Palouse Mall Bridal Fair

This past weekend we participated in our first bridal fair! I chose to feature yellow and grey since the mall doesn't have great lighting. The bridal bouquet above has: callas, cremones, billy balls, succulents, queen anne's lace, dusty miller, tulips, and lisianthus.

I found an old ladder at a thrift store and painted it yellow to showcase the potted succulents. Mike whipped up the "ranch inspired" backdrop to hang the window and more pictures from.

The back of the bouquet was lined with pearl headed pins and a small picture frame at the top. A couple cute kiddos even stopped by for a visit! :) Thanks Naphtali and Rachel for your help!

Professional Shots: Ashley and Tyler

Ashley and Tyler got married in early December. Ashley went with purples and greens which hi-lighted the winter element nicely without being specifically "Christmas." Her bouquet featured succulents, green hydrangea, picasso callas, ranunculus, seeded euc, stock, lisianthus, queen anne's lace, and cream hypericum. I used ornamental kales and cabbages on stage.

(Thanks to Chris Walker for the pictures!)

I love succulents for boutonnieres! They hold up really well (as do callas) and add a lot of texture.

Sneak Peek: Paul Wedding

I have to say that these are some of my favorite winter flowers yet!  The bride did a great job picking colors and varieties.  The purples and greens with succulents just play so well together!

Wedding Prep

I'm loving all these purples and whites! They look like winter without saying "Christmas."

Those are picasso callas in there - so gorgeous!

Christophersen/Crapuchettes Wedding

Daniel Foucachon sent over some pictures of Annike and Jonathan's wedding! I haven't had a chance to go through all of them yet, but this one caught my eye. So sweet. These flowers were so fun to do - so vibrant! More to come!

Feature Flower: Greens

This was another project for school which required us to showcase six different kinds of foliage and only foliage.  We also had to incorporate a lot of lines throughout and manipulate the greens.  It's definitely a different kind of challenge and surprisingly difficult.  I do love those dramatic monstera leaves on the right though.

Let me know if you're curious about the specific varieties.

Inspiration Board: Winter Purple and Green

Sneak Peek: Laura's Bouquet

Malibu Gerberas

I realize I didn't do a single post last week! With some sick kiddos and a few weddings, the blog got neglected. But here's a look at Laura's bouquet and her maid of honor. (The locket held a picture of her grandmother. And Laura gave me a charm to put on the bouts, corsages, and maid of honor bouquets.) I'll get you the professional shots in a bit! Meanwhile here's the inspiration board.

By the way,  I've been updating some of the vendors, so take a look there!

Real Weddings: Robin and Lance

Here are some of the professional shots from Bryan Aulick of Robin and Lance!  Robin wanted a vintage feel of sage and white with a few hints of dusty pink.  Here's the inspiration board. Robin and her mom were such fun to work with!

I had Vicky Ryan help with the design of the signs.

Here we are setting up at the Banyans! Their wedding was at the end of May and it was still chilly out.  With that and the scattered showers we brought everything indoors.

Isn't this picture great!?  One of my favorites.

Robin used a dark purple for her bridesmaids which offset the pale pink in their bouquets.

These last two I snapped.  

These are the centerpieces waiting to get put out.  

Inspiration Board: Pink and Green Gerbs

Inspiration Board: Black and White with Lime Green

Inspiration Board: Teal with Golden Sunflowers

Feature Flower: Mini Cymbidium Orchids

Orchids are a great long lasting cut flower.  As long as you keep the water clean and the flowers out of drafts they can live for as long as 4-6 weeks!
Potted orchids are also fantastic since they'll keep re-blooming for you and aren't that hard to care for (but details on that is for another post!).

Green Eggs and Ham Cupcakes

Our poor little guy is sick on his birthday!  Fever all day long.  We'd planned on doing a laid back celebration with the family but Asa's spent all day in his pjs not wanting to eat (which is a first for him - no exaggerating - he LOVES food).

  

 Don't worry, we're not eating all these ourselves - we'll save them for tomorrow! 

Since we're doing so much Dr. Seuss theme for his bday party we decided to keep on going and do it for his actual bday.  So yesterday, before Asa was sick, Mike and I made these (from What's New Cupcake's Cracked Eggs).  Such a fun cookbook!

  

We used Martha Stewart's One Bowl Chocolate Cake instead of the box mix yellow (just be sure not to overfill your liners, this is a very runny batter and it's easy to do!), dyed the lemon curd green for the yolks and used a canned vanilla frosting as recommended in What's New Cupcake.  The shells are white chocolate formed from plastic Easter Eggs.  *note - make a nice thick coating of chocolate - chilling and adding more in order for them to come out without cracks*  (Took us a number of tries!)

Green Smoothie

I've been wanting to see if Asa would like the green smoothie for awhile.  This recipe sounds pretty good to me - we'll see if he gives it the approval!
Recipe and pics from One Charming Party.

Shamrock Cupcakes

We had a St. Patty's Day dinner to go to and I didn't want to or have the time to spend hours on dessert, so I went with a basic vanilla cupcake from Hello Cupcake and just tweaked it a bit.  I added a mint "buttercream" to mimic the mint oreos and that was that!  (Asa LOVED helping out by adding/eating the oreos.)

Ingredients:

2 3/4 c + 1 T cake flour (I switched to cake flour they called for 2 1/2 c all purpose)

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 c milk (I used 1/4 milk 1/4 half/half since I had some that needed to be used up)

1/2 c vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

1 c sugar

3 large eggs

1 c chopped mint oreos

Preheat oven to 350.  Line 24 muffin cups

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Combine the milk, oil, and vanilla in a separate bowl.

With an electric mixer on medium, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy - about 3min.

Add the eggs, one at a time.  Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture alternately with the milk - beginning and ending with the flour.  Beat just till blended

Add the oreos.

Spoon the batter into the muffin cups.

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean.  15-20min.  (less on convection)

Cool on a wire rack.

Frosting:

(this is an approximation since I didn't measure)

6 T butter softened

3-4 c pwd sugar

vanilla

milk or half/half

mint extract

green food coloring

Beat butter with an electric mixer until fluffy.  Add pwd sugar on low and slowly incorporate.  Add 1/2 tsp vanilla and a few drops of mint extract.  Add milk 1 T at a time until it reaches the right consistency.  Add food coloring and beat.  Frost and top with an oreo!

 Hello Cupcake is a great and easy book for kid's cupcakes!  (As is the sequel- What's New Cupcake?)

Shamrock Cake

Isn't this Shamrock Cake great??!  This is from i am baker.  It's a similar idea to the rainbow cake I'm sure you've seen around - but really fun!

St. Patrick's Day Coasters

Twig and Thistle has some more great free downloads!!  St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner!

Inspiration Board: Sage and White with Dusty Pink Accents

Here's the current inspiration board for an outdoor garden wedding featuring sage and white with dusty pink and purple accents.