"Birds of a Feather" Wedding Cupcakes

My sweet friend from college was planning her wedding when she asked me to make cupcakes for the celebration. I was so flattered and excited to be a part of her special day! Crystal is someone I have a huge admiration for because of her creative craftiness and keen eye for pretty, vintage things. Her wedding was pretty much all DIY and so gorgeous! iDropPhoto took the above picture of my cupcakes and took many more beautiful photos of the ceremony and reception.

{They are seriously so adorable!}

{Argyles and Toms...so charming!}

{Crystal's handmade brooch bouquet}

{The best seats in the house}

{At the reception tables}

{A sitting area in the back of the reception. A great spot to chill and drool over some pretty cupcakes in the back right corner!}

SUCH a beautiful wedding and beautiful pictures to capture it all! Now here's my iPhone pics. Don't laugh!

{They made all the cake stands with plates and candlesticks}

{I got a special spot in their program! Made me blush}

Flavors:
Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting
Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting
Cocoa coconut cupcakes with coconut buttercream frosting and topped with toasted coconut
Hummingbird cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and topped with pecans

Hummingbird cupcakes aren't as popular here in California as in the south. They include banana, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, pecans, and pineapple. My husband says it tastes a lot like banana nut bread, which I thought was perfect for guests that like their cupcake with much less sweetness.

Congratulations Luke and Crystal! Thank you so much for letting me celebrate with you on your beautiful wedding day!

$10 Mason Jar Coat Rack

What's not to love about mason jars? Better yet, mason jars being used for something other than canning! This was inspiring to me by OldNewAgain, a "shabby chic cottage decor" Etsy shop. I found this link and pic on CraftGawker...


Just lovely! I especially like the aged look they gave to the turquoise-painted wood.

To make our own {bigger} version of this, we used...
~jars {$3}
~wood {free}
~hooks {free}
~hose clamps {$3+}
~spray paint {$3...optional for wood, hooks, and hose clamps}

{Side note: My husband had to clarify to me that they're called "hose clamps" and not pipe clamps since hoses are flexible and pipes are not...hence the reason why the hose clamps are adjustable}

From these things and for less than $10, we came up with this!

Justin found a box of mason jars at Target {12 for $12, but I know you could probably find them cheaper at other places}.

The wood was leftover in our garage from who-knows-what Justin was working on. Our garage doesn't store cars, it stores wood. We are one 2 by 4 away from opening up the garage doors and calling ourselves a lumberyard!

The hooks were on the wall of our laundry room from the previous owners. These babies got spray painted with a coat of Ace brand cream colored paint. Recommendation alert!: cheaper paint does not always equal better paint! You'll see why in one of the pics.

Hose clamps can be found in the plumbing section of the hardware store for a buck something. You can tighten or loosen the clamp with a standard screwdriver. We spray painted these the same color as the hooks.

For directions with the hose clamps, I got help from Whitney at Shanty 2 Chic who tried drilling {then hammering} a hole in between the clamp threads so a screw could fit through to hold the jar up.


Justin suggested this instead...
Take a standard screwdriver and bend the thread up. Then take wire cutters to cut the thread out.


I tightened the hose clamp around the neck of my jar so I could see how much of the excess clamp to cut off with wire cutters. I recommend doing this before you spray paint it {if you plan on painting}.

Now I don't know if...
{1} I'm just super impatient or...
{2} the fact that our garage turns into an oven when it's over 100 degrees outside has anything to do with it or...
{3) Ace brand spray paint really is that cheap...

...but after spray painting the clamps in the garage, some of the paint came off the clamp when I tightened them.

I think I was just being impatient and not letting the paint dry long enough. "Long enough" is a very subjective term when you're letting spray paint dry in a fryer of a garage!

Then we drilled the hooks and hose clamps into our wood and then tightened the clamps around the neck of the jars.


And of course it's not complete without some manzanita branches and orchids!

I thank my lucky stars for an incredibly handy husband who knows his way around a drill, leveler, and anchor screws! Thank you honey for helping me with this one! Now please put your shirt away...

Craft Room {aka "The Oasis"}

Last week I was off work for 6 days {oh yeah!} and had the best time with my little man and the hubbs. We went to Monterey with some great friends and got some projects done around the house as well.

The highlight of my little vacay was turning our spare bedroom into my craft room {I call it "The Oasis"}. It's only taken a year of living here to finally get moving boxes, donations, & miscellaneous who-knows-what squared away from this room and finally giving it purpose {besides throwing random who-knows-what in it}!

My husband was so helpful and super handy in getting my white pegboard up on the wall and intalling an extra shelf in the closet for storing fabric, ribbons, paper, jars, etc. You can never have too many craft supplies is my new motto!

I got to be completely honest with you and say that cupcakes really aren't my heart's biggest delight {my husband is, wink!}. Yes, I get joy out of it and it's fun, but sometimes it just seems really tedious and taxing.

Creating is definitely a huge passion for me, one of those things I am 100% willing to lose sleep over and skip meals for. Since cupcakes are meant to be eaten, it's hard for me to spend much time and energy creating something that I'll only remember by pictures. When I make something that I can keep looking at or using, it has so much more meaning and "specialness" to me.

