Cupcake Bakery Review - Frost Bake Shoppe

Just wanted to write a quick post about an amazing cupcake bakery in The Woodlands, Texas - Frost Bake Shoppe.

You'll hear more about Zett's Surprise Bridal Shower and Girls Weekend in another post, but I just wanted to quickly highlight some delicious cupcakes and wonderful customer service that I experienced while in Texas.

Photo: frostbakeshoppe.com

In a frantic internet search for a specialty bakery that could make some delicious gourmet cupcakes for the shower, I was pleased to find a newly established bakery with a friendly voice on the other end of the phone.

I explained that I was from Philadelphia coming into town for a surprise party that has a "red, white, and blue" theme. Lucky for us, their signature cupcakes all had those colors incorporated!

We ordered two dozen, consisting of the following flavors:

Chocolate - Vanilla "Frost"

Red Velvet

Vanilla - Chocolate

Strawberry

Snowball

Chocolate Dream

DELICIOUS!

Looking at the list of flavors again, I'm wondering why we didn't order snickerdoodle, or actually just one of each!

The shop is so cute (sorry, there was no time for photos), and the ladies were so helpful and friendly! Be sure to stop on in if you're ever in the Houston suburbs!

Thanks, Frost Bake Shoppe, for helping make the shower a success!

My Best Friend's Wedding - the invitations

The wedding invitations are complete! Mailed out early last week, they have a quick turnaround time, but as this is a destination wedding, a lot of information has been communicated via email and the couple's website. The invitations were more of a formality, but what a fun one! As mentioned previously, the colors we're using for this wedding are turquoise, red, and orange, so naturally these were the colors we used in the invitations.

The end result:

The elements:

The paper components were ordered from invitationoutlet.com. I found the paper to be of good quality, but not too thick. This worked well for me, as I was printing them at home. Invitation Outlet was quick, efficient, economical, and even found me a better deal when I called them to make a change to the order!

The invitations were individually hand stamped using rubber stamps from Paper Source. LOVE THEM! Such great quality stamps, and they really came out well. Very consistent.

I used a combination of the solid and outline mum stamp in different colors. 

All stamped and ready to be assembled...

Remember the fabrics I chose several months back? You can find the post on those HERE.

Well, those fabrics were cut into 8" by 8" squares and one square was included in each invitation with this notecard explaining what to do with it:

You'll see more on that project when the time comes :)

The response card was fun and casual, with plenty of space for invitees to write a nice note:

Part of Zett and Bryan's wonderful story is how they met: while working diligently in Florida on the Obama election campaign. And since President Obama was essentially the one who brought them together, he should of course be invited to the wedding! I had fun addressing this invite (went through 4 envelopes just to make sure it was perfect!)

Did you know that there's a whole office in the White House dedicated to dealing with correspondence such as this?? Well, there is! Find the address below.

They have included a letter with the invitation, explaining their story, and our hope is that they at least get a standard response from an intern with a rubber-stamped signature! We shall see...

(That smudge is from my photo editing to remove the house number)

As you can see, I decided to use a more casual handwriting font, rather than a traditional calligraphy. Fun to use, and easier on my wrists with 175 addresses to write!

All in all, I love the finished product. More importantly, so do the bride and groom! And the great thing about the rubber stamps is that we can use them again and again - favors, place cards, programs, table numbers - anything!

So, what do you think?

Posting to these fabulous websites:

Please welcome my Dad - new to blogging! heymorandphotography.blogspot.com

On March 2nd, my Dad celebrated his - let's call it a "milestone" - birthday. He's a wonderful high school science teacher at T.L. Hanna HS in Anderson, SC (home of "Radio") who loves teaching and his students. He began teaching when I was 15 - a second career for him, but one to which he is certainly well suited. He's that crazy science teacher who goes to some extremes to make the kids talk about his class - like getting cow's hearts from the butcher to dissect on Valentine's Day or swabbing the drinking fountains in the hallway to see what bacteria from them will grow in a petri dish. Of course what they don't realize, is that although they think he may be a little "unorthodox" - they are learning. And that's what makes him a great teacher.

