Pokemon, Gotta Catch Them All!

Happy Friday!  I can't believe how fast each week is flying by!  It's the end of the month already!!
Instead of posting something Halloween related, I thought I'd jump into my nephew's super cool Pokemon birthday!

Justin is the middle child of my cousin.  So, technically, he's not my nephew... but in the Asian world, you're Auntie and Uncle to all young kids!  I had a great time creating themed goodies for my nephew!  The awe on his face when he saw how exact I got to Pokemon was priceless.  For this party, I ended up making a small cake, poke ball cake pops, and some cute cupcakes!  Check it out:

My cousin has three boys....Three! Her and her husband definitely has their hands full with these three cuties!  There's Jacob in the middle, Justin on the left, and cute little Jared on the right.

That's me and the birthday boy!  I had a great time making yummies for him and attending his birthday party!

Have a safe and fun Halloween weekend, dear readers!

Do All Things With Love

Hello Blogworld!

I know it's been a while since I updated my blog.  A long while, actually.  I'm hoping (again) to start writing more on this blog.  I find that I really enjoy seeing the progress I've made!  As you all know, from previous posts, my brother and I have taken over our family business.  We are finally growing it to be a ritual part of your daily breakfast (donuts) and to also merge what I've been creating here on the blog (catering).  So, I've been pretty busy with creating another name for myself, but in the real world (aah!).  Although, I find that I missed writing and updating those who have been with me from the start of this blog.  SO, I will try my best to write more posts!!

Anyways, a lot have happened from my last post.  I believe the last one was right at the beginning of the year!  Today's post is an update on my life (don't worry, I've got pictures too!).  Today's post is on my wedding!  I got married at the end of May 2015.  Seeing as it is both our second time around, I thought we were going to have a very small, intimate wedding.  Nope.  Not quite!  We ended up having 325 guests (!!) and every single one was so happy to celebrate with us!

We decided to have a simple, outdoor wedding.  We ended up choosing San Dieguito County Park, which was right at the border of Rancho Santa Fe.  It was a beautiful, well-maintained park! We did everything ourselves...well, we did everything we could ourselves and in a sense of not vending out services.  We definitely had a lot of great friends and family who put in their share of help too!  I made all the "save-the-dates" and wedding invitations myself.  I already knew that I loved peonies and wanted to make that flower my main theme.  And pink (of course!).  So, we had a simple but elegant and fun wedding outdoors!  Thank you Stone and Shelby Crandall of Stone Crandall Photography for these amazing photos!

My husband designed my beautiful ring.  He picked out the rock (from raw), had it cut and polished to this beautiful cushion cut, and set in a one of a kind heirloom quality rose gold setting.  This gorgeous morganite stone (my most favorite!) is adorned with pink sapphires all around.  I LOVE my ring! Anyways, we decided to stay at The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe the night before the wedding.  What a beautiful property!  But even better, the service was amazing!  We will definitely stay there again!

Peonies everywhere!  I just love that flower!  I even made a board of flowers for our alter.  It was a good thing I decided to use silk flowers instead of fresh!  I think overall the board looked very nice!  We decided to have no seating chart.  Guests were able to sit wherever they please.  What made it easy was that guests were seated for the ceremony and reception.  Where they sat for the ceremony was where they were eating at the reception! Aren't those two young men adorable?  We were roaming around the Hillcrest farmers market one Sunday and the young boys were playing Canon in D.  We decided to approach them and asked if they were interested in playing for our wedding.  We were so happy that they said yes!  Our wedding was their first paid gig!  And they did a fantastic job!  They mashed up two versions of Canon in D, to create their own version and played that as I walked down the aisle.  Then, as per hubby's request, they played the funeral march as we walked down the aisle, and kicked it up a notch with Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine".

After our ceremony, guests were treated to crepes and wood fired pizzas!  We decided to go the nontraditional route and had food trucks cater!  Although, with the set up, you wouldn't have known these vendors were originally food trucks!

