Wedding Stuff!

How excited am I that I have the ability to get a couple of wedding things done finally? Super! I'mtrying to put together all of the items that will go in the "Out of Town" guest bags.

*I've embroidered half of the boat bags so far with their respective "owners" names.

* I've already designed, printed, and cut the door hangers. I did these back December.

* I just designed, printed, and attached the labels to the water bottles (two per bag). I wish the starfish on the label showed up brighter. The "Nutrition Facts" I designed cracks me up!!

* I've completed 7 out of 16 welcome books. I absolutely adore these. (they just took a while to do!)

Bags (with potential beach towel to be embroidered):

Door Hanger:
Front:Back:

I'll post pictures of the inside of the books at some point. There are a total of 9 pages. Welcome note, Key Largo facts, getting around, sharing memories (info about where to post photos), word search, maze, hidden message word search, sudoku, and contact information!

St. Patrick's Day Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

Since I haven't posted in a while, I think I'm long over due. St. Patrick's day was three days ago
and with some guests aboard, why not make cupcakes! I was a little on the nervous side after Valentines day's fiasco (which hopefully will never repeat itself). After scrolling through Pinterest, I noticed a Irish Car Bomb Cupcake pin. Upon clicking it, I was lead toBrownEyedBaker's blog. Oh how I love her! Especially her Pistachio Nut Ice Cream for my boss.

I decided a midday booze fest was in store. I love to cook with wine and sometimes I add it to my food! Okay, so I copied her recipe for the

cupcakes and ganache. Both were fabulous. Her icing, I did not follow. It seemed like a little bit too much butter in the mix. My inner Paula Dean wanted to scream for it, but I don't think anyones waistline wanted it. SuzyBakes is another great blog. Her icing recipe was what I used to work with. I did add another teaspoon (or two) of Bailey's.

Below are the ingredients so you can check out what's in each part. If you want the full recipe, see above for their respective websites.

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

Yield: 24 cupcakes

Prep Time: 40 minutes | Bake Time: 17 minutes

For the Cupcakes:
1 cup Guinness stout
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1½ teaspoons baking soda
¾ teaspoons salt
2 eggs
2/3 cup sour cream

For the Whiskey Ganache Filling:
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2/3 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
2 teaspoons Irish whiskey

For the Frosting:
1 stick unsalted butter
3 - 4 cups confectioner's sugar
3T Bailey's Irish Cream
1T milk

It's really sad being stuck in The Bahamas sometimes. I know, boohoo me, but finding decorations for... well, anything, is difficult. I didn't have time to print cute St. Patrick's Day printables, so I stuck in a frilly (and very annoyingly tall) green pick.

These cupcakes were rich, moist, and divine. Since I ran out of icing about 3/4 of the way through, I improvised. Best.Deicision.Ever. Instead of a sugar icing - whip all of these together:

For the Whipped Icing:
1/2 cup heavy whipped cream
4t Bailey's Irish Cream
Dash of sugar (optional)

It's a lot lighter and a little less "sugary". It completely did me in. Side note, because of the wrapped I cooked them in, they're best eaten with a fork!

Enjoy!

Instagram

Okay, it's been a while. I know.

I did need a few days to turn the brain copletely off, and I believe I did it quite well. No guests on, its windy outside, and I got in only one snorkel session yesterday. Today however, I have decided to finally try out the Instagram app I put on my phone months ago!

I am in L.O.V.E. with this app. I feel like I've become a phone-ographer! There are so many filters that make your photo crisp, clear, and interesting. If you haven't added Instagram to your smart phone, you have no idea what you're missing.

Cake disaster.

Let's not talk about it. Some things are better left unknown and in the dark.

Okay, so let's talk about it without posting a picture.

Yes, no picture. The cake it's self turned out fine, but the icing was one hot mess. Twice. I ended up throwing out the icing that the recipe called for. I think it was too much champagne, and it wouldn't set. The next batch of icing I made, wouldn't set. My frustration almost got the best of me and my galley when Bill told me, "suck it up and finish it." I did and it was yummy, but just the darn ugliest iced cake ever. I'm staring at it now and would love to chuck it over board for the sergeant majors to attack, but I don't think they'll eat cake. Damn it, LET THEM EAT CAKE!

