Posts from — December 2011

whimsical wonderland weddings

love maegan

elisa mclaughlin

I’m actually away at a camp until the new year, so this is a pre-scheduled post, so I keep the wedding wednesday alive!   I have atarted collecting a few hair ideas, but still to decide the ‘look’ for the big day!!

With some of the home baked goodies I made, I created little gift jars of sweet treats.  mmmm

I wore- A Japanese vintage dress, that I bought at Glebe market the day before.

I was given- books and cooking utencils.

I made and ate- Cake pops, truffles, petite fours and almond biscuits.

The table is set.

the family photo- can never get the ‘perfect’ shot

games

Dinner mmmm

I still can’t believe Christmas has just passed us by! It was a hot summers day, after weeks of rain, it turned sunny. We just relaxed, ate and played games.  I’m starting to feel quite excited about 2012.

All the pretty lights on the night before Christmas.

merry christmas everyone x

Want to win these sweet brooches I made? Go see the lovely interview and giveaway on Manzanita

The thing I really love about Christmas is baking yummy food. I managed to squeeze in some time to do some baking this week. I made Red velvet cake pops coated in chocolate and edible gold dust, marzipan petite fours coated in chocolate and almonds, greek almond biscuits and nutty chocolate truffles. mmmm

The red velvet cake pops were the biggest adventure, my first go at cake pops and red velvet cake. I always wanted to try making red velvet cake, so despite most cake pop recipes using packet mixes, I choose to make it from scratch. Seeing as I could not find such a recipe, I combined 3 recipes to make it and i made a few changes along the way too!!

So for others wishing to try and for my own future reference, here is how to do it (no packet mixes!!):

Red velvet cake:

You need |

• 125g plain flour
• 15ml tbsp cocoa powder  (more if you want a darker red)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 50g soft unsalted butter
• 100g caster sugar
• 2 tsp red  food colouring  (more or less depending how bright you want the cake)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 eggs
• 90ml buttermilk

Method |

1. Preheat the oven to 170C and line the cake tin with baking paper. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarb in a bowl. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar, beating well, and when you have a soft, pale mixture beat in the food colouring and the vanilla.
2. Still beating, add 1 spoonful of the dried ingredients, then the egg, followed the rest of the dried ingredients.
3. Finally, beat in the buttermilk and pour into the tin. Spread evenly.
4. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes.
5. Leave  to cool on a wire rack.
6. Once totally cool, break the cake apart into crumbs. (It felt a tad counter-productive to make a cake then pull it apart, but hey its fun!)

Turning them into cake pops:

You need |

• 100g icing sugar
• 70g cream cheese
• 70g soft unsalted butter
• 150g chocolate
• Decorations (sprinkles, glitter dust etc.)
• Cake pop sticks

Method|

1. Put the icing sugar, cream cheese and butter into the food processor and mix till smooth.
2. Put the frosting you have now made into the cake crumb mix, and mix together.
3. Roll mixture into balls and lay on a baking tray, insert cake pop sticks into the balls and put the tray in the fridge for several hours. ( Even better the freezer)
4. Now the tricky bit, the colder you can keep them the better, as the heat of the day can start to make the cake balls flopbefore they have chocolate set to hold them together.
5. Melt chocolate and dip your pops into the chocolate, hold to the side until all excess has dripped off, then put them in a stand (e.g Styrofoam)  And get them back in the fridge asap, so the chocolate can set, if you find they are beginning to loose shape, as you go, put them back in the fridge for a while.  Perhaps the best method is to take one out of the fridge at a time then pop it back in. Add extra decorations if you like!! I added edible gold dust to mine.  *note: I’m in Australia, and it gets hot and food melts easily, these may be a lot easier to make in cold climates.

I’ll show you the final pics from Christmas day, after Christmas!!

So I have blabbed on enough about cakes, but not the cake table!

