May Day

Sorry, this is not a post about May 1. I just thought I would tell you all about one fine day in May that proved to be a very productive day; weekend actually.

Saturday:
- Picked up supplies for our table numbers.
- Printed our engagement photos. Take note - if you print pro photos yourself, make sure to ask for color correction to be turned off. Thank goodness Costco took pity on me and was willing to reprint at no extra charge.
- This is totally not wedding related, but I purchased a new lens for my camera. I scored a used Nikkor 24-85 mm f/2.8-4.8 used from a photographer in Plymouth. It was a bit of a hike to get the lens, but for $350, it was worth it. The lens currently retails for $700+ brand new. It was not in pristine condition, as there were a few cosmetic defects (I'm pretty sure there is nothing wrong internally). But $50 and a couple of fixes later, it'll be good as new.
- Re-layed out the invitations for print. I like to be efficient with my layouts to waste as little paper as possible.

Sunday:
- Finished a small project that will remain secret, sorry!
- Color matched the red cardstock I purchased to the corresponding color code in Adobe Illustrator.
- Printed 86 invitations.
- Cut out all 86 invitations.
- Started rounding out the corners on the invitations. I (we) made it through 25% of them before it was way past my bedtime.

Monday:
- I took the day off from work to focus on wedding crafts. It was so nice to wake up late after 9 hours of sleep!
- Finished rounding the corners on the invites. I'll let you do the math on how many corners that is in total.
- Stamped all 86 invites.
- Embossed all 86 invites. Am I giving away too many hints?
- Caught up with our wedding planners. We are now starting to have phone conferences once every 2 weeks for updates.
- Printed, cut, and glued the "inner envelopes".
- Started gluing the invites onto a backing layer. I got about half way through before calling it quits.

And now it is time for bed. No more crafting until at least Wednesday night...then again, that might not happen as I still need to do the homework for the class I am taking at work for personal enrichment.

Bless his heart

Sorry for the gap in posts as of lately. I was on a roll too! Things may start to get more sporadic as we close in on 100 days before W-day. Just warning ya.

Moving onto todays post. I do a lot of things myself instead of relying on others, this includes Jake. Its just that things aren't really done the way you like them done unless you do them yourself.

I am a bit stressed out if you cannot tell. I have bitten off more than I can chew (but wait and see, I will get it all done, I always do). I have one last baking gig before my focus can be directed at wedding and wedding only. Jake is always asking me to give him a grocery list, but I never do, you will see why in a minute. Given the circumstances, I decided to come up with a detailed list of things I need for this last gig.

via Simply Shredded

The list was handwritten and included quantity, brand, and some idea of where to look for said item. The list consisted of cupcake lines, cream cheese (regular), mascarpone cheese, heavy cream, carrots (small bag of medium sized), buttermilk, liquid red food coloring, bread, eggs, and maybe a few other things that I cannot seem to remember off the top of my head.

Last night, right before my photography workshop started, I received a couple of text messages:

Q.They are out of cheap pastel liners, do you want expensive ones or cheap white ones?

A. Neither, just as long as you got the aluminum ones.

Is 2lbs of carrots enough?

A. Yea, that should be enough

I respond back, assuming that he is still in the store...DO NOT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS. As it turns out, he texted me as he left the store. WHAT? Yea, it is best not to ask and just go with it.

I get home to find:

1 - 16oz of cream cheese spread (is this regular cream cheese? I think not.)

1 - 2 lb bag of baby carrots (1-we barely eat 4oz bags of baby carrots, 2 - I cannot grate baby carrots for carrot cake, maybe if I had a baby sized shredder and still that would be a NO) Jake's reponse is that there were large carrots and baby carrots, it was safer to go with baby carrots. Maybe I should have clarified that I would be GRATING them.

2 - things of expensive white cupcake liners ($1.99 for 50 liners is not cheap)

*SIGH*

I have to give him credit, he got everything else. I won't tell you how long it took him and how many rounds around the store it took (let's just say a long time, many rounds, some help from a clerk, and help from his phone). Bless his heart. He tried.

