Last Minute Wedding Update!!

Hi friends and family!  This will probably be the last blog post before the wedding so enjoy it for all it’s worth!  Just an upfront warning, you will see lots of exclamation points and incoherrant rambling (due to my brain being filled with all things WEDDING). If that makes you nauseous, read no further. And lastly, we wish that all of our friends and family in the entire world could be there to celebrate with us and we will really miss everybody not there with us.

Over the past few days things have been winding down, but we have been able to fit in a little fun as well!  My wonderful girl friends and sisters (yup, already calling Emily my sister) threw me a wicked fun bachelorette party.  Thank you so much for a night filled with delicious food, tasty girly drinks, and tons of laughs and happiness.  I am so glad you could turn a stressful week into one of my most fun weeks ever.  I can’t wait to see you all next weekend!  Currently Ben is away for his bachelor party and I am sure his friends are having a nice relaxing weekend on the lake.  Enjoy it honey…this is the LAST time you’ll ever have this much fun with your friends!!!  Married life begins in T-6 days

After about 9 months of planning, almost everything is all set.  This means on Sunday there will actually be food to savor, music to dance to, and drinks to help our guests dance better than they already can!  It’s hard to believe there is less than a week left and I know it is going to go by fast.  We are leaving for Van Hornesville on Wednesday morning, we’ll meet the guy setting up the tent, and from there things are just going to get rolling.  Ben’s parents also leave on Wednesday, followed by my family on Thursday.  Our first friends arrive on Friday and I can only imagine that we’re going to have 3 straight days of partying with everyone around.   What else might you need to know before you leave for upstate NY?

• The weather is going to be on the cool side.  The weather predictions say it’s going to be around 65 so bring a sweater or wrap to keep warm!  The tent will have sides if it’s too cold, and you can go into the carriage house, but neither will be heated in the evening.
• There is a pool that we will be able to enjoy with us and there is a lake at our rehearsal dinner.  Don’t forget your suits!  Also at the rehearsal dinner there are fields for playing in.  You should bring frisbees or wiffle ball sets.  Also, get ready for some games of “Ninja” which we learned at Eric and Clarissa’s wedding.
• If you have a cooler, we can probably use it!  Would you mind bringing one for us to borrow?
• If you are looking to meet up with other people in the area for our wedding, or would like to set up a hiking trip up the creek (I know Amy might be interested!) post a comment here or on Facebook to find others who want to go too.  There are tons of really amazing things to do outdoors and I am hoping many of you can take advantage of the outdoor beauty.

We can’t wait to see you all and spend a wonderful weekend with everybody we love.  See you soon!

C is for Cupcakes!

Wow- it’s been a long time since I last posted here.  Ben and I have been extremely busy with wedding planning, work, and other peoples’ weddings.  For our own wedding, we’ve accomplished a TON of tasks lately and it really feels good to have so much finished, however after attending Eric and Clarissa’s wedding, it became very clear that we are nowhere near finished!

Before we left for California Ben and I worked on our invitations and favors.  The invitations were designed by Ben, and I proofread and edited them.  He’s a bit more talented when it comes to using Illustrator.  I think we got what we wanted in the end!  The invitations were printed on Fino Cream paper from Paper Source, and stuck onto a Pool backing.  Inside we included directions and a map as well as a little postcard for RSVPs.  We left a space blank for our guests to write an Exclamation! (ad lib style) and have gotten back some great responses!  We love all of you!

After returning from Eric and Clarissa’s wedding (which was beautiful!) I decided it was time to get down to business.  My sister and I made cupcakes and cookies today!  We tried a revamp of the key lime cupcakes and I am happy to proclaim that these are a success!  First, I made my own cake mix, which is very easy, and probably a  lot cheaper.  (All recipes are posted below.)  We added the normal oil, water and eggs to the mix, but threw in some key lime juice and zest for flavoring.  Key limes are so delicious!  They’re so tiny and cute that you know they must be tasty.  Once they came out of the oven we let them cool for an hour.  This is key in order to make the filling work.  The filling is just sweetened condensed milk and lime juice.  To insert the filling, this time we skipped the pastry bag and went for the big guns– a cookie press gun. I don’t know why I did the following, but in order to prime the gun and make sure there weren’t bubbles I started pulling the trigger, but didn’t think about what would happen when the air was gone.  I shot a nice stream of key lime filling straight across the kitchen.  We were entertained by the line of white creamy filling covering my kitchen floor.  Oh, how I love vinyl flooring….  After the mess was cleared we put the cupcakes in the fridge for awhile to let the filling chill.  Becky and I both thought it would be better to frost them once the filling had set.

Then it was time to test the cupcakes...YUM!

Success!  We now know which two recipes we’re going to serve at our wedding.  The only thing left is to figure out the cherry filling for the chocolate cupcakes.  Hey you chefs out there– have any suggestions for me?

I am also making spritz cookies for the wedding.  So far, I’ve made two kinds- cream cheese sugar cookies, and baby chocolate chip cookies.  They’ve both turned out pretty good, but I think I am going to need more variety for the wedding.  What kinds of cookies tickle your fancy?  I have 7 weeks to make as many cookies as possible so don’t hold back, folks!

