Sunday, July 01, 2012

Banana Bread + Oh, Happy Canada Day eh?

Happy Canada Day to all my fellow canucks!


I love my country but that's as patriotic as this post is going to be! On to baking!


Yesterday I spent the day at my sister's house and we ended up having an impromptu cooking/baking fest.  Now, I'm no expert in the kitchen.  Food I cook is usually only for me. It's good enough for me to devour when I'm starving, not good enough to share with others. 


Baking is a different matter. I love baking! Again, I'm no expert but I just really enjoy it and I find baked goods to be a little more forgiving when serving to others.


My sister mentioned she had a several bananas in the freezer so we decided to make banana bread which I've never made before if you can believe it!  A couple of my friends make a wicked banana bread and I actually enjoy the banana bread at Starbucks so I've just never had to make it. Not to mention I love bananas so they're usually consumed as soon as I bring them home. 


When looking for a recipe, my sister said to type in "easy" "quick" or "simple"- her go to words when looking for recipes! Haha


Well it worked and I found this very simple recipe. They aren't lying about the prep time being 5 minutes. I think we had in the oven in 4. 


Never having made this before, I was a bit confused about the colour because every banana bread I've eaten has either been brown all over or a brown exterior. 


But after an hour, we took it out of the oven and we had this:


Life Designed


A nicely browned top! Just ignore those cracks please... =)


Oh I forgot to mention! The recipe didn't call for it but we added some chocolate chips. I can't help it, I love chocolate. 


The recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar and it notes you can use 3/4 cups which is what I was going for but my sister accidentally used the wrong measure cup and we ended up using about a cup of sugar. Luckily, it wasn't overly sweet. If anything, I think the sugar creates a crispy top layer that was a nice balance to the moist bread center.  Yummy!


Life Designed
I was really happy with how it turned out and I would definitely use this recipe again!


My sister suggested adding some walnuts next time. I just might do that! 


I see a lot of banana freezing in my future. 


If you have a favourite banana bread recipe, please share it in the comments!


I also made garlic mashed potatoes (the one thing I feel confident enough to share with others) to go along with my sister's pork chop and then for the heck of it, I made peanut butter cookies- another first! Yes...we ate A LOT yesterday.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Wedding Reveal!

Christina + Renan
Introducing the beautiful bride and groom! Now that is one good looking couple. Beautiful inside and out.

Last Saturday was the big day! Months of prep and I was feeling the pressure... What did I have to show for it??!

Sorry folks, I was hoping to have a lot more pictures but I was so stressed and busy that I didn't have time to stop and take pictures! I hate it when that happens.. I saw the photographer take some pictures so I asked my friend for copies when she got her pictures. I was expecting to wait months for them but the photographer is amazing and just posted a few pictures on her blog!

One of the few pictures I did manage to take was the guestbook table at the church: 

Life Designed
Instead of a conventional card box, we used the birdcage to collect all the cards. The black and white photos are of the bride and groom's parents on their wedding day. The bride- Christina, really wanted to incorporate this bit of history on her day which I think is so sweet.

The best compliment I got was when one of the co-maid of honours said, "This is SO Christina!". Phew! What a relief!

Here are some close up shots from the photographer:

Guest Book Table


Guest Book Table
Guest Book Table
Most guests don't get a chance to write a meaningful comment in the guest book. Usually they just enter their name, maybe their address and a little "congrats" note. So Christina wanted a "well wishes" jar where people got to write a longer blessing. They're going to use the filled jar as decor in their new home and every day they can read a new blessing! So cute!

Oh, see that flowery box on the left? That's actually a napkin I found that I used to cover an old shoebox! It was the perfect colour and style for the wedding that I had to find a way to use it!

Snack Bar
I love candy bars! The bride bought a bunch of their favourite goodies for guests to enjoy and take home as favours. I was going to purchase acrylic stands but due to budget, I ended up buying gift boxes at the dollar store and painted them seafoam. I love the touch of colour!

The vintage looking labels I used can be found here. I just changed the colours in photoshop to fit the wedding colour scheme!

Snack Bar Signage
Does that look like a dollar store frame?

Because it is! 

I just added a coat of Martha Stewart's gilding paint in brass and I think it looks lovely!

Okay, now on to the centerpieces:

For months I scoured thrift stores for vases and by the time of the wedding, I had about 200 vases, most of which I either painted or covered in lace.

Life Designed
For the circular base, I ordered 14" cardboard cake circles from Wilton and painted them seafoam. I took the above picture with my little point and shoot. If it looks a little lack lustre, it is! 

Cake Table + Centerpiece
Christina said it best, "The flowers were such a small but pivotal touch". I agree. And I love the pink, cream, seafoam and gold colour scheme. I initially wanted peonies but the roses are classic and lovely!

Isn't the cake so cute?? And those custom made cake toppers from Etsy are awesome! 

Head Table
A close up of the head table. Yes, that's a baby jar! Good thing I have a niece and nephew- who happens to eat like a beast! I gathered at least a couple dozen from my sisters! It's a great, economical and sustainable way to decorate! 

To save money, I even used plastic cups for some of the lace candle holders! No one knew the difference until they actually touched them! I just had to make sure we used battery LED candles and not real ones! Melting plastic would not have been good... =)

I also used Starbucks Frappucino bottles, other juice bottles and lotion bottles! Whatever I could find, I used!

Head Table
I was happy when the lights went down because the head table glowed and it was so pretty!

Head Table
Head Table

Head Table
You can really tell the difference between my point and shoot pictures and the professional shots! I took this one right before I got the flowers. I was so happy to get pink and cream flowers. It was a nice surprise because I was told we were only getting cream. The pink was definitely needed to add more colour and dimension! (Sorry, I don't have a full shot of the final head table!)

Sigh... my biggest disappointment is that backdrop. 

When the rental company came to set it up, my heart fell. It wasn't what I was expecting. There was no way I was going to be able to hang all the frames that I had laid out. 

I ended up being able to use only half of the frames. I'm not going to lie...I wanted to cry. It looks so sparse to me...

Everyone was really encouraging and told me it looked fine but it's so disappointing when you spend so much time and effort on something and it doesn't turn out exactly how you envisioned it. 

Christina and Renan were so gracious and lovely! They thanked me several times throughout the night and afterwards as well. 

This was the first wedding I have decorated to this extent. Everyone asked me if I would do it again. Yes and no... haha. There were definitely stressful moments...but overall, it was such an honour to be a part of their day. 

So there you have it, a romantic, vintage inspired wedding! 

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Head Table Place Cards

To jazz up the head table, my friend requested place cards for her bridal party.

We could have done simple tent cards but I wanted to do something a bit more fancy and I had these little frames I got from Michaels in their $1.50 bin.

Life Designed
They were just sitting around waiting for me to do something with them. There was actually a third one which was square but I accidentally stepped on it one day and it broke... =(

I got these several months ago and when I went back to Michaels, they didn't have these frames anymore but they did have these plastic ones:

Life Designed
I definitely prefer the first ones I bought but these will do!


The bride and groom's frames got painted gold while the rest of the bridal party got seafoam. Sigh... I just love seafoam!

Life Designed
Much better than tent cards don't you agree? AND it totally fits with the "frames" theme.

Hope ya'll are feeling the love this past week with all the wedding related posts!

Warning: most of next week will be wedding reveal week! =)