Welcome to the World Harper Grace!

My brother Casey and his beautiful wife Leslie welcomed a baby girl into the world. My entire family was so excited for her arrival. Harper Grace is my parent's first grandchild and my first niece. We could not wait to take some pictures of our beautiful baby girl, so at just a week old she is already a model!

I'm definitely not a professional photographer, in fact I just got a fancy camera as a graduation present last May. But I've been practicing, reading tutorials and looking at photos I like. We took the pictures in my Mom's backyard which is well shaded and the grass is lush and green. And we picked the perfect time of day, around 4:30 PM. My Mom picked out a beautiful antique quilt my great grandmother made and an antique mirror that used to hang in my room when I was a little girl.

I have to say, she was fantastic and the taking pictures of her was so fun. I'm enjoying every minute of being an aunt. Maybe in a few years in can give her a cousin :)

Ciao!

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Baby Shower Cookies

In a few days I will be an Aunt for the very first time! Just a few weeks ago my aunt's threw a beautiful, fun baby shower for my sister-in-law Leslie. I was thrilled to make some cute cookies for my coming niece, Harper Grace, as shower favors. I'm so excited to show them to ya'll. Enjoy!

Ciao!

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New York, New York

My cousin had a birthday recently. Her mom, my aunt, is wonderful at planning parties and every year she gives Emily a fabulous themed party. Emily has a big personality; she's a cheerleader, gymnast and dancer. So when Christine began thinking about Emily's party, she thought about her recent plea to go to New York City! I was thrilled when she asked me to create some fun New York themed cookies for Emily's party. Check out the finished product:

Ciao!

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Don't call it a come back....

I'm back! I hope ya'll have been wondering where I've been these past 6 months. Well wonder no more. It was a tough final semester finishing school but I did it! It feels so great and I'm so excited to be able to return to my hobbies and bring me even more joy. Plus I get to spend more time with my family and my incredible husband.

It wasn't all reading and writing this semester. My lovely sister-in-law Alisha did ask me to do some yummy cupcakes for a bridal shower for her friend. I was excited to be able to create something for her and she was so easy to please. She let me be creative and do whatever flavor combination and style I wanted. Her friends wedding colors were purple and white so I decided to work with that. Then I found this fun tutorial on how to create edible sunflowers from pineapple! I just had to give it a try. Of course you can check out the tutorial here. If your coing to attempt to do these, you'll be thrilled with how easy they are to do. Here are a couple of tips, when you slice the pineapple, let it sit on a few paper towels for an hour or so to get rid of some of the juices. You'll also need to really concentrate on cutting the slices as thin as possible, otherwise it wil take FOREVER to dry out them out into flowers. I actually left mine in a little long in the oven so that they browned around the edges because I really liked the color it created.

It's always super important to me that whatever I create taste great. What's the point in creating something that's pretty but dry, bland or just gross. I want my creations to taste as good as they look! So I went in search for the perfect vanilla cupcake recipe. I didn't have to look far. Glory, over at Glorious Treats (haha get it, Glory, Glorious) had already done all the research for me. She has discovered THE best recipe for vanilla cupcakes EVER. You can find it here. I really wanted to challenge myself with these cupcakes so I decided to fill them with something and if you know me at all you know I love chocolate. And what's better than chocolate ganache? What I was really happy to learn is that it is soooooo easy to make ganache. Of course the amazing folks over at Martha Stewart have a recipe and tutorial for ganache here. To cut the rich taste of the ganache, I decided to top the cupcake with classic vanilla buttercream icing. This was a big challenge for me as I've never been able to successfully make buttercream icing from scratch. I've made may attempts but it always seems to separate. I used this recipe from Magnolia Bakery that I Am Baker posted here. It totally worked! A couple of tips and apparently what I had been doing wrong the whole time you really have to wait for the unsalted butter to reach room temperature and you must use heavy cream. Otherwise, your icing will separate and be super runny and gross. These cupcakes turned out cute and delicious!

I'm so glad to be back to blogging, I missed ya'll and I hope you enjoy these! 

Ciao!

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Holiday Invites

Lately I've been bouncing between pasting and cutting paper and baking and icing cookies. One of my students, Megan, recently told me her Mom needed some invites for a Christmas party. I was excited to do them but it was going to be a challenge since she needed them quickly and I had several papers and groups projects due that week. So I had to be creative and be creative fast! After two trips to Hobby Lobby and two evenings of work, I had 20 beautiful custom Holiday invites. These were so cute, simple and I was so proud of them.

I wish the pictures were a bit clearer, I apologize for that. I layered on top of green textured paper. I put this beautiful white paper that has a great iridescent, shiny effect that reminded me of snow.  I got a little snowflake punch and glued the snowflakes for the martini glass which I glued to actual toothpicks. I also drew the martini glass and cut them by hand. The lettering was printed off my computer. For a nice touch I stamped the envelope with a snowflake.

Debbie and Megan loved them and told me their guests loved them too. It was a great experience to create something quickly that I was happy with in the end.

Ciao!

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Christmas is Here!

Tap, Tap, is this thing on? It's been a whirlwind of a few months but also an exciting few months. Filled with many ups and downs. I was asked by the wonderful Ms. Maria at the Yancey House to make some treats for her guests visiting her beautiful home for the Grayson Tour of Homes. I have never done such a large order, of 200, but was more than willing to try. My Mom graciously allowed me to use her kitchen since mine was very far away and not prepared for so many.

I had made several attempts at a design for these but was not happy with any of them. Finally I spotted a technique I loved.

The pattern was so easy to create. While the white icing was still wet I alternated lines of red and green icing. When that was done I ran a toothpick through the lines, alternating up and down. When the icing was dry, I sanded the tops with gold sanding sugar. Finally the monogram was added for a very personal touch.

We added the business cards to the packages so that the treats would also supply some business for the Yancey House. 

It was a lot of work but I enjoyed the time working with my Mom and teaching her how to do these. I hope you enjoy them too! Merry Christmas to you!

Ciao

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For Home and Hearth

Every since I started using Pinterest, I have been continuously inspired to create. There are some fantastically creative people out there. And since there really are no "new" ideas, I've been recreating some of my favorite things on there as gifts.

This one is definitely my favorite. I made it for a friend who is getting married in December. I made some fabulous invitations for her. I'll post those for you later. I wanted to make her a keepsake but also something for her new home. The same scrapbook paper I used for her invitations, I used to make this piece of art! I just added the buttons.

This one I made for my Mom for her birthday. I was pretty impressed with myself on this one. I bought the frame, plain unfinished, the hooks at home depot and painted the letter by hand. I painted the frame grey, let it dry, and then painted it white. The next morning I used sandpaper to scuff it and distress it. I painted the O directly on the scrapbook paper the night before, making sure I didn't s\use too much paint which makes the paper curl.

These gifts were super easy, the frames and scrapbook paper do all the work. I hope you try it out soon!

Ciao!

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