Shhh...it's an affaire!

A CRAFTY AFFAIRE!!!

My mommy and I are taking the trip out to the West Coast in a couple of weeks to help my sister out with her booth at the holiday market!

If you don't know, my sister is the wonderful mastermind over at Try to Keep Up!  She's been putting a whole bunch of news up on her facebook page, so follow along there for the most up to date news!

She's been working hard crocheting her fingers to the bone to get ready for this show, and set up some online shops! Wanna see what kind of goodies she has?

Lots and lots of combinations of infinity scarves and headbands, as well as beautiful snowflake Christmas tree ornaments! Click here to check out more of her goodies!  Here's a secret - I totally made some of those scarves for her! (Sisterly slave labour!!!) So you should definitely buy one because I might have made it :P

If you are in the BC lower main land area, come stop by and visit us!! Look for the West Coast Leslie Designs booth ... we'll look something like this:

If you say you stopped by because you saw this on Envirocraftiness, you'll get a free gift...and by free gift, I mean a high five. 

Not in the lower mainland area? 

If you're in the Edmonton area, check out Modern Sole in Sherwood Park for some of the sweet boot cuffs made by Leslie!

Alright, not in either of those places?! I have good news for you too!  Leslie just opened up an online store at StoreEnvy!! Check out all her goodies here!

Thanks for checking it out! Hope to see you in December for your free high fives!!

30 Days of Salad! {Try to Keep Up}

This is me doing a little advertising work for my big sis Leslie at Try to Keep Up.

 

Last summer she put on a cute little series called 30 Days of Salad.  As the weather turns warmer (well, not in Saskatchewan!) our stomachs turn to salads.  Over the summer Leslie's blog will have 30 different posts of salads. 

 

I discovered the best salad by Bev at Flamingo Toes last summer.  It became my new go-to salad to bring to BBQs.  Although now that I'm not eating wheat, I'm not sure what I'll do (probably eat it and think about the consequences later!)

 

 

Anyway, she's still looking for people to contribute! If you're interested shoot her an email! westcoastleslie@gmail.com  

The BIG ONE {Wedding Cake}

Alright.  There has certainly been a lot of pre-amble up to the making of my sister's wedding cake.  I had never done this before, and so I had to learn as much as I could in a short period of time!

My first big cake with my new pans turned out delicious - chocolate cake with mint cream cheese icing (you can't really lose!)




After that I needed to be a little more brave and make a 2 tiered cake!




Then I started working with fondant for my Uncle's 60th birthday cake




Continuting to learn on my Grandma's (lumpy) 80th Birthday cake




 I was particularly proud of the Skyrim Birthday Cake I did




Another cake for Amy



The last practice cake where I played with some lace texture...




That wraps it up for practice cakes.




The day came do to the real thing....

(This magnificent photo is taken by my sister's wedding photographer - Randal is INCREDIBLE! If you're in the Vancouver area, I strongly suggest working with him!!!  http://www.randalkurt.com)

It turned out great and I'm so glad that her photographer got so many amazing shots of it! (Thanks Randal!!)

I don't intend to be doing any more wedding cakes in the near future, but I definitely would for friends & family - provided I'm NOT in the wedding in! 

Sharing at:

                  

Argyle Cake

Who doesn't love argyle?!  One of my friends in university used to have enough argyle sweaters/tees/socks that I figured he could sport argyle every day of the week - and he could!  I may or may not have called him Argyle Kyle from time to time... ;)

Anyway, this post has nothing to do with my friend Kyle.  Although he is pretty cool.  See - argyle tee shirt, even when riding a llama. (Don't ask!)

This is really a post about cake!

I made Amy a cake because I was throwing her a bit of a pinterest party!  Everything we ate came from her pinterest board!!

I also needed to make more cakes to practice for the (at that time) upcoming wedding!

This cake is one of the few I've made from scratch.  I even went so far as to buy cake flour (that I may never use again. lol)

Source: foodiewithfamily.com via Amy on Pinterest

I thought the cake was just okay.  I probably wouldn't make it again.  But for some odd reason, this cake is like soups & chili in the sense that after it sat for a couple of days, it got better.  Weird.

