Time to Get Creative

There are so many fun things coming up! This weekend I'm hosting our annual Lord of the Rings Marathon. You may remember the Hobbit cake I made for it last year. The Legolas die-cutout is ready and waiting at my house and I just have to finalize the menu for a full day of eats. I think I'm going to try to make the Eye of Sauron cupcakes. I also found a recipe for Lembas bread that I'm pretty excited about!

The palace has announced that Kate is due in July! That means I can start planning a royal baby shower! I'm going to do some sort of tea party. Luckily I have a while to figure out the menu for that!

The Princes Half is approaching way faster than I am prepared for. Since I don't like to dwell on how out of shape I am, I'm just going to focus on what really matters: my costume! I have a purple skirt procured from Team Sparkle. Now I just need to figure out a top and my hair! SO MUCH TO PLAN.

Lost: Looking Back At One of the Best TV Shows of All Time

Words cannot describe how much I miss this show. For an hour every week I was transported to a magical island where I never knew what the heck was going on. First Ben is evil, then he's kinda good? Maybe just misunderstood. Kate's with Jack, no, she's with Sawyer, back with Jack. They're in the past, they're in the future, they're.... sideways? You had the Others, the Dharma Initiative, the Boaties (I love you Faraday!), the back of the plane (which I guess audiences decided was too many characters to keep track of so they literally killed all but one of them off - RIP Echo.) I sobbed like a baby during The Constant which I'm sure we can all agree was the best episode of any show ever. AMIRIGHT!?

For the series finale we had themed party. *shocker!* I dressed up as one of my favorite bad-ass characters - Juliet. I let my hair dry wavy, used a good amount of bronzer to get that "I've been living in the jungle for the past 10 years" look, even bought a toy gun to show how bad-ass I am.

No Lost party would be complete without a healthy supply of Dharma food. I found this amazing website that has labels for TONS of products. Then during lunch one day I did the whole press-the-print-button-then-sprint-to-the-copy-room-so-nobody-sees-you-printing-weird-pringles-like-labels thing at work.

Mmmmm.... This Dharma stuff tastes just like Hersey's!

And of course it wouldn't be a true Lost party without Sawyers beverage of choice. I can't believe its been a little over 2 years since we've had to say good-bye to the passengers of Oceanic flight 815. You will never be forgotten.

Another Party In The Bag

1.) Google changed their blog interface and it is FREAKING ME OUT. 

2.) Oxford Party = Big Success!! We finished off 2 bottles of Pimms and I think everybody enjoyed it. 

It ended up being more a blend of classy Oxford (Pimms, cucumber sandwiches, and scones) and your typical American BBQ (chips & dip, hot dogs, and Bud Light) but everybody had fun and most of my guests dressed up! Yay theme parties!! 

I made the BEST COOKIES EVER - and then ate about 10 of them. Seriously need to start exercising again. I put them in a Ben's Cookie's tin since that's what they remind me of. I'm still sad their Utah store closed. *sigh*

Again to stress how this was a combo UK/USA party - the day started with a thrilling game of Croquette....

 ...and ended with video games.

Though it is Beatles Rock Band - so that fits the theme right??

Oxford Party

The City of Dreaming Spires

Time for another Themed party!!! The weather is warming up and I'm feeling a little nostalgic for my favorite city on earth - Oxford. It is also in my favor that I live on Oxford street so double reason for the theme! I'm going to have people dress in their preppiest clothes, make a bunch of English food and buy a lot of English drinks. I still need to work on the menu, but I've pretty much decided on the drinks - the most important being Pimm's Cup!

Pimm's Cup is very popular in England in the summer. Usually imbibed at cricket matches and crew races, we'll have to make do with the croquet set I just bought. I am so looking forward to hosting a garden party. I am NOT looking forward to manicuring the back lawn beforehand. At least that can count as my exercise for the week right??

Let Those Hungry Kids Eat Cake!

Here it is! The COOLEST cake I've ever made!! Get ready for A LOT of pictures. I took them at almost every step of the way - so here we go:

I baked a yellow cake and frosted it with store bought 

frosting - not enough time to make my own! Also, still delicious. 

I used black Fondarific butter cream fondant for my base - it is actually delicious. I had never liked fondant before, but I can definitely eat this stuff. Dying anything black is a feat in itself so I'm happy I could by pre-dyed fondant. 

Time to roll it out! It was a bit of a pain because I have the WORST 

kitchen table known to man for baking. There are 5 leaves 

in it so you get lines in EVERYTHING.

Transferred the fondant to the cake.

Smoothed it out and cut off the excess. Time for decorating!! 

I got my fondant tools all ready. I bought 

Wilton's white fondant to mold into the mocking jay.

Using the lid to the fondant and the slightly smaller lid to 

the frosting can, I cut out this circle and then painted it gold.

Next I shaped the head and used one of my decorating tools to 

texture the head to make it look like it has feathers.

I started assembling the mockingjay on the cake. I made the body 

and the tail out of one piece of fondant and cut lines into the tail.

I used a leaf cookie cutter for the feathers because that was all I had.