For as long as I can remember, Dad has also always been behind a camera. Every major event in our lives has been documented by him - willingly or not :) In the beginning he had a decent film camera and a tripod, and every family photo consisted of "just one more" shot until he got the right one, while the smiles of my mom, sister, and I turned into blank stares and signs of frustration. You've never seen so many eye rolls captured on film until you've seen our family photo albums!

Over the years his skill has gotten better, his equipment has become more sophisticated, and his "eye" for a great shot has gotten sharper. I think part of this was fueled by his interest in taking photos of his students at their sporting events. It was in the high school arena that he really started to capture great sports action shots. His photos now are nothing short of stunning. A byproduct of his new thirst for photography is also that he has gotten a little more "artsy" with his landscape photography. Beautiful scenery shots and interesting angles - he's really learning some great techniques. Not only that, but he enjoys shooting human portraits, and has a knack for capturing the sunlight in just the right spot. 

So for his "milestone" birthday, I decided to share my newfound love of blogging with him, and encouraged him to start a blog so that he could share his talent with the world. In fact, I started one for him, and with a quick tutorial he has hit the ground running! He quickly picked up how to watermark his photos (as he does sell his sports photography) and enjoys getting reactions from his subjects and observers alike.

Please check out his blog HERE and especially view his previous posts. Most of his photos for now are of student sporting events but his Yosemite Vacation post has some beautiful scenes. His post on his favorite photos has a wide variety of great shots from over the years - and even features a pseudo-celebrity :) I'll also feature his photos in a few months after My Best Friend's Wedding in Panama, as she has asked him to be the photographer.

To amend the movie-ending quote from the movie Radio (if you haven't seen it, you should),

"So if you're ever in Anderson on a Friday in the fall, get there early. You'll see the man they call Morand...snapping photos of the Yellow Jackets as they take the field."

Happy Birthday Dad; I look forward to you sharing your talent with the blogging world!

Philadelphia Flower Show

Spring is coming! I can feel it. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the two feet of snow on our property is finally melting away. To get ready for the new season, I convinced Jim to head into center city with me for the Philadelphia Flower Show on Friday night. Loved it! Picked up some great seeds, artwork from a favorite artist, and some gorgeous pussy willow branches. Loved seeing all the vendors and their crafts, and with all the pamphlets and business cards I picked up, I look forward to exploring what else they have to offer. 

Only took a few photos, but I think they're pretty enough to put you in the mood for sunny days ahead!

Loved the display by Terrain, and look forward to visiting their location when I find some time in the coming weeks.

Lovely tulips

I really loved this prize-winning floral arrangement. Nice and exotic!

Makes you want to sit out in the backyard, no?

An interesting display of flowers in colored water, all suspended by wires from the ceiling.  Really beautiful in person.

Looking forward to our daffodils, azaleas, and forsythias coming into bloom...

Such pretty colors.

In addition to all the gorgeous blooms, everything smelled wonderful! The hyacinths were delicious!

Always stunned by the beauty of a pure white phalaenopsis

Hello spring! I'm waiting for you :)

Our Wedding - October 27th, 2007

It wasn't quite how it all began, but our wedding was definitely the largest event I had ever hosted, and I never lost the taste for planning events...

...I'd been in love with the beauty of weddings well before the first time I saw Father of the Bride. The traditions, the grandeur, the dresses, the flowers - oh how I loved it all! The first wedding I can really remember being a part of was that of Prince Andrew and Lady Sarah Ferguson. Of course, "being a part of" meant being glued to the television at six years old, and wondering what kind of strings I would need to pull in order to be married in Westminster Abbey.

21 years later, and I was living out my fantasy - walking down the aisle of my Westminster Abbey, the Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia. Walking down the aisle to meet my prince (my darling husband Jim), in my satin gown (Anne Barge), borrowed family jewels (from each grandmother), and shoes fit for a queen (Manolos)!

A 14 month engagement and a not-so-demanding job allowed me the time to plan the wedding and honeymoon of our dreams...

