New York, New York! Pt. 1

We got back from our NYC trip on Sunday night, but I am finally just getting back in my normal routine. Traveling is exhausting no matter what, travelling to somewhere with a time change even more, and since we were in NYC, to say we didn't get much sleep would be an understatement. I'll write this in a couple parts to break it up a little bit, here we go with day 1 and day 2 morning!

Most people know I used to live in NYC when I was going to school. After I graduated the FCI, I decided as much as I loved NYC, I loved Seattle more and decided to move back...but I still missed the excitement Manhattan brought. So I was pretty darn excited when we decided to head back for a visit to see Spencer with John and Steve, exploring old/new things-because let's face it.. there is ALWAYS something new to discover there. It was perfect because our good friend Spencer (who was our officiant at our wedding) had moved to the East Village shortly after I had moved, so we now had somewhere free of charge with a great location to stay at. Even though Spencer has a very spacious studio in NY standards, it was still pretty funny watching 5 adults figure out sleeping space.

Kirk, Steve, and I had gotten in Wednesday night and went to go drop off our stuff at Spencer's. John was patiently waiting since he got there the night prior. We had planned a pretty low key Wednesday night since Spencer still had to go into work the next morning so we settled on dinner and a comedy show.

Spencer had talked about a "unique" burger place in the East Village which sounded pretty yummy. He brought us to Korzo, a delicious place that serves Mittle European comfort food. We walked in and it was a super tiny place, but SO nice. It was full of brick, wood tables, and dimmed lighting. Our server quickly greeted us, and we ordered a pitcher of their house beer. It was technically an ale but was much milder in flavor to me than what I am used to. We all thought it was delicious and went great with our meal. 

 Don't mind Spencer's awkward stare, I was trying to get somewhat of a decent picture of the decor

The boys not paying attention, and also enjoying their Korzo beer. So typical.

The whole table started off with their Klassik Halušky that is petite hand-cut potato spätzle, bryndza (Slovak-style feta cheese), crispy bacon bits, and fresh chives.

I have this problem of going to dark restaurants which than result in poor pictures that don't give justice to the dish. I promise, it was delish.

Kirk and I decided to split their original burger, and I am SO glad we did. It was gigantic. The original has their korzo-blend beef patty, applewood-smoked bacon, allgauer emmentaller cheese, 

korzo organic ale mustard, dill pickle. And as you might be able to tell it is not your typical bun. It is deep fried. But... it's the best deep fried thing ever. Unlike most deep fried foods that make you feel sick after and are super greasy.. this is anything but. It's actually really light. They also have a house beet ketchup that they     serve it with, which was pretty darn good too.

Kirk and I at Korzo...very very full. But happy.

After dinner we took a much needed walk to the Comedy Cellar in the West Village. If you have never heard of Comedy Cellar you MUST go. When I was living in the city I would go weekly for several reasons. One being admission is completely free during the week nights, and two they have AMAZING well known comedians. On two different nights when I was living in NYC and went, they randomly had Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle perform. And with not a bad seat in the house, I don't know what else one could want in a comedy club.

John outside of the Comedy Cellar in my glasses. So. Trendy.

We ended up getting a nice big table right in front of the stage and had some great acts perform. Dave Attell and Judah Friedlander from NBC's 30 Rock was there, along with several other great comedians. Oh Comedy Cellar, you never disappoint.

On Thursday morning, Kirk and I headed off by ourselves to check out some sweet places I wanted to visit.

Our first stop was Payard. We ended up getting our usual order from a bakery: chocolate croissant, eclair, and a macaron. This time we added a ham and cheese croissant too... it just sounded so good.

Ham and cheese flaky wonderful.

Chocolate eclair, and passion fruit macaron.

While everything was delicious it was no where near as good as everything had at Tartine in San Francisco. I am a little snobbish about my pastries, I admit it.

Next we walked down into Soho to find Kee's Chocolates. It was my first time visiting Kee's so I had no idea what to expect. We walked in to a tiny little space with a glass display full of chocolates and macarons. It was very pretty, however they wouldn't let me take pictures. So sad.

We each picked out a chocolate, I had picked passion fruit, and Kirk picked out honey saffron. We also bought a coconut guava macaroon because it was just too pretty to pass up.

