birthday and bachelorette festivities

this past weekend was one of my good friend, lauren's bachelorette/birthday party in austin. the days prior to this past weekend were filled with lots of crafty surprises and presents for the guest of honor.


part of the night of the bachelorette, i wanted to do a "toast" drink before we went out. since it was such a special occasion, i wanted to do some sort of champagne toast. i had been eyeing a pinterest craft with painted bottles with writing on them (the tutorial had the bottles in black though) and i thought the white and gold was more fun. i will definitely say that it was spot on in the tutorial was to not take the cork closure off (the part with the wiring). why? let's just say the first bottle doesn't have a top on it anymore and i definitely thought a gun went off in my garage when it randomly decided to "pop off"

(tutorial)

as i mentioned not only was it lauren's bachelorette, it was also her birthday too. not wanting to shadow her birthday by her bachelorette, i wanted to also have something for her birthday as well. i had seen a pinterest (surprise, surprise) tutorial on ombre sugar hearts that i had wanted to try as well. lauren's birthday was definitely a perfect excuse to try it out! it was super easy and fun! loved how they came out. (can't wait to do different shapes and colors!)

(tutorial)

trying to be secreative, i asked lauren what her favorite colors were and she said blue or pink. i decided the birthday girl should have it all so i made bright blue frosting along with the pink ombre hearts. also, saw some blinged our candles on pinterest too and thought it was definitely something i wanted to add to make it as girly as possible!

(pinterest pin for the candles)

here is what the cake looked like in the center (three pink ombre cake layers)

the other craft i made or DIY was her bachelorette scavenger hunt. i designed the inside with photo shop and googled the "to-do" list from various websites. after i printed it off on some card stock i felt like it need it little more bling so i taped this white glittery card stock to the back and wrapped a single ribbon around it for the "closure"

i also made some wedding cake pops but forgot to take a picture of them :(

on a side note: i made a few other things as well since my last post (almost all baking)

this was for valentine's day. 

red velvet heart shaped cake made from scratch. too bad i already had everything to buy it before josh and i went paleo. but at least lauren's fiance, zach got to enjoy it :)

(recipe from bakerella)

needing some sweets around the house after going paleo. i made these DELICIOUS paleo chocolate chip cookies!  

paleo chocolate chip cookies recipe:

ingredients:

3 cups almond flour

.5 c coconut oil

.5 c pure maple syrup

2 eggs

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

1.5 c semi-sweet chocolate chips

directions:

preheat oven to 375 degrees

in a medium mixing bowl combine dry ingredients

in a small mixing bowl beat eggs, maple syrup, and vanilla extract with a hand mixer

pour wet ingredients into dry and beat with a hand mixer until combined

melt coconut oil, pour into batter, and continue to blend until combined

stir in chocolate chips

on a parchment lined baking sheet, drop balls of dough about a tblspn in size

bake for 15 mins and wahla!

oh yea, and one of my recent shoots was featured on The Wedding Chick's sister blog: OnToBaby.com

(happy dance!)