food

The Actual Reception Location

Seeing as it’s now less than 3 weeks from our wedding reception, my folks called us outside Saturday afternoon to start discussing the logistics and layout of the tents, tables, food, drinks, etc. I’d posted pictures on here not long ago of the yard where the party was going to be held… well that’s totally changed! Rather than party in the big open yard with bad lighting and trenches where dad pulled all the trees out, we’re having it in the yard between their house and ours.

Dad decided to hang a few more light strands around the yard to increase the lighting. It’s a gorgeous area with tons of plants and natural beauty already in place. AKA zero need for additional décor! The strung lights cast plenty of light, but there will also be several spot lights around the yard. Over by the tents, there will be more lights. Good thing my father is so crafty as there are electrical outlets all over the yard perfect for additional lighting.

He’s also going to buy mulch to even out the ground so no one else trips like I did a few weeks ago. I’ve been checking the weather and it is going to be the perfect Miami “winter” with a high of 73* and a low of 53*. So much for my idea of wearing a cute dress! More like a cute sweater with a pair of jeans and maybe boots.


The plant house in the middle of the area


The large tree surrounded by seating, the appetizer/ drinks tent


The food tent


The whole area taken from the area where the seating tents will be located

We still need to make the favors. I bought 100 sheets of origami paper to make the candy dishes and 7lbs of candy. Also need to…
* organize the guest book canvas boards and markers
* make the flags for the centerpieces
* order the food!
* make sure we can borrow tents and chairs from Cathy’s family or else find a place to rent
* buy the centerpieces (6″ plants) and plant sleeves [or maybe make them]
* find table cloths
* clean our house!
* and probably several other things

spacer

Chocolate Chip-Walnut Cookies

What? How do those relate to babies, weddings or knitting?

Well, the next month 26 days is all about testing desserts for our reception. These are potential winners! My favorite site for recipes is definitely Annie’s Eats as she has stuff from every imaginable category, but is a great writer to boot! So yes, I took her Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe and split the chips to about 3/4 cup and added 3/4 cup of chopped walnuts. OK, more like “chopped then smashed up even smaller by hand” walnuts.

In case there was any doubt how big these suckers were...

Last weekend I broke in our new KitchenAid Stand Mixer by whipping up Annie’s Challah recipe. While delicious, I’m really not sure how she got such a huge loaf. It was delicious and been requested to have a presence at the reception. Guess I’ll be playing with it a lot more in the coming weeks.

Check her site out, and be sure to let me know what kinda stuff you’ve made!

spacer

Help Us Pick Flavors, Please!

Hello readers!

I need some help from you and your taste buds. We are having several dozen mini cupcakes at our mini Vegas reception. The problem is, our bakery, Retro Bakery, has some really amazing flavors and narrowing it down it driving me slightly mad. For every dozen cupcakes, we are allowed 2 flavors, which means we get to pick up to 8 flavors. For sanity’s sake, I doubt we’ll pick that many. We also get to pick a flavor for the 6″ cake we’re using as our cutting cake.

The 8 I’ve managed to narrow down for the cupcakes are as follows. We have tried 4 flavors when my amazing friend, TheDearlyWed, sent us a package. Take a peek at all the flavors Retro offers and, if the 8 below don’t satisfy your sweet tooth, feel free to suggest some more.

Red Carpet: Red cake topped with almond buttercream and red glitter sugar
Milk & Cookies
: Chocolate-chip cake topped with vanilla buttercream and a freshly baked chocolate-chip cookie.
Cinnamon Toast
: Vanilla cake topped with cinnamon buttercream dusted with cinnamon and sugar
Cookies and Cream
: Chocolate cake topped with crushed, chocolate sandwich cookie buttercream
Peanut Butter Cup
: Chocolate cake topped with peanut butter buttercream and dark chocolate shavings
Mint Chocolate Chip
: Chocolate cake topped with green mint buttercream and mini chocolate chips
Pink Lemonade
: Lemon cake topped with pink lemonade buttercream and hot pink glitter sugar
PB & J
: Vanilla cake filled with strawberry jam and topped with peanut butter buttercream

I’m thinking of going “plain” for the cake and getting Vanilla Loves Vanilla, which is exactly as it sounds: delicious! Alternately, Cinnamon Toast was amazing and might become the cake as well. Who knows! I’d love to have all their flavors. 😀

Pick your top 3 choices and maybe it’ll be amongst our choices!

