I sometimes hear wedding vendors who get frustrated with brides contacting them through Facebook and other social media avenues. To them, I will say, just embrace it. Facebook is how my very first bride, Jana, got in touch with me. Back in June when we first met she shared how she had all of the decorations finished already and just needed someone to help out on the day of, to make sure things run smoothly and that everything is decorated. Of course I told her “Yes I’ll be your day of wedding coordinator!”
Leading up to to her wedding day, I think I was getting more nervous about it than she was. Only because I wanted her day to be as perfect as could be and I honestly wasn’t sure how things would go. I envisioned in my mind how great things would go, but I also kept thinking of all the horror stories I have seen on TV & heard about from other people.
When the day finally came, we were all so ready and knew exactly what Jana had in mind, everything was set up in no-time at all. All of the vendors were right on time & everything was just perfect. As the wedding day progressed everything just seemed to happen naturally. I really enjoyed being able to share such a special day with Chris & Jana, and I cannot thank them enough for giving me the opportunity and for trusting me with the job of wedding coordinator -all while knowing that it was my first wedding.
So Jana & Chris, again THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart, and i sure hope you’re enjoying your honeymoon!
Here are a couple photos from the ice cream dessert table that I setup for them. *All the ideas were the bride Jana’s.
I’m sad that I got so wrapped up with the day that I forgot to snap more photos. However, as soon as the photographer shares photos with me, I’ll share them with you!
So my boyfriend has been wanting me to color my hair dark for quite some time, yet I never quite felt ready. Or that I even wanted to. Until this spring itch. I’m sure you know what I mean. It happens a couple times a year for me. Right around the time of the season’s changing. I either need to chop off my hair, or color it. Lately, I have only had the urge to color it, since it has taken me so long to grow my hair out. I forgot to take a photo during the day when light was better, so I apologize about the poor quality.
My hair was a reddish color, and I had quite a few dead ends. So I colored it pretty dark, I think it’s the lighting that makes it seem redder/lighter in the after than it actually is. I’ll post other pictures later on.
So…what do you think?
Sorry for my lack of posting anything yesterday. I celebrated my 25th birthday! Both my boyfriend and I had off of work so we just spend the day together doing everything. We did SO many things! I’m gonna try to make a list:
Since my birthday was in the middle of the week, I am celebrating this weekend with my friends. I can’t wait!
It’s amazing how when you’re younger, your idea of where you will be by a certain age is totally different from where you actually end up. I thought I would be married, at the very least, with maybe 1 kid on their way and working a full-time job. The reality is I work 2 jobs, with a bunch of odds and end jobs here and there, I live with my boyfriend and our puppy dog and I am completely happy with where I am at in life.
There are a lot of ideas brewing for this next year, that we are looking into with personal endeavors, business ventures etc. It is exciting. It is almost like a switch went off in my head, at the beginning of this year, that made me realize that if I don’t push myself as hard as I can, than things will never get done. There are too many distractions with TV, Internet, etc. that unless I put the time aside to get things done, it won’t be there. This year will be a year of getting things accomplished, or at least rolling in the right direction.
My sister got me a new planner which is awesome, I now have 2. One for keeping track of my daily life, and the other for keeping on track with LeeMaeMarie’s blog and photo shoots/ideas. I also grabbed a new notebook to use for writing down ideas in more detail from Mommalicious. So hopefully this will keep me in check! Well, I’m actually off to have a meeting about my blog re-design!
-Janelle
Many of you may have already seen my Sweetheart’s Valentine Table display that I posted, last week. It was the 1st layered cake I have ever made and or decorated. I hoped to have more time because I wanted to make the cake from scratch but with my time running short I had to resort to a boxed cake. I used Duncan Hines Decadent Triple Chocolate Cake mix.
The flavor from the cake was great, but I didn’t have a spring form pan small enough for a cake to fit on my 6.5 stand I wanted to use. So I baked the cake in a 9×13 pan, and I found round cookie cutters from Michael’s. I used the one that was about 4 inches so that I would have room to icing the cakes. I was able to fit 4 rounds from the cake I baked. I decided to icing 2 little cakes to see which I liked better, and to experiment with learning to icing cakes.