Style Me Pretty

Green Wedding Shoes

Style Me Pretty

Style Me Pretty

Beautiful cake surrounded by doilies, sweets, flowers and candles.

I bought some glass bottles for my wedding from Sweet Style a while back, a few weeks later, I get an email from Leanne of  Sweet Style, asking me if I could re-design her blog! Funny how things come back around.  Well here is the result…

The Selby

Well this is officially my 1000th blog post!!! How exciting!

At the beginning of the year, I made a ‘one thousand’ goal. Trying to reach 1000 for several things, so lets so how I have gone…

1000 blog followers- THEN- 698    NOW- well its hard to tell to be honest, since my google friends will no longer work :(  but last check it was 805
1000 blog posts THEN  740  NOW- 1000
1000 etsy sales – THEN  871   NOW- 961
(cut short by slowly closing my shop, but I otherwise would have reached this, I did if you include the sales from my second shop)
1000 facebook fans THEN- 553  NOW-1127 (umm wow!!)
1000 twitter followers  THEN-858  NOW- 1509 (woohoo!)

So blog followers is the only one to not really get there, seeing as etsy should really now be a combo of boths shops, after clearing my main shop out (due to other work and change in my location, it bacame to hard to keep running).  So all in all I did pretty well I think!  Biggest achievement would be facebook which pretty much doubled in a year! twitter is also pretty epic.

Just on a quick side note, if anyone knows how to get friend connect working on wordpress that would be great!! It had been working for about a year, then suddenly stopped working and I can’t seem to fix it.

2011

So… while we are on goals and achievements, i thought I’d use this post to do a summary of my year.. this could end up being a rather long post, don’t worry it’ll mostly be pictures :)

2011 has been a big, eventful year full of change, loss and gain. Much has occurred this year, and yet it has flown by so fast.

Jan- Dan took me to Bathurst, where he grew up. I got to see his old school, his old homes, and the town. We even went to the local pool for a swim as it was such a hot day!  We also spent a day in Jan painting Dan’s bed chocolate brown.

Feb- Went to a valentines formal, celebrated our 1 year anniversary and attended a wedding (the month of romance). A less romantic adventure was seeing the old White bay power station.

March- A somewhat quieter month, which included, voting, swimming and a trip to Maitland.  And I took this photo..

April-  I got engaged!!!!!! Dan took me to the family farm and proposed :) I was also in an exhibition, and went to the Easter show.

May- The hunt for a wedding venue began.

June- this was a really crazy and highly emotional month. I turned 25, we moved house and we lost my Grandfather. A lot of change in one big hit, it was a bit of a tough month.

July- Went through the torture of having my wisdom teeth out! And lived on milkshakes for a week.  Also asked my bridesmaids to do me the honour.

August- Went looking for hotels for our wedding night, worked on wedding invites and began collecting decorations.  Also went wedding dress shopping. I thought I had found my dress, but a few months later I was told they couldn’t get it in!!  Also climbed a tall hill up to a lighthouse near Palm beach.

September- Our engagement shoot, printed invites and went on shopping trips to find bridesmaid dresses.  Also went to my bridemaid’s engagement party. (yes everyone seems to be getting married!)

October- Dan moved to Bathurst for work. I help him with the move. I also found my final wedding dress!!

November- Went on my first plane trip to visit my brother in Melbourne (he relocated this year, boy so much change this year!!) Also went to a wedding in Bathurst (caught the XPT train down) and went to a friends bridal high tea (yes yet another getting married!)

December- Wow we finally got to the end of a crazy year! Well the best of this month is yet to occur, with another wedding to attend (up in Gosford) this weekend. And then camp at the end of the year! Oh and Chrsitmas, lol. I hope I can squeeze in some Christmas baking too!

Thank you to everyone who entered the shopbop giveaway. The winners are….

Amber (comment 42) , Jacinta (comment 49) and Kim D. (comment 16)

Congrats girls!! I will email you soon with the details :)