[poll id=”2″]

spacer

Not so Quickie Update

In the last few weeks, we’ve had the following wedding progress:

* booked our airfare — yes, this ranks as the absolute highest since it was such a chore! But alas, we have non stop flights to/from Vegas from the 8th to the 13th for $390.99 including the flights, taxes, fees, airline club fees, AND insurance. I may be taking a risk by booking on Spirit Air, but there’s a few reasons why I am OK with it. Namely being in touch with their head of customer service via twitter and email the last few weeks, and also Cat’s sister is working for them. Both make me feel good about the decision. Also you can’t beat that price for 2 people ON a holiday weekend with a stick! Now the problem is finding a hotel room for the 8th since our reservation in the suite is for the 9th-13th. Also, this puts us $200 under our travel budget!

* guest list — I finally typed the names from all the labels and the slips of paper mom gave me into Excel. I was somewhat shocked to find out that it added up to 189 warm bodies including children. The reception will be open to all families, totally casual and just plain fun. Honestly, as much as my head is saying no, I think it’d be completely fun to have a bounce house! The whole shindig is in my parents back yard and guests will have roughly 4-5 acres to roam and play on during the party.

* designed and had printed 2 more stamps for wedding/ post-wedding use — the first is a super fabu address stamp that went through tons of changes before being agreed upon. The other is a stamp for the back of the RSVP envelopes. The envelope stamp says “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Love Robert Frost! These 2 and the original one I had printed were done by the crazy talented BlossomStamps.

* purchased clear labels and downloaded loads of new fonts — yes, I am both lazy and cheap and will be using labels for our invites. The font I finally decided upon is called “MA Sexy” which amuses me, but whatever. It is both easily read and super flourishy. LOVE!

* cupcake tower — during a shopping trip to Home Depot to get the pieces for the tower, dad pointed out that we can do as many projects for the Miami reception, but not Vegas. His idea is to use short pieces of PVC pipe since I was going to wrap whatever I bought with blue painter’s tape anyhow and he has tons of piping. I’m also going to use 2 of the leftover door knobs from our new cabinets since there are a bunch left over.

* cupcake wrappers — I bought 3 shades each of orange and blue 12×12 card stock from Michael’s. After cutting them all out, I’m planning on stamping and embossing the following logo onto each. Steve said he prefers mini cupcakes, so we’ll be getting 4 dozen of those from Retro Bakery. I asked and was told we get 2 flavors per dozen, which is great and all, but their flavors are aMAZing and picking 8 will be torture!

* crinoline — I haven’t ordered one yet as I’m sort of hoping to find one locally. The only problem is I can’t find a store locally that sells square dance outfits. I might just suck it up and order the one from Petticoat Junction. I want a pale blue one, but think getting white and dying it on my own might be a better option than hoping they sell the right color.

+++++++
In totally non-wedding related news:
* ECU finally recognized me as a graduate with 2 degrees (the MBA and the MIS certificate)
* I am officially a Florida drivers license holder, now to get Luna transferred as well
* I am the somewhat proud owner of an iPhone. Somewhat because the signal is horrendous, but that may be due to it being an old phone.

spacer

Bringing in Food

This is me not working on my midterms or paper. My brain seriously hurts.

But anyhow, I started looking for a hair salon – cuz hey, why not, right? I asked @luxorlv if there was a salon onsite for us (ok, me) to get our hair done, and she pointed me directly to their price list (PDF). Bueno! Last time I’d checked, I only saw stuff about their spa.

I’m definitely thinking of getting my hair done. Since I’ll be wearing Converse, I won’t need a pedicure. And since I bite the hell outta my nails, I won’t need a manicure. Granted, if I really wanted a mani or pedi, I could easily get them at home the day before we leave.

I also started playing around on the Amenities page to look at the food prices for a possible in-room meal. They are crazy! I’m still totally OK with the whole group heading to one of the many buffets in Vegas after the pictures are done. However, after reading their Policies (PDF) I’m worried that we may not be able to bring the cupcakes in from Retro without an extra charge. I’ll give them a buzz on Monday to double check. Pretty much because while their cakes look amazing, they are also pricey (PDF) for wedding cakes or even “special event” cakes.

198 days until we’re married. Um, wasn’t it just like 300++ yesterday?? Seriously, time is flying, but not fast enough.

spacer