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

Vancouver, AT LAST!

Oh my, I have been totally slacking and am embarrassed I haven't posted about our August anniversary trip to Vancouver yet! Life has been busy, and I am hoping that as we creep closer to fall, I will get some "catch up" time!

I had never been to Canada, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect with this whole drive & border deal. I am super impatient, and not a fan of long car drives. Kirk had told me the trip would take four hours, so I was kind of dreading it. Luckily, my husband didn't remember the exact driving time it would take to get there, so instead of a four hour drive, it only took us 1.5 hours! I was thrilled to say the least. Kirk blamed us moving to Woodinville for the time difference... silly boy.

Before we even headed to Vancouver, we went into Richmond for dim sum. Richmond is known for having some of the best Asian cuisine on the West Coast and because Asian food is Kirk's fave - it was a no brainer that we would be stopping for lunch. We got a recommendation from Kirk's co-worker who lives in Vancouver to try out South Ocean for dim sum.

These little guys were my favorite!

After a nice amount of dim sum, we headed to our hotel. It was really, really nice. We usually don't care too much where we are staying since we are always out on the town exploring, but Kirk decided since it was our anniversary, we deserved a nice room :) He spoils me.

This was our view out of the room. It was windows from floor to ceiling, so it was a little scary to look down haha.

We had planned to just explore Gastown our first night since we were doing a fancy dinner the next day. Our first stop was Salt Tasting Room. We walked in to a small room, with long communal tables, and blackboard wall with their daily offerings which change often. I really appreciated their concept of pairing meats, cheeses, & condiments together. With the help of our server, we had picked three condiments to pair with a meat and two cheeses for our tasting plate. They also offer you a chance to pair your wine with each, but we opted for a glass of wine instead. I had Ormarine Picpoul de Pinet from France which I *loved* and Kirk had a Six Hats Shiraz from South Africa.

From left to right, we had smoked beef with a Guinness mustard (our fave), Chaumes cheese with a quince paste, and their local Chevre with honeycomb.

Later that night, we headed to The Clough Club. It is in a 110 year old building, and the decorating definitely shows off their classic style. We sat outside on one of their darling little benches with some pretty succulents in the center. They are very dark spirit forward, which I was a little nervous about, but I trusted them to make a nice whiskey cocktail. I had ordered their Wax Poetic which was bourbon with pressed pink grapefruit, agave nectar, lemon juice, Peychaud’s bitters, egg white, flamed grapefruit peel. It was the best drink I have ever had with bourbon. Not saying I'm totally going to convert from my love of vino to bourbon, however it was a lovely drink.

Saturday we slept in, and decided we would just use it as an exploring day! We were able to walk to one of the farmer's markets since it was just a couple blocks from our hotel. It was a nice and big market full of a little bit of everything! There was even a maple syrup booth where the woman was pouring maple syrup onto ice, and rolling into taffy. I wanted one so badly and then I quickly realized we only had American money on us -- oops!

MAPLE EVERYTHING!

After the market we walked over to Gastown to go to a French bakery called Cadeaux. Their pastry case was super tempting, yet somehow Kirk and I made it out with only two desserts!

Gingersnap Cookie Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich!

Salted Caramel Brownie

We continued to stroll around town, and found a cute little patio bar next to the water so thought it would be a nice