Digital Camera 1: Assignment 3

The third week of the workshop, we discussed aperture and its impact on a photo. Aperture simply put is the opening in which light can pass through. A larger aperture allows more light in and a smaller aperture limits the amount of light. The funky thing with aperture is that the actual numbering system is backwards. A large aperture is a small f-stop number and vice versa.



via Wikipedia



In addition to controlling the amount of light, aperture also controls the depth of field. A large aperture will give result in a shallow depth of field. This means that things behind and in front of your point of focus will be out of focus. A small aperture will give you a large depth of field. Large depth of field will allow for everything in your frame be sharp and in focus, relatively.

I LOVE working with shallow depths of field. I love being able to achieve that creamy blurred background. Now do not get me wrong, it can be over done or done completely wrong, but when it is right, it is oh so beautiful.

Now the secret is not in your camera or your photography skills, but in the lens itself. You have to have a lens that will allow you to open the aperture up really wide. Kit lenses (the one's that come with the camera) do not allow you to. You can cheat by doing two things. 1) Zoom in as far as you can. 2) Get really close to your subject and make sure the background is far enough away from your subject. I am lucky enough to be able to borrow lenses at my leisure from my boss. My standby is a fixed 50mm lens that enables me to go up to f/1.4. I use this lens on all of my baking photos and have started keeping on my camera at all times as it is a great all around lens as well.

The assignment was to play around with aperture by setting up your shot and taking it at multiple aperture settings. Styling food against a distracting background is something that I would not normally do, but it gave the best example of the purpose of the assignment.

Chocolate Nutella Cupcakes.
Photo by me!
Lens: Nikkor 50mm f/1.4

I have to make a confession: I knew all this depth stuff before taking the class.

A Taste of PDX - Broder

A long time ago (try circa 2005), a friend introduced me to a quaint cafe in SE Portland called Henry's Cafe. Til this day, I still remember the drool inducing french toast paired with fresh lemon curd. I swear it was heaven in my mouth. A few years ago, I tried to take Jake back to the same cafe, but to my surprise, it had been replaced by a swedish cafe. The place still looked the same, same tables, same chairs, same open grill, but had a very different menu. It was that day that I was introduced to ebleskivers and have been enamored with them ever since.

I don't remember the name of the cafe, but I know that it is somewhere on SE Clinton St. This morning, while catching up on my blog reading, I came across a photo taken at Broder Restaurant. Of course seeing that the restaurant was located in PDX, I started poking around their website. The menu looked amazing and instantly I was hit with déjà vu. "This menu looks really famililar, I wonder if it's the old Henry's place? I thought to myself. Then I perused the photos they had posted on their website. And wouldn't you know, it IS the old Henry's Cafe!

 

via Peaches by Plums via b is for bonnie (Photo by Bonnie Tsang).

via Broder

Aebleskivers with lingonberry jam and lemon curd.
via Broder

I wonder if this is the lamb burger Jake ordered?
via Broder

  
Oh home and amazing food, how I miss you.

No Soup for You!

"No soup for you!!" Seinfeld anyone? Here's a link to clips from the episode.

I am not The Soup Nazi. And I am far from being a cupcake nazi. In fact, I do not possess the ability to tell people "no" (people outside of my immediate family that is). 

In order to keep my sanity for the next 119 days, I have decided to take one thing off my plate...baking requests outside of family functions. This morning I put the following message on Facebook and on my webpage:

The Delightful Cakery kitchen will be closed until August 29, 2011. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience.

Every minute between now and August will be focused on completing our handcrafted wedding.

Thank you, Celia.

I love seeing peoples reactions to my sweet treats, but I do not want to add more things to my already too long to-do list. I sat down yesterday and created a list in which I gave myself small jobs to do every single night for the next 30 days. The exception being Tuesday nights since that is 2.5 hours of photography class. It is a bit overwhelming to see that every single night, there is something to work on. But they are small bits of a bigger projects, so it should not be too bad.

via Delightful Cakery

Let us hope that I do not lose any of my baking skills during this hiatus.