Of course, we found the nearest bench and decided it was the perfect time to eat our macaron. It was definitely delicious.

We had meant to find another chocolate shop, but instead got distracted by signs guiding us towards the Brooklyn Bridge. In my entire duration of living in NYC I had never walked on the Brooklyn Bridge (crazy, I know) and Kirk hadn't so we decided it was the perfect time. We were lucky it was so sunny outside, it was gorgeous.

My view from the middle of the bridge looking up.

My pretty Instagram photo of Brooklyn Bridge. SO PRETTY!

After our Brooklyn Bridge adventure, we stopped for a quick bite at The Malt House off of Bleeker Street. They had a great craft beer selection and yummy food. We shared some fish tacos and marched on to a cupcake shop in Greenwich Village called Molly's Cupcakes. We had a decent cupcake and coffee, but what I really loved about their shop was the swings at their bar top!

Cutie husband putting up with my photo craziness.

Pt. 2 to come!

xo

December in Pictures

December was a whirlwind! Isn't it for everyone? Kirk and I played socialites all month filling our schedule with dinner parties, Christmas activities, birthday parties, shows, hosting - you name it! We have declared January our month of hibernation which will be true minus 1/16-1/21 because we are headed to NYC for my birthday! Our first weekend hibernating was last weekend, and it was so SO great having no agenda to follow! So following this laid back plan, this post will just be filled with pictures and captions documenting our December :)

This was how I decorated our fireplace mantle for Christmas! I had used burlap, fresh garland, and some decor I had found at Ben Franklin for half price. Yes - Max and Bella have their own stocking.

Our Christmas tree! It was so beautiful! I had found a gorgeous burlap tree skirt with white ruffles, Max fell in love with it too.

We had tons of red/white straws left over from our Christmas party in 2011, so I cut them and made this pretty little wreath! I'm keeping it up for Valentine's Day.. 

We saw this house posted all over Facebook, and lucky for us, it was located in Kirkland! So we went to go take a look and it did not disappoint! This picture does no justice for how many lights there were. They even had a little area for UW!

Kirk and I went out on a date to one of our favorites, Barking Frog. This was my tenderloin entree, seriously amazing, I am so hungry just looking at this!

We went with a group of 8 of our friends to the Land of the Sweets - The Nutcracker burlesque! We love this show, and always book early so we can get front row seats. The show never disappoints, I love!

_

We decorated gingerbread and sugar cookies with Chloe. She obviously hated it, ;)

Ta-da!

Kirk and I won tickets to St. Nick's Winter in Woodinville. It was so AWESOME. Each ticket came with a booklet of a ton of wineries that were participating that let you do their tasting and give food out. We used it as an opportunity to check out the wineries in the Warehouse District that we hadn't been to before. We found some that are definitely worth checking out again. This was a picture from one of the wineries of their decorated tree, I thought it was so pretty!

With Kirk's fam + his aunts and uncles we had hired a private chef to come over to Erica's and prepare us food for a cocktail party. I had forgotten my camera (of course) so this sad cell phone picture will have to do. It was one of the starters, bruleed plums with chevre and lemon thyme - yum! There were tons of other smaller bites, along with soup shots, and a couple different slider options. We had a great time, yum yum yum.

Now that I finally have time to relax, I will be able to document our NYC trip properly :) Kirk, John, Steve, and I are headed to stay with our friend Spencer. I already have reservations planned and my must visit bakery list. I am so excited, it will be a great way to spend my 24th birthday!

AND.. Crafted got it's first media attention! I am so proud of my little Champagne mallows!

GO HAWKS!

xo

Thanksgiving!

In normal Whitney fashion, here is a late blog post about our first Thanksgiving we EVER hosted!

Our Thanksgiving mantle!

Thanksgiving was super special this year for many reasons, it was the first time we had our parents + siblings together for a holiday, we had my two adopted sisters (Carissa, the Swede - Katie, the NYer), and Katie's brother Matt from New York over too. It was a full house, but so much fun!

Everyone's setting was accompanied with fresh herbs. Fresh rosemary, sage, and thyme. Herbs are such a simple way to make things a little more special.

