Celebrating Marriage!

While it's a little early to celebrate our marriage just yet (I mean, we haven't even been married for 6 months...), I was so excited when my boss asked me to help plan her in-laws' 40th wedding anniversary! 

It's so reassuring to see people who are still in love with each other after being married for so long! I can only hope that we will be just as happy in 39 years and 7.5 months! 

My boss and I scoured Pinterest for some amazing ideas and then put our own spin on things. I helped her create a wreath for their front door, a chalkboard sign and a fantastic cake. I won't go into much detail about the wreath and sign, but I'll explain the cake a bit more below. Enjoy these pictures in the meantime!

I have to say, I had SO much fun making this cake!

The boss didn't want anyone to bump into it, so she put it in the corner. 

It's not perfect, but I did it pretty quickly...on my lunch break. 

This actually turned out WAY cuter than I thought it would!

Ok, so this cake was a first for me. I had never worked with gumpaste before. It was SO much fun!!! I had such a ball! Oh, and the silly puppy did too. In fact, she decided to eat some of the leftovers...that was a fun digestive experience for her. 

I digress. I tinted the gumpaste, rolled it out, used a handy dandy cookie cutter and used these marvelous flower forming cups. 

You can find these at Michaels. They are super helpful!

Sounds easy enough, right? Well, I didn't have quite enough of the cups, so we improvised...with wine glasses. Wish I had a picture of this, but I was too busy to remember to document the process.

The centers of the flowers were crystal beads we found at Michaels. I threaded wire through the holes and twisted until I had little sticks. Obviously, these weren't edible. No word on whether anyone tried them, though.

I alternated between pink and white layers, different sizes and let them "set up" a little differently for each layer. Once they were kinda set up, I assembled them and stuck my crystal/wire stem through them. I wanted them all to hang naturally, but I hadn't thought to purchase one of these: 

So I had to improvise. I twisted the head of a wire hanger (Mommy Dearest flashbacks, anyone?) and let them hang from the fireplace overnight. Clearly I closed the door to the bedroom so no curious kitties or precocious pups would try to taste them. 

As for the cake itself, I basically doctored up a vanilla cake mix by adding a box of vanilla instant pudding and changing the liquid measurements a tad. Don't remember exactly what I did though so will try to find that recipe later. Promise! Scout's Honor! (Haha...but I wasn't a scout so you can't hold me to it!)

As with all icing emergencies, I defer to the person I consider to be the baking guru...Whisk Kid. I followed her directions for Italian Meringue Buttercream. Almost perfectly. Except I'm not perfect and I'm very impatient and this lack of patience and perfection caused me to have to wait a while for things to look as good as hers. Don't be like me. Follow the directions. And don't use boxed egg whites. They just don't work as well. 

Oh, and I also decided to flavor my icing with a little Amaretto. Just to make it interesting. Icing it was a royal pain. I wanted to make it as smooth as possible, so I kept sticking it back in the freezer and then smoothing it out with a paper towel. I know this sounds silly, but it really helped a lot! 

Anywho...after everything was said and done and perfect enough, I stuck the flowers in and, well, you see the final result...and apparently it tasted pretty good too! Success!! 

Happy 40th Anniversary to the Jones'. And yes, that's actually their name, not some pseudonym! 

One Man's Trash...

Is our awesome new dining room!!! I know it's been a hot minute since I blogged last, but we've been extremely busy. You know, the Olympics have been going on. Now, we don't have cable, but I've been super pumped about it at work and I've been spending a lot of time decorating there. I'll be sure to upload pics of that later. 

But, while I've been extremely busy at work, Evan and I have also been really busy at home! See, we have this really awesome friend, Genesis, whose dad had this awesome table. I had seen this thing on Pinterest...

Check out the AWESOME Blog this came from

So I decided I wanted to replicate it. But I couldn't find the same stencil. Or anything close to it. But I also wasn't willing to wait for something I ordered online to come in. Ever get that bug in your butt about finishing a project IMMEDIATELY? That's me every single time I get an idea...

Anyway, I went to Michael's and found a Martha Stewart stencil. And then I stared at it...and tried to figure out how I wanted to lay it all out. And I stared at it for over an hour...

And then I decided I might want to sand it before I got a headache from trying to figure out how to lay everything out. Cali decided to help. By licking the sandpaper. Have I mentioned that she's not very bright?

And then I started to paint. And that took forever. I mean, like...FOREVER. Evan actually went out, had drinks with his friend, Jeff, and came home before I was even close to being done.

Now, Ashley from Domestic Imperfection stained over her paisley table. Since our table had been previously stained or treated or something, I decided that I was just going to varnish over ours. I have yet to do this. I got too impatient and wanted to put it all back together. And use it. I'll get to it eventually.

But I did manage to paint the legs and the bottom lip of the table.

Evan did varnish them while I was at work. It took forever for them to dry. But the table looks really great!

After that was done, I really wanted to use the table...but we had no chairs. But THEN, Gen's awesome mom had these chairs she didn't want anymore! So I gladly took them off her hands! 

Now...they didn't exactly match our decor. And they had a nice layer of dirt on them. So I scrubbed them clean and took the covers off the pads. Mercedes was VERY happy with the "lilypads" we had sitting in the living room for a few days. 

We had friends coming over for dinner last night and I had a day off...so naturally, I repainted them and recovered them. It was a really busy day! 

Now, Gen's mom only had 5 of these chairs. We really need a 6th one. If you happen to have this EXACT SAME chair, please message me! I know the chances are slim, but it would really be great! 

Here's the finished product...our dining room is really coming together! 

And this adorable bird cupcake dish is courtesy of my amazing mother-in-law!
Red velvet cupcakes courtesy of me. :) 

Once we get the bar built in the back, we'll be all set! Can't wait to show everyone the finished product!!

Oh, and here is our newly-built Cali area. I love having all of her stuff in one place!

I promise she has more toys than this...she just doesn't put them away. Ever. 

Thanks to Ben and Phyllis for her adorable Georgia bowls! We all love them!