I also made our cakes!  I decided not to have a dessert table (even though I have created plenty for other couples!) and ended up having a cake buffet!  I ended up getting a couple of chocolate cakes from Costco since, at the last minute, I decided that we wouldn't have enough cake to go around!  That proved to be a good buy, since it really balanced out the look of the cake table!

I had found these super adorable donut truck pdfs online.  I tested it by printing one, cutting it out and putting it together.  It didn't feel like that much work.....boy was I wrong!  Imagine cutting out 600 pieces of paper...and then folding and glueing them together to make 300 trucks....what was I thinking?! Seriously, the idea sounded good in my head...and one truck was super adorable.  But when I started cutting and was 10 trucks in....I almost stopped!  But I couldn't stop!  The idea took hold already!  In the end, I'm glad I stuck to it!  We filled these trucks with chocolate dipped donut holes and guests left with a piece us, the donut family!

The bestest friends a girl can have!  We always have a blast making zombie faces!

We had such a wonderful time celebrating with all our friends and family and was so happy everyone took the time to come celebrate with us!  And now, blog world, you had a glimpse into our memorable day.  I hope I made up for the lack of posts!

Until next time readers! Thanks for reading!

Audrey's 5th Birthday

Ahh...Saturday mornings.  I forget how it feels to wake up naturally, without an alarm clock and without plans!  Actually, I woke up this morning in a slight panic because I thought I forgot to set my alarm for work at the donut shop!  And then realized it was Saturday!  Yay...a day I actually didn't need to set my alarm.  And now, here I am, somewhat awake...pot of coffee ready...hubby playing video games and me, well, how about a new blog post?

Today's post is on Audrey's Mickey/Minnie Mouse birthday party.  It was a pretty simple order for me, that included cake, sugar cookies, and donut holes.  Of course, I added, in the fashion I usually do, Mickey and Minnie Mouse shaped donuts and macarons!  This order was a test in ability, patience, agility, and how to restart my heart from shock.  I would like to say I passed in each section.  Didn't I say this was a simple order??  Check it out:

The order started out well.  I figured I'll get most of the cake ready and then put on the mouse shapes the morning of...just so that the black doesn't condense onto the rest of the cake.  So, I got the cake ready to this stage (above)..and popped it into the fridge.  Now, I know there have been a lot of back and forth about putting fondant cakes into the fridge.  You're not supposed to and some do and swear by it and some don't and swear by it.  WELL, I've put fondant decorated cakes into the fridge before...many times, and have been fine.  This time around, the morning of the event, I went into work to finish up my 90% done cake.  And this was what greeted me:

Lesson one: how to restart my heart.  I literally shut the fridge door, blinked, and opened up the door again.  And then I thought if I blinked hard enough and opened my eyes wide enough, that the cake would magically appear as it was when I first placed it into the fridge.  Yeah...that didn't happen.  As you can see in the middle white layer, I had already wiped it to see how easy this would be to clean up.  It just smeared all over and laughed in my face.  Yikers, I thought...well, no time to sit and cry about it...I had to get going!  I cleaned the cake up as well as I could...and it was a pretty difficult task.  You see, the problem was, this cake was placed into one of our new refrigerators.  The temperature must have went too low and semi-frozed the cake.  Because when it was out and I was cleaning it up, it kept thawing out and running. even as I cleaned it up :(  The biggest problem was trying to get a clean line and clear definition of each cake layer, while cleaning up the sopping mess.  Here is the result:

What do you think?  Not too shabby, I thought.  Especially with no options to completely re-do the entire cake!  Here are the rest of the goodies:

What do your think about those Mickey and Minnie donuts?  That's something fun I can see selling at the donut shop!  Same with the sugar cookies and macarons.  These treats were a lot of fun to make and decorate.  Even the cake was fun...and given that extra excitement the cake gave me...well, I would be perfectly fine if it didn't try that again!  But hey, it's all in a day's work!