Because I am absolutely insane, I still believed everything had to be done homemade. Not just our meal, but I mean everything.. place cards, table setting, to go boxes, and even SODA. We accomplished everything except the gravy (weird how something so easy ended up the one thing we didn't make haha).

For our table, I wanted a rustic theme, so I covered it in a ton of mason jars with tea lights. I had also covered in burlap cocoa bean bags from Theo Chocolate.

Here is the table still fully set. Mucho loves to Matt and Kirk for helping me set our table the night before so I could be calm on Thanksgiving day!

I had made two homemade soda bases, one cream soda, the other, apple cider soda. It is basically a syrup that you mix in with club soda. Pretty darn good, using very little sugar, accompanied by vanilla bean and tasty spices.

This was my little cocktail & soda station

This was the cocktail I had made for the group. It had thyme simple syrup, bourbon, lemon, apple cider, bitters and garnished with fresh thyme and an apple slice. This was a total hit, Kirk and I made it again when we were decorating our gingerbread houses this year. So, so good. I tweaked the recipe to our taste, but this is basically the recipe.

Because this was our first Thanksgiving, we had assigned some dishes to our parents. Seriously SO THANKFUL to our sweet mothers for taking some stress off of us. Lynn had brought over her signature mashed potatos + made an amazing crab app + sweet potatoes  while my mom did her signature potato dish (Yes, Kirk, his sis, my little sis, and I requested both!), stuffing, and stuffed mushrooms for an app.

If that doesn't already sound like a huge amount of food, I had made a warm artichoke dip, the Heinrich gourmet cheese plate, and a mock of Lot No. 3's goat cheese toast with candied pecans and balsamic redux -- my mom is basically obsessed with this and so I wanted to attempt it.

Kirk and I than proceeded to make green beans with pancetta covered in brown butter, rosemary sea salt buttermilk biscuits, an 18 pound turkey, and homemade cranberry sauce with vanilla beans.

...and obviously for dessert I made my spiced pumpkin pie, an apple crumble pie, and oh yeah..cinnamon ice cream. Seriously, we were so gluttonous. Just typing all that sounds ridiculous, I totally understand how everyone went into food coma after.

I had no time whatsoever to take pictures of final dishes, but here is my gigantic plate of food :)

Matt was very sweet, and allowed our spoiled baby cat to sit with him at the end of the meal.

See.. I wasn't lying. Everyone was over the feast and couldn't move.

We had sent each guest home with a white box covered in Thanksgiving cut outs (Thanks sweet mama in law!), and with a booklet filled with ALL the recipes from our evening. I had each mom send me all their recipes, and pasted them into little notebooks I had got from the craft store for $1. A total steal for how cute the end product was. I will take a picture and post it, so..cute.

The rest of November in a nut shell: Insane.

My sweet little desert biz was super busy! I was so thankful from all the support I got from everyone. The whole week prior to Thanksgiving I was in crazy mode baking pies, caramels, brittle, etc. for customers! Our kitchen looked like a factory, the kitchen was production, and our kitchen table was full of packaging supplies with the best packaging elves (Kirk & Katie) helping me.

This is a picture from one of our customers. This is how we packaged our pies, cute huh?!

Crafted also had it's first event at Getty Images, supporting InfluenceHer. It was such a great event and I met some awesome women. And... all of the product I brought SOLD OUT! I was super psyched!

 My little table at the event!

It was my lovely sis in law, Angela's birthday November 10th! Happy birthday sissaloo! She requested a spice cake, so I came up with this little rustic cake. Inspiration from Hilary Duff's wedding cake of not fully frosted.

And lastly, my beautiful baby sissy got into WSU and U of A! Congrats baby Shawnzy!! I love you!

Isn't she a little cutie!

Well folks, that is all for now! Kirk and I are now on a work date where I will be completing Crafted's first round menu. :) Stay tuned!

October in Pictures!

Shoot, I suck at blogging. Once again I will make up the excuse that this month has been crazy! Partially because we officially launched my sweet little dessert business, Crafted! I am so excited that we are finally at this point. We had been working with one of our good friends on our logo for a couple of months, here is what Donnie came up with for us:

Do you love it? I do :) 

Once we got the logo, we officially made our Etsy shop - check it out here: CRAFTEDconfection

I got all my packaging supplies on Saturday, and will get my plastic sealer tomorrow - who knew kraft bags, green bakers twine, and something that seals plastic bags closed could make a girl so happy?!

