chocolate cake pops with vanilla frosting dipped in milk and dark chocolate that I made for a co-worker to bring when she spoke at her old club.







Side note:

I totally love Anthropologie's birthday specials that you get in the mail...isn't this just so cleaver? The necklace is a keepsake too!

Beach Baby Shower

My good friend Ev and her husband are having their first baby in 6 weeks!

She loves the beach so a few of us decided to throw her a beach themed party. Thank you Wendy C., Wendy Eng, Sumiko and Sandy and Maria! It was a great shower filled with laughs, great food, great decorations, music and an awesome soon-to-be mama Ev!







I decided to make cake pops for this shower since they're starting to get really popular. These were lemon cake pops with lemon frosting dipped in white chocolate.Congrats on your new baby boy Ev! =D

Camera Strap

I don't have much time these days to get as much sewing in...I can't wait until June when I'm free of classes and able to do more with my free time...I love that Summer is just around the corner and the daylight lasts longer! :)

I managed to squeeze in another quick camera strap project to go along with my new camera! I love the print of this fabric...it's so fun and bubbly :)

Lemon-icious

I had participated in a dessert potluck at one of my client's company and had taken some lemons that someone had brought and decided to make lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting. The cupcakes turned out well, it wasn't too dense.



I had some left over lemons and was watching Giada De Laurentiis this morning so I decided to make lemon ricotta cookies. The recipe called for a lemon glaze, but I decided to jazz it up by adding some cointreau. The cookies are fluffy and light.


And I wanted to try to bake something out of my comfort zone so I made black and white checker cookies...I need to do a better job piecing the cookies so they're more even. I also think I'll add more sugar than the recipe calls for because they didn't turn out sweet enough.

Homemade Camera Straps

I decided to try and see if I could make my own camera straps, and I must say, for my first try, it turned out pretty well! I'm excited to make more =)



The fabric is from Jo-Ann's and the clip and key ring are from Daiso. I had bought a cell phone chain from Daiso and took it apart.