Without Further Ado here are the recipes:

KEY LIME CUPCAKES
1 large lime, scrubbed (for 1 teaspoon zest and 2 tablespoons juice)
4 eggs
1 package (18.25 ounces) plain yellow cake mix or 2 cups of your homemade mix (see recipe below)
1 package (3.4 ounces) vanilla instant pudding mix
1 1/4 cups water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon coconut flavoring (optional)

FILLING
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
1/3 cup Key lime juice

CAKE MIX
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 cup Crisco
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
2/3 teaspoons salt

CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk

Cupcake Baking then Tasting

I know there will be  a lot of you out there thinking I am crazy for doing this, but we are making our own cupcakes for the wedding!  My sister and I spent several hours the other day baking 3 different kinds of cupcakes for the wedding.

Fluffy Chocolate Cherry, and Hard Lime Cupcakes

All the cupcakes were made from scratch (a first for both of us) so we knew there would be some kinks to work out.  The first was a key lime cupcake which is pretty much just a vanilla cupcake with lime zest and juice.  We started off with a recipe that ended up being horrible to follw, so halfway through making the batter we had to change recipes.  The result was a perfect tasting cupcake, but one that was too hard to pass the test.  The best part was the key lime frosting (creamcheese frosting with lime zest and lime juice added) but it didn’t compensate for the tough cake.  I have plenty of frosting leftover and since the flavor was so good I will be making more this week in order to find a better recipe.  These will probably make it onto the menu, but only if I can make a fluffy cake!

The second kind we tried was lemon.  This was pretty much the same as the lime cupcakes but with lemon.  Surprisingly, these turned out to be fluffier, but for some reason nobody was a fan of the lemon flavor.  Again, they were a little tough to chew, but the flavor was good.  Everybody who tried these and the lime flavor preferred the lime over the lemon.

Now last but not least we made chocolate cupcakes, with a cherry filling.  The chocolate cake part was amazing from scratch.  they were fluffy and perfectly chocolatey.  The filling was made from a reduction of sour cherries, sugar, a bit of tapioca and of course some DiSarono, my favorite.  I didn’t have a recipe for this so I just threw the cherries in a food processor (they would later have to be piped into the cupcakes) along with the sugar.  Since this mixture was too watery, I decided to boil it down.  I only started with 1-1.5 cups of cherries, but it took about 30 minutes to boil off the water and to have a thick enough syrup that would be able to be put inside the cupcakes.  The end product was delicious, but the process of getting the cherries into the cupcakes proved to be difficult.  The first pastry filler tip was too small and we ended up squirting cherries out of the bag, and the second one didn’t reach deep enough to fill a cupcake with enough filling.  We’ll have to experiment with this more next time.  We’ll also have to find a better way to make the cherry filling.  I don’t want to use corn syrup, but that might be the best way to achieve the viscosity we need in a reasonable amount of time. Once we tried the chocolate cupcakes with the filling we knew these would be on the menu, but we really need to find a way to speed up the production process!  Afterall, we’ll have more than 200 cupcakes to make for the wedding!  Yikes!

What’s your top choice for a cupcake, ever?  Which of these sounds appetizing?  What kinds would you try at our wedding?

Eco Wedding Signs

One of our goals for our wedding is to make sure it’s as eco-friendly as possible.  One of my major concerns is that while we want it to be eco-friendly, we still have a budget to stick to.  We’ve decided to go with plastic plates and “silver”ware to cut costs but we are hoping to reuse these for future parties.

That being said, here’s one thing I made this weekend that has zero impact on the environment.

These signs were made from all reused materials.

When my parents bought their property, this picket fence was along the road frontage.  They had planned to repaint these and put the fence back up, but they got put in a big pile in the backyard.  I decided to use this wood for wedding signs, that will direct our guests to important locations during the ceremony and reception, which are at different venues.

Then, I had my mom bring over her old acrylic paints.  Some of these paints are 20+ years old and were a little gloppy, but we just strained out the dried parts and mixed colors together so we had the right quantities of what we needed.  The blue is a mix of about 7 different paints (I recycled the old bottles too!) and the pink is made up of 2 old bottles.  I even think the paintbrushes are the very same ones I used as a kid, so this project cost us absolutely NOTHING!

My parents and little brother chipped in the painting of these signs.  First we watered down a blue-gray paint to give them a uniform color.  They were already stained gray ages ago, but the elements over the years made them pretty messy.  Then we each painted them using the old paint.  The points at the end show the guests which direction to go to find what is on the sign.  I might end up painting some arrows, but for now I think they look great!

These are the kinds of things I love to do.  My family helped paint, and on the day of the wedding everybody will be able to say, “Hey!  There’s something I made!” and they can be proud of their work.  I hope you all enjoy these DIY projects as well!

We’re Getting Married in Van Hornesville!

We haven’t posted here in awhile so I’m stealing the site for our wedding.  I’ll be posting about wedding planning and other related things until September, and then we’ll use the site again for our travels!

Our wedding is going to be September 5,2010 at the Home Farm in Van Hornesville, NY.  For those of you who have never been there, Van Hornesville is a quaint little town of a few hundred people about 25 minutes from Cooperstown.  We chose VH for our wedding because of the meaning VH has had in our lives together.  It’s always been a place of peace and relaxation, but it’s also super fun to explore!  There are hidden caves, “diamond” mines*,  streams and waterfalls, and the perfect mosquito to human ratio (about 0 mosquitos per human).

We hope that our guests will enjoy the area as much as we do.  Please make sure to check out all that the area has to offer!

* The diamonds are really quartz.  Google Herkimer Diamond Mines for more information!  It’s a really fun activity.