On the plus side, the weather has been lovely! We had an impromptu dive yesterday and we're going for it again today. This time I'm bringing my GoPro to post pictures. Let's hope I've remembered to charge my battery.

Booze Cakes!

Today is Valentine's Day and I get to mix to of my favorite things! Booze + Cakes! Since there's never a dull moment on this boat, I decided to get a kickstart this morning to my Pink Champagne cake. Normally, I see champagne and say "YAY, CHAMPAGNE!", but I've been under the weather and all you're getting out of me is "yay, champagne!" Ho hum.

I tried this recipe for my New Years dessert which I found in the book Booze Cakes by Krystina Castella, and turned it into a champagne trifle. It was a-mazing. For design, I found this pinkalicious inspiration from Glorious Treats. I only have two round pans, limited time, and patience (see under the weather comment above). I'm only doing two alternating colors, white and a dusty pink.

I have approximately three types of champagne on board. Veuve Cliquot, Graham Beck Blancs de Blancs Vintage, and a Graham Beck Rose. I chose the rose. I'm not sure if its available every where, but I've fallen in love with this "champagne" (its actually sparkling wine if you want to get technical) from South Africa. Here is a great write up/description of the Graham Beck Rose. If it's available in your area, try it. It's only about $17 per bottle vs. $42 for Veuve Cliquot. I could talk champagne for hours, but I'm not going to. I'm going to bake.

Tagxedo

I'm loving this Tagxedo app! You can create all sorts of cool things with it. It's a great word cloud program as you can see from above. This Google document slide show shows 101 Things Ways to Use Tagxedo. It's fun to play around with. This is how I created the second graphic on my Love is patient .pdf printout.

Another fun text app is Festisite. I'm not as impressed with it, but it does remind me of writing square swirl notes to friends in grade school.

Printouts for Popups

I've decided to post the printouts I made for my cards. Not sure if they'll make sense to anyone, or if they'll see them, but its worth a shot!

I'm not a fan of Google Documents. It works well for .pdf files, but not .docx. If you can convert a .pdf then you can manipulate the printouts.

- I used 12" x 12" scrapbook card stock for the cards. They ended up being 6" x 5" cards. For the exterior, just fold your card stock in half and glue together, then fold again. You'll need to cut off the excess 1" with a straight cutter.

- Since I made two cards, I cut 1 piece of card stock in half and printed each individually. Print on the wrong side since the printouts are made as cutting guidelines. I'm limited on my resources here in the Bahamas so I used a razor blade and cutting board to make all cuts.

- Practice on plain paper first a few times and you'll get it in no time!

Love popup print out.

I <3 U popup print out.

In case anyone wanted to use the graphic I made (Love is patient) for the front of the card, you can access that and another one I made (which I did not use) here.

A new beginning - Valentine Popups

So here goes nothing. I must have a beginning to a journey, so that day starts now.

It's gloomy here in Harbour Island, and I've decided to finish some projects I've started for Valentine's Day. It's only three days away.

Trying to find a tutorial for a pretty pop up card has been quite the hunt. I was inspired by this card (I <3 U), so I decided to figure it out for myself. It really was quite easy, easy enough for me to try the second card (LOVE). The real trouble in all of this was to figure out what to do on the front. Since I never write on the first page of a notebook or journal, I've had a stigma for the first page of anything.

Both of the cards have the same front design. They just happen to have different variations of red paper, and the book page circles are a tad different. I picked up a book to tear apart when we were in the Abacos last week. Excited to finally put it to use! The circles, or lollies as they're referred to, were found on Ashley's Dandelion Wishes. The frame she's done is cute, and I can see myself using the lollie idea more than once.

The insides are completely different. I didn't think about leaving room for the red boarder around the inside of the I heart you card. It was all experimental any way!

This picture shows the back of the card and as you can see, it's a different paper from the first. I prefer the darker of the two papers, it really leads to a richness. The free printable graphic on the back is from Mommy by day... Crafter by night.

I haven't written anything inside of the cards yet, but I'm giving my Valentine the I <3 U card. Hopefully he'll choose me as his this year, but I'm not sure... I have a really cute dog to compete with!