This next picture is of all the scraps leftover from cutting out the cake. If you had time the scraps would have been great to break back down and make cake pops out of. (I didn’t have time so my roommate ate the scraps just like this!)
This part was a little tough, the cake mix has you add in chunks of chocolate & fudge, which makes it very sticky. I had to wash off the cookie cutter a couple of times so that the cake rounds would not fall apart. I did stick the cake in the freezer after it came out of the oven to cool quicker.
The nice thing about these cookie cutters is that they were about an inch thick, so I was able to level off the cake by leaving the ring around the cake and cutting off the excess on top above the cutter. Once the layers had been cut & leveled, I placed them back in the freezer to harden up a bit more.
That fudge made it really hard to work with the cake without it crumbling. I can see why most bakeries will let the cake almost get stale before they decorate it. I just didn’t want the cake too dry. I decided to use a homemade butter cream icing for these cakes. Mmm I love butter cream icing! It is pretty much the only thing I ate that day I think. Opps.
TIP: Something that will come in hand is a large glass of hot water.
TIP: Have a cake stand to turn the cake while you icing it
This part went ok. I started by adding a large scoop of icing into the middle of the cake, I then turned the cake as I spread the icing out as I went, working from the center. I found fresh strawberries in the fridge and decided that adding strawberries was perfect for valentine’s day, so I then added a layer in-between the cake.
So after I had this layer done I put another layer of cake on top and spread the icing from the middle out again til the cake looked like this:
I know the icing isn’t perfect but I was trying. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of this next step. Next with my icing spatula I lobbed a bunch of icing on the top edge of a side and at the same time I started spinning the cake around. I never let the spatula touch the cake. There was always icing between. If it got too thin, I would glob more icing on the cake. I did this until the entire sides had been covered with Icing as well.
If the icing started to glob or pull off from my spatula, I would dip it in the hot water and it would help smooth the icing as I dragged the spatula across.
I did both mini cakes this way and placed them in the freezer.
It was after 2am so I decided to just go to bed and keep working on these the next morning.
This is what the 2 cakes ended up looking like:
For the cake above I made 3 colors of icing. I took a light pink, a dark pink and a lavender purple icing for the top. I first added icing to the top of the cake. I then worked my way to the sides with the light pink covering the entire sides. Then I took a bit of dark pink and only spread it along the bottom edge. I used sprinkles that I separated from a Halloween pack, so I had to pick them out of black and orange sprinkles. That part probably took the longest. I almost wish I had more of a variance in color but I still think it looks pretty cool.
I’m sure you have seen this cake already! This was my first time piping icing on a cake! I was pleased with how it turned out. I didn’t get everything uniform, but for a first attempt I can’t say that it’s terrible! I used pink vanilla butter cream icing, and did the ruffling with the icing, starting from the bottom working my way up the cake. I stood over the cake working upside down on the opposite side. (if that makes any sense.) I then used red sugar crystals to cover the base layer of white icing on the top of the cake. It still didn’t look finished so I took another strawberry and cut it like a heart and placed that on top.
I stuck the cakes back in the freezer until I was ready to use them for the photo shoot which I think was a mistake. I should have left them out to stay soft. Reason being, is because when I went to cut the cakes during the photo shoot to place a slice on a plate, the icing was still hard (even though I used a hot knife) and the strawberries in the middle were frozen! It was like hitting a rock wall. It also cracked the icing when I went to cut the cakes.
You can see here the bottom corner cracked. I had to push it back together so it wouldn’t show up in photos.
And the inside of the cake got more mangled up when cutting because the knife couldn’t go straight through because it was too cold.
So summing up my first cake decorating/photo shoot experience here is what I learned.
1. stick the cake in the freezer to firm it up.
2. when icing the cake never let your spatula touch the cake.
3. Have a glass of hot water handy to rinse off the spatula so you can get a smooth layer of icing
4. Don’t leave the cake in the freezer for 8 hours before a photo shoot and then only take it out with 30 min. before. Allow your cake time to properly thaw!
So any lessons learned from decorating or setting up table displays? I would love the extra advice!
- Janelle