The Details:

Aside from the obvious favorite part of that day - marrying my true love - I was so thrilled to see all of the little details I had put so much effort into, all come together. I've heard past brides tell brides-to-be, "don't worry about the details, no-one notices them". I whole heartedly disagree. If you are someone who wants to put all those details into your wedding, by all means, do so! You will be happy with the results, and people will notice.

The wedding invitation sets the tone for the entire event. So much more

than merely an invitation and response card, it can represent the theme and color scheme, it demonstrates the formality of the occasion, and it can show the personalities of the hosts. I believe a wedding invitation should delight the guest that they have been invited, and excite them for the festivities to come. After all, why invite a guest if you don't want them to be there? Opening an invitation to a wedding can feel like an honor - a gift that you have been given the opportunity to attend such a happy occasion. It was for those reasons that I finally was able to convince Jim that our invitation could only be sent in a box! It took a lot of convincing, believe me! I worked with the wonderful staff at I Do Graphics to come up with the whole concept, and they provided beautiful papers and ribbons and wonderfully designed graphics to put the whole idea in the works. I was sent all the pieces, and got to work assembling the boxes, tying the bows, and scribing the calligraphy. I was thrilled with the end result, and guests enjoyed the little surprise in their mailboxes.

The most meaningful detail to me was my use of flowers. It was a fall wedding, so I wanted the colors to be in tune with the season. But I also didn't want our wedding to look like a thanksgiving feast. I love bright and bold colors, and I wanted every detail in our wedding to have a connection to our lives. That led me to link the theme and colors in the wedding to my "home" state of Florida, and bring in some citrus elements. So the colors represented the fall season - oranges, reds, yellows, and greens - but in a brighter, happier display. We used waxy greenery and tropical hues, and the centerpieces had sliced citrus lining the vases. But above all this, every flower in the wedding had to have a meaning. My grandmother was the one who taught me about the meaning of flowers, and how flowers were used in the 1800s to express emotion and sentiments between couples. I therefore integrated this idea into our wedding, and only used flowers that represented the meaning of the day. I carried this one step farther, giving each of my seven bridesmaids a bouquet of a single type of flower.They were flowers that represented each girl and the relationship I had with them, and then my bouquet was made up of each of those flowers.

This expression was explained in our program, and even our priest commented on the beauty of that notion in his homily.

Certainly a detail that was not overlooked by our guests, and one that held a special meaning to me and my family. My grandmother had passed away weeks after our engagement, but the detail of the flowers was my dedication to her, and I certainly felt her with me on that day.

Another favorite wedding detail was that of our favors. I am a big believer in edible favors - otherwise people are prone to forget them.

In a real wedding featured in a Martha Stewart wedding magazine, I fell in love with the idea of a cookie bar.

Of course the wedding featured had perhaps 50 guests, but I was set on that idea for our wedding. Months before the wedding, I sent a letter to each of the leading ladies in our families - Jim's grandmother, our mothers, our sisters, and each of our aunts (Jim has 13!) - and asked them for a favorite cookie recipe. Everyone responded - amazingly with no double recipes! - and I then invited some of the local teenage female cousins to come over and spend a day preparing the batters. We had a great time bonding and laughing, and prepped at least half of the cookie recipes to be frozen so that we could bake them the week before the wedding. That week finally came, and my mother and I spent the Wednesday before up to our eyeballs in flour, baking 18 different varieties of cookies - about 800 cookies in all! Each had its own glass cookie jar labeled with the name and contributor of the recipe, and guests were invited to pick their own sampling of cookies, collect them in a cellophane bag, and seal them with personalized stickers. The execution of the idea wasn't exactly to plan. Guests who had frequented the open bar reportedly ate straight from the jars, and younger cousins lined their pockets and filled the bags to capacity in order to pass them out to guests on the dance floor. Regardless, people loved the idea, the display was beautiful, the cookies were delicious, and I shared a connection with the women in the family to which I was entering.

It was important to me to have family connections to the

different elements in the wedding. For example, I wore jewelry belonging to both my grandmothers, and the bridal party wore McGrath tartan - the men with a swatch on their lapels, and the ladies a wrap over their shoulders. The ring pillow was made by my mother with extra satin from my gown, and a piece of what was an old tablecloth that was hand-crocheted by my great-great-grandmother. I hope to pass that ring pillow onto future generations.

