Sister's Shower

Just wanted to share a few pictures from my sisters bridal shower that was this past Saturday. It was a lot of fun and I think I was able to pull it off nicely, semi-last minute. Since she lives in LA, she wanted to have the shower part way between SD and LA so that no one had to drive especially far. My mom and sis decided on JT Schmidt's Brewery in Tustin....

Good news for me was I didn't have to worry about food and drink... Since it was a smallish group of about 15, mama picked up the tab and we just enjoyed liquid goodness and munched on delish appetizers. I felt ambitious enough to make the cake. Even though it took forever, it turned out really nice and all the guests were super impressed that I did it myself. I can't really think of much else to elaborate on so I'll just end this with some pics from the afternoon.

Oh, but I should include the beautiful invitations from my friend Cathy at LAFI...



Bride (right) and her friends

(left to right) Great Aunt, Dad's Cousin, Mom, Aunt...


(back to front) Mom's bff, Youngest Sis, Me, Family Friend...


Cake table


Pretty cake *pats self on back* =P


Homemade chocolate dipped pretzel rods


Crummy pic of sissies (bridal party)


Bride with RD bouquet

Fab Fire

As some of you may know, our living room fireplace was quite the eyesore in our otherwise beautiful kitchen/living room combo. We were so fortunate to have had my dad help us so much to get where we were. The only thing we'd been undecided about was the fireplace so it got put on the back burner. It's ugliness bothered the heck out of me for quite some time. We decided to hire our friend to do the make-over for us (my dad is busy doing my Aunt's condo at the moment) so they banged it out last week!

Above the fireplace was a mirror covered window. We didn't fill the window in from the outside; just took the mirror off, filled the inside "hole", and mounted the TV up there (with all the electrical running through the wall). We took out the fug gold fireplace insert, cleaned everything out and tiled over the brick. We ran our speaker wiring around the base of the hearth, under the quarter round and lastly, mounted the mantle that was custom stained to match our furniture. I couldn't believe how well it all turned out. Yay!!

Before:







After:

Conquer the Cake

I signed up for a series of beginner cake decorating classes at "Do It With Icing" with my friend Verlee. So far, so good! As it stands, icing the cake is by far the hardest part...decorating it is pretty straight forward when you have all the right tools. Yes, it's all about the tools; tools = $$$ lol. We're half was through and I feel like I've learned a LOT, especially in the way of general cake baking, splitting and filling. Who knew it could be so involved?

This week we did a rectangle and boy was it tricky getting around those corners! To start with, I made a good pan investment so it'd come out nice and square. The key is also to bake it so it doesn't puff up too much in the middle. Tricks - lower oven temp, bake longer, and use these wet strip things (pictured below..find them at Michaels) around the outside edges. Worked like a charm!



Here is is after it got it's pretty icing layer. Ok, so maybe I haven't perfected "even-ness" yet but it's hard, man.



Meet Andy!!



See Andy's insides:



I'll leave you with a picture of Cake #1 from last week...