I can't remember if I actually had a reason to choose blue fondant or not.  Covering it in fondant went pretty well, there are only a couple little puckers if you look closely!

Using some leftover chocolate icing I piped on an argyle pattern just for funsies.  If I had really wanted to take a little more time, I would have smoothed out the filled in parts with a hot butterknife.

Now if you're thinking the top looks pretty bare, well....I did write something on it, but it's an inside joke and not really family/blog appropriate, so we'll just leave it at that!

Only a few more cake posts until the big reveal!!!

       

Grandma's 80th Birthday Cake

I know you all are probably getting caked-out, but it'll only be another couple months until the wedding AND I do have other things to blog about, I just haven't gotten to it yet! So until then, another cake!

This year seems to be a big one as far as birthdays go for my family.  I did my uncle's 60th birthday cake in March, and my Grandma hit the bit 8-0 in May!

I feel that when making this cake, I took one big step forward, and a small one backwards.  I got together with my friend Megan to get her to teach me to be as awesome as she is.  Seriously though, she does some fantastic cakes and I really needed someone live & in person to help me out.

With her help I managed to cover a cake in fondant without a million puckers at the bottom! Yay!

I was disappointed with how the cake looked overall though because the cake itself was poorly structured, I think in large part because it had thawed before putting the buttercream on it.

I didn't actually have a freak out covering the cake in a million piped dots - which I thought I might! lol

This was my first cake with fresh flowers, and it worked out pretty well.  I was going to use craft wire to stick them into a styrofoam ball like I saw somewhere, but I couldn't find a cheap styrofoam ball.  I ended up using slightly dried out fondant from another cake that I'd done instead.  

Slowly, I'm getting better at this whole thing!

2 Tiered Cake with Fondant

Now that I've tackled stacking cakes, I need to practice like crazy with fondant.  Luckily my uncle's 60 birthday was this year!

I originally though I'd just try my hand at making fondant (tried it once before here) because I didn't have much time (ie to order the good stuff online) and I figured why not..

FAIL!!!

I don't know what went wrong this time, but no matter how much I kneaded it it would NOT come together!  I ended up throwing it out and going to Michael's and buying a box of the Wilton stuff.  I've heard a few bad reviews about it, but I was kinda in a pinch.  lol

All in all it didn't turn out too bad!

Luckily the stripes help hide the rips on the top layer...

For the bottom I took some cookie cutters to make shapes and "glued" them on with some icing.  

My family was pretty impressed, and I figured it wasn't too bad.  Need a LOT more practice before the wedding though!

Brunch! YUM!

Amy loves making brunch.  I love eating brunch. I think you can see where this is going!

Amy had Adam and me over for brunch one Sunday morning, and it was delicious!

She made super tasty whole wheat flour waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, bacon, and adorable mini parfaits.

She was even so generous as to provide me with the waffle recipe (I love her copy written out on this cute card! Maybe that'll have to be a new project for me, putting my recipes on to cute cards!)

AND because this was close to my birthday she had an awesome goodie bag done up for me containing her killer maple nut granola (used in the parfaits) and also delicious nutella banana bread! YUM!

What a great day!

The beginnings of new Easter Traditions?

It's not too late to post about Easter is it? I'm a little behind here, but working on it!

This year for Easter Amy really wanted to do an Easter dinner at her house.  Because my family hadn't decided what they wanted to do until the last minute I was all in for a dinner at Amy's.

Between the two of us we put together quite the spread!

Amy made a slow cooker ham (yum!) using this recipe from pinterest!  (original source)

And she also did asparagus in the oven, with I think just a little oil and lemon juice!

I brought over a sweet potato dish, again from pinterest! (original source)

It was good, but the recipe title said yams, and the ingredients said "sweet potatoes"  so I bought sweet potatoes, and I wish I had bought yams...  oh well!

I also brought over one of my all time favorite salads.  This recipe comes from Adam's aunt and is SOOO darn good.  I'll be sharing the recipe for it soon!

Before dinner we decorated Easter eggs because really, we're just big kids!  (more on that tomorrow!)

I wish someone would have told me the plan was to wear green!

Amy is wondering what's wrong with me!

It was a great evening, and something I could see becoming a new Easter tradition for us.  It's wonderful to have such great friends.