The Etsy shop is in a soft opening phase, we are playing around with, but will be adding product quite frequently during the next couple weeks to make sure we don't miss out on the holiday market. Soon we will also be able to post our offerings on a menu on Facebook. I love, love, LOVE all of you friends & family members that have been posting my links to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest it means so much to me!

Now here is to shameless promoting, if you are looking for ANYTHING please email me and I would love to help you out Whitney@CraftedConfection.com

In other important (?) news:

I was a Zombie Bride for Halloween

At Kirk's work, his department had the theme of dead rockstars, so he ended up being Jerry Garcia

He grew out his beard for way too long and it was so scraggly. When he shaved I shed a tear of happiness, true story.

Kirk's office had a baking contest, and I submitted the "Cherry Garcia Magic Brownies." They were my original brownie recipe with some ground sage and cherry preserves - and they won 1st place! I contribute it to team work though, Kirk marketed those babies like crazy!

We celebrated Steve's birthday, and he got a special My Little Pony birthday cake from moi. Just what you'd expect for a 28 year old man - right?!

I have a new obsession for wreath making, I made an indoor and outdoor one for fall

We carved pumpkins - I carved a cat (Bella specifically) and Kirk carved the Husky logo. I would have an image for you, however there are either squirrels, rabbits, or cats who had been munching on our pumpkins so by the time we were ready to light a candle in our pumpkins, the carved design was basically gone haha..

Here is a picture of Kirk at the pumpkin patch in Carnation:

I have planted a TON of tulip bulbs! We have a very long driveway that had no plants or flowers down one side, so there are enough bulbs for 250 tulips come spring! I am going to try and plant some more within the next week if I have time. What can I say?! I love flowers!

Kirk and I have started going on walks down to the wineries in the warehouses and a favorite local brewery of ours, Dirty Bucket. The walk takes about 20-30 minutes each way, so it ends up being a nice little walk with a reward of wine tasting or pumpkin beer. It balances itself out quite nicely ;)

Here is me on one of our walks, I am a leaf wizard!

I also had the honor of telling my beautiful sister in-law Erica, and her husband Ryan the sex of their baby! Their doctor had wrote down the gender on a piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope for me. The assignment Erica gave me was to make a cake with the color frosting in the middle being either blue or pink to identify what it was! It was really special to make and I was SO excited for them to cut it open!

Here is my little cake before it headed out to the party! Erica and Ryan had a huge group of their friends over for the announcement! I basically had to avoid everyone in the room so I wouldn't give it away.

It's a boy! I'm going to be an aunt to a little guy! Being an aunt to Chloe has been so fun, I am excited to see how much fun a nephew can be!

Here's to November! xo

It's October!

Yay! It's October 1st! While September was lovely, I was just waiting for October. I love pretty much everything about the fall - pretty scenery, football, pumpkin spice lattes, apple season, pumpkins, BOOTS.. the list can go on and on but I'll hold back a little and calm down. I love decorating and hosting events and I think that between now and New Years, that passion grows and I am constantly thinking of creative ideas to make every weekend better than the last.

Yesterday we hosted the first official Snack Pack of the season with our friends. What's Snack Pack you ask?! It is a large group of our friends who get together every Sunday, each bringing a dish and cheering on the Seahawks. Since everyone brings a dish or two, it becomes this huge potluck with delicious snacks (how the Snack Pack name was born). We host this throughout the season, and end on a big Superbowl party. It's always delicious, and the perfect excuse to get everyone together. Yesterday we had 20 people over, which was great! I started to think about last year when we were in a one bedroom apartment hosting the same amount of people...crazy I know.

This picture doesn't do justice, I used the most gorgeous, sparkly blue & green paper for this :)

The decorated table!

Katie made these awesome team flags

The party table before the Snack Pack arrived

After the game we had a BBQ in our backyard with everyone. I had made this special tutu for the Seahawks season...if you didn't already know, I love all things girly with a touch of sparkle. And of course, Eric made his way into the picture. Silly, silly boy.

Well, I promise to be better at updating this month with our weekend adventures and tasty recipes. Stay tuned.. xo