I filled in the wings with my feather/leaves and then made an arrow to lay across the bottom. I pulled the mockingjay's beak down a bit so it looks like its biting the arrow. 

Then I gave it the Midas touch.

Woot!

Cutting out letters!

I had to work a little with the kerning. I put way too much space 

between "be" and "ever" at first and had to move it all around.

Then I used the leaf cutter to *gasp* actually cut out leaves for the border. 

I rolled purple balls, rolled them in disco dust, 

then indented them to look like berries. 

Nightlock berries. 

And there you have it! My finished Hunger Games Mockingjay cake!! 

I have to give credit to Pikko's step by step instructions on how she made her Hunger Games cake. I followed it to make the wings and then eyeballed the rest. Ahhh - November 22, 2013 can't get here soon enough!! 

Hunger Games Party: Nobody's Hungry Here!

I looked through the Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook for recipes to make for the party. I picked 3 different ones - Lamb Stew, Prim's Goat Cheese Truffles, and Cheese Buns.

For the Lamb stew I pre-chopped everything 2 days before and then threw it all in the Crockpot the morning of the party.  It cooked well but there are definitely things I will change next time I make this recipe.

1.)    I'm going to buy pre-cut lamb or use beef instead. Lamb is a pain in the butt to cut up and its pretty expensive to boot. 

2.)    I'm leaving out the sugar. The recipe has 5 cups of plums plus granulated and brown sugar - so it was pretty sweet. I think it'd taste better minus the sugar.

3.)    Cut the recipe in half. Nobody LOVED the stew. It didn't taste bad, it just wasn't fantastic. So I have A LOT left over. The recipe says 8-9 servings, but it made way more than that. I've been eating the leftovers all week, and probably have enough to eat it all next week too. 

The goat cheese truffles were my favorite - a little bit of a pain because it calls for all fresh herbs. But they were delicious and ALL of them got eaten

The cheese buns were yummy too - kinda tasted a bit like red lobster rolls. Shout out to my friend Amanda who actually made these while I ran around like a crazy person decorating and getting my costume together.

I also made croissants (because how can you have a Hunger Games party without them?) I sprinkled sesame seeds on top to give them more of a "District 11" feel. 

I decorated with toy parachutes to look 

like the capitol sent the bread to us.

This one just makes me laugh.

HUNGER GAMES TONIGHT!!!

This has me laughing non-stop. As I said before, this week has been crazy - I was up till 1am last night making THE COOLEST CAKE OF MY LIFE. Get excited for that post next week. I have my Effie hair, my Effie nails, and my Effie eyelashes. Hopefully the dress and shoes will fit in well with the rest. OH MY GOSH YOU GUYS - in 7.5 hours I WILL BE WATCHING THE HUNGER GAMES. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Accio Cauldron Cake!

If you've been reading this blog you know I love nerdy things and theme parties and especially the combination of the two. That’s why for the last Harry Potter movie I had a big party before we all went out to the midnight showing (yes, in costume!) I made a few things from the Harry Potter Cookbook - Pumpkin Pasties and Harry's favorite dessert - treacle tart. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal theme park in Orlando has these DELICIOUS cauldron cakes.

Yes, that’s me in Diagon Alley. MAGICAL!

I tried to recreate them for the party. I didn't get the feet on the cauldron - but the top looks cool. I made chocolate cupcakes and put a dollop of icing in the middle. Then using melting chocolate wafers, I traced out handles on wax paper and when they hardened, placed them on top of the cupcake for the full "cauldron effect."

I think it’s a bit like the ice cream truck though; it's just not the same if you don't get a cauldron cake straight from Diagon Alley. Hit the jump for more HP food photos!

One Ring To Rule Them All

I am a nerd. I love fantasy and sci-fi and am therefore uber psyched for the new Hobbit movie!!




My whole family loves Lord of the Rings - in fact, my parents took my brother, sister, and me out of school to go to the very first showing the day it was released. I think we saw each movie at least twice in theaters. We own all the extended versions on DVD and may or may not also own this life size cutout:

Another thing I love? THEMED PARTIES! Over the summer a few friends and I got together for the ultimate marathon - all 3 LOTR movies (extended versions!) in one day. Twelve pure hours of Middle Earth geek-awesomeness. it. was. fantastic. One of my friends works for an interior design firm and printed out a giant map of Middle Earth so we could move the characters around as the story progressed.

All our meals were themed around the movie as well. (which basically just means we ate British food all day) For breakfast we had scones and tea. Fruit for second breakfast. A nice stew for dinner. Trail mix for elevensies. And I made this Hobbit Hole cake for dessert!

I used a cupcake for the Hobbit Hole bit and melted down chocolate for the stepping stones and fence. I had to fill in a lot of the gaps with copious amounts of frosting but its delicious so a little more wont hurt anyone. I think the pearl sprinkle finishes it off pretty nicely as the door handle.

I plan on being at the midnight showing of the Hobbit so maybe I'll throw a pre-viewing party and make some more fun Middle-Earth themed foods. Dwarf cupcakes?

A few more photos of the party after the jump.