For some reason I started collecting corks, and it grew into quite a collection.

When I told people that I was going to use them for

placecard holders, I got several donations from friends and family. A little tedious for the caterer to set up, but loved the end result.

Specifics:

Ceremony Site: Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul, Philadelphia, PA

http://www.sspeterpaulcathedral.catholicweb.com/

Celebrant: Rev. Milton Jordan, Retired, Archdiocese of Washington, DC

http://prayeronthehill.blogspot.com/

Reception Site: College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA

http://www.eventsatcpp.org/

Catering: Culinary Concepts, Philadelphia, PA

http://www.culinary-concepts.com/

Florist: Heidi Diskin, Peony Peach Floral Design, Philadelphia, PA

Reception Music: EBE Talent, Melanie Rice Band

http://www.ebetalent.com/wedding-bands/barcelona-dance-band.php

After Party Music: Curtis Peoples, West Hollywood, CA

http://www.curtispeoples.com/

Photography: Dave Lakatos, Lakatos Photography, West Chester, PA

http://www.dave1photo.com/weddings.html

Invitations: I Do Graphics, Denver, CO

http://i-do-graphics.com/index.html

Calligraphy: Myself

Please click on my calligraphy post to see samples.

Videography: David Kibelstis, Center Stage Video, Lafayette Hill, PA

http://www.centerstagevid.com

Wedding Gown: Anne Barge, Hannelore's Bridal Boutique, Alexandria, VA

http://www.annebarge.com/main.html

http://hannelores.com/

Shoes: Manolo Blahnik

http://www.manoloblahnik.com/

Jewelry: Bride's own (ring, bracelet, necklace); earrings: Homa Bridal, Hitched Bridal Couture, Washington, DC

http://www.homabridal.com/

http://www.hitchedsalon.com/

Wedding bands and engagement ring: Berman Jewelers, Cherry Hill, NJ

Bridesmaids Gowns: Watters Bridesmaids, Ashley's Bridal Shoppe, Warminster, PA

http://watters.com/catalog.php?coll=watters

http://www.ashleysbridal.com/newlook/ash_pa.php?store=pa

Groom/Groomsmen's Attire: Calvin Klein, Varani Formal Wear, Frazer, PA

http://www.varanitux.com

Transportation: Elegante Limousine, Philadelphia, PA

http://www.elegantelimos.com/

Makeup: Danielle Pfrommer, Philadelphia, PA

Hair Salon: Pierre & Carlo, Philadelphia, PA

Nail Salon: Rittenhouse Nails, 1742 Sansom St, Philadelphia, PA

Bridal Luncheon: The Waterworks Restaurant and Lounge, Philadelphia, PA

http://www.thewaterworksrestaurant.com/

Rehearsal Dinner: Ristorante Pesto, 1915 S. Broad St, Philadelphia, PA

http://www.ristorantepesto.com/pesto/home.asp

Groom's Cake: Night Kitchen Bakery, Chestnut Hill, 7725 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia, PA

http://www.nightkitchenbakery.com/

Honeymoon:

We spent three wonderful weeks in Australia and had the time of our lives! For anyone interested in visiting, these accommodations are highly recommended:

Bedarra Island Resort, Bedarra Island, Great Barrier Reef

http://www.bedarra.com.au/

(previously owned by Voyages)

Silky Oaks Lodge, Daintree Rainforest, QLD

http://www.silkyoakslodge.com.au/

Hunter Resort, Hunter Valley, Pokolbin, NSW

http://www.hunterresort.com.au/

Fairmont Resort, Blue Mountains, Leura, NSW

http://www.fairmontresort.com.au/

(previously owned by Peppers)

Sydney Hilton, Sydney, NSW

http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/SYDHITW-Hilton-Sydney/index.do

Sydney Marriott, Sydney, NSW

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/sydmc-sydney-harbour-marriott-hotel-at-circular-quay/