I'm just glad that everything came out well!  Happy birthday again sweet Audrey!  Until the next post dear readers!  Have a fantastic weekend!  Oh yeah..I almost forgot!  Happy new year dear readers!  Let's make 2015 a blast and just as memorable!

Tiffany's Inspired Baby Shower

Good morning blogging world!  Well, it looks like it's finally getting cold here in this fine city I call San Diego!  We actually have temperatures in the upper 40's and into the 50's!  In fact, in a house that is always air-conditioned (hubby likes it cold!), we actually have the heater on! Brrr brrr brrr!  I am actually in the middle of baking up Hawaiian rolls this morning, so while I'm waiting on it to rise, I decided to churn out a blog post!   I know I haven't been writing for a while (again!)...sowiee...It has definitely been very busy season!  I've got tons of goodies I want to share with you, including a couple of birthdays and weddings...but today's post is dedicated to a Tiffany's inspired baby shower!

I met the hostess of this shower through a dear friend of mine.  My friend was supposed to help with the goodies for this shower, but because she was in the midst of moving to Japan, along with health clearances and whatnots, she wasn't able to help out.  Instead, she gave Toni (the hostess) my info and I was able to help Toni out!  Some sweets requested were: creme brulee, mini fruit tarts, French macarons, nutella cheesecake, rice krispy treats, donut holes, chocolate dipped strawberries and much more!  The theme to this shower was Tiffany's meet Vans...since the baby to be is a sweet baby boy.  Toni found some super cute baby shower themed food and mini sized yummies, which I helped incorporate into the savory side of things.  Check it out!

I made those sweet baby carriages out of hard boiled egg and carrots!  They were charming to have all around the table!  I also made mini 7 layer dips!  These were the size of 4 oz portion cups.  I though they were definitely the right size for a party that had tons of food and sweets!  What's nice about these dips is that you can scoop out all 7 flavors for each bite, instead of having to go through so much with the regular sized dips!  

All in all, I had a great time creating the sweets and setting up the table.  More importantly, I met a great lady who went through so much to give her baby sister a fantastic baby shower!

Until next time!

Football Madess

Happy Tuesday everyone!  See, I told you I'd have another post for you, didn't I?  I know, I'm pretty proud that I was able to follow through!  Especially with it being so close to my bedtime!  (I just glanced at my clock and it says 5:27pm).  I've been turning in pretty early, trying to catch up on my zzz's.  That's probably why I have enough energy to write another post!  Anywho, since we're in the middle of (or start of?) football season, I glanced through my files of posts to write and came upon a football dessert table that I created a few moons ago.  I don't think I had the pleasure of sharing it with all my fans, so here we go!

Sorry for the terrible lighting, but this was a football banquet that was held in a bowling alley!  The table was set up in the front, where the projector also shined (shone?) upon....hence, all that blue lighting.  Anyways, a dear friend commissioned me to do a football dessert table for her little boy's football banquet.  Yes, dear readers, this lovely table was for a bunch of young(ish) kids!  But don't you think even young'uns can appreciate the look of their desserts and not just the desserts?  I think so, and I think those boys loved it.

Here are some of the awesome desserts I made for this banquet.  We had mini "sliders" cupcakes accompanied by sugar cookie "fries," mini chocolate chip cookies, tiny apple strudels, cake pops, caramel popcorn, mini palmier cookies, puff pastry shells filled with home made whipped cream, chocolate candies, and donut holes from yours truly's shop: San Diego's Finest Donuts & Bakery.   What kid wouldn't find all these yummies appealing??

Here's another shot of those cool mini sliders!  I think mini slider cupcakes are one of my favorites.  It's probably because I love hamburgers in real life, so anything that reminds me of burgers...me like!

I wanted to divert your attention to the lovely green "field" that the desserts sat upon.  I actually made this linen myself.  And because it's all about football, I thought the kiddos would get a kick out of my football field linen.  (I think they did!)

This was definitely a fun event to cater, and definitely a different theme than what I've been doing prior.  However, it was just as fun and I am always stunned at the end product.  Thanks for stopping by!