We've lived in our new house for over a year and I had yet to have a space just for me to paint, sand, sew, hot glue, cut, and decoupage to my heart's content. Part of me thought that a true artist would not use his or her lack of space as an excuse for not creating. But during our first year as homeowner's, it got annoying for me to lug my beast of a sewing machine plus fabrics to the kitchen table every time I wanted to sew something {usually it would take several times of taking it to and from the table to ever finish anything}.

This almost made me hate sewing and extremely envious of other sewers with gorgeous tidy spare-bedrooms-turned-craft-rooms.

I have yet to actually sew in my newly designated room of creating but only because I've been so busy making other things!




I hung up three clipboards on the pegboard and decorated them each in a pretty aqua paper or paint with a sunshine yellow and white patterned paper. Here is where I can put up photos for inspiration or directions for current projects. Pictured is the middle clipboard, and all three of them together say "What a Lovely Idea."



My sewing box had a pin cushion glued in the inside and it bugged me to have to keep the lid open to have access to my pins. I saw lots of tutorials on CraftGawker for pin cushions glued into the lids of mason jars. Well of course I had to make one too! Inside the jar is some spools and bobbins of thread.



A soup can with scrap paper that I hot glued on and then I drilled a hole in the side to hook it up to the pegboard. Right now it's holding a stud finder and anchors but that will probably change soon!

Welcome to my Oasis! Can't wait to share with you all that gets created here.

Birds of a Feather Wedding Tasting

One of my sweet friends from college is getting married this September and I have the utmost privilege of making cupcakes for the wedding!

Aren't they just adorable? Totally diggin' on iDrop Photo's gorgeous artistry!

Crystal and Luke came over the other day so I could let them nosh on the flavors they requested: chocolate, vanilla, toasted coconut, and one of my new favorites, hummingbird {to go with their "Birds of a feather" wedding theme}. Each cupcake was topped with chocolate buttercream, vanilla buttercream, coconut cream cheese, or vanilla cream cheese.

Ian's First Birthday!

One of our absolute favorite kiddos is Ian, who just turned one on June 10th. Hubbs, Logan, and I were thrilled to be able to celebrate with our dear friends Kayla and Adam {Ian's parents}. Logan and Ian are only 2 months apart so we've been on a pretty similar journey these past couple of years {pregnancy, labor, diapers, and midnight feedings!}.

I have been so blessed to see Kayla and Adam's faith throughout their attempts to conceive. I won't go into details but if you knew the years of heartache they had been through, then you could fully understand just how precious Ian is to them...and to us!

For his party I made velvet cupcakes {red velvet recipe just minus the red food coloring} with orange and blue buttercream frosting and green cream cheese frosting.

Cookie Monster Cupcakes

"C" is for "Cookie", that's good enough for me....

My sister Summer found these adorable Cookie Monster cupcakes from With Our Best, complete with crumbly cookies in the mouths! These definitely take me back to my childhood days of watching Sesame Street and watching Cookie Monster get his ferocious nom nom on.

Cupcake Bandages

Well wouldn't these be the perfect way to sweetly soothe any boo-boo or ouchie? I would probably wear one even without having a boo-boo or ouchie, they are so stinkin' adorable! And what's that I read on the tin..."Free Prize Inside"?! Aw heck yeah, I'm sold! Find these on Amazon for $4.95.

Lanna Cafe Coffee and Tiramisu Cupcakes

If you love coffee so much, what's the best way to share with the world how much you love it? You could do what our friend Bryan Acosta recently did, and that means starting up your own coffee roasting company. Better yet, Bryan combined his love for coffee with his passion for the villages of Thailand and came up with Lanna Cafe.

Lanna Cafe is a non-profit company dedicated to...

"...raising awareness for the needs of those living in the Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand. Lanna Cafe uses proceeds from coffee sales and donations to sponsor a wide variety of holistic and sustainable community development projects. Our goal is to assist resource-poor hill tribes by increasing their social and economic opportunities through the funding and facilitation of culturally appropriate activities."

Justin thinks this is {literally} the best coffee he has ever had, so I decided to marry together Lanna Cafe coffee with cupcake into a delectable Tiramisu treat! Last night we met up with Bryan and his wife Carly at Lanna Cafe's booth at the River Park farmer's market. They each got to try their own Tiramisu cupcake and the census was pretty positive!

I was joking around with Carly, telling her that this was going to be the picture that comes up on my phone whenever she calls me from now on!


How to make these yummy little things...

{Step 1}: Make vanilla cupcakes. After cupcakes have cooled, use a butter knife to cut out a cone from the top.

{Step 2}: Mix 1/3 cup of Lanna Coffee with 1/3 cup Kalua. Pour 2 teaspoons {or more!} of this mixture into each cupcake. Dip the cut-out cone into this mixture too and then set aside.

{Step 3}: Fill and top each cupcake with vanilla buttercream.

{Step 4}: Top with the coffee/Kalua-soaked cut-out cone.

{Step 5}: Add more vanilla buttercream and a Lanna Cafe coffee bean or chocolate chip on top.

{Step 6}: Dust with cocoa powder and cinnamon. Enjoy with your favorite cup of Lanna Cafe coffee!

Want to get your hands on your own bag of delicious Lanna Cafe coffee? Of course you do! Choose from light and smooth Classic Roast, medium-bodied Lanna Roast, or rich and full Premium Roast.

~ Visit Lanna Cafe's website at www.lannacafeusa.org to order
- OR -
~ Visit the Lanna Cafe booth Tuesdays 5-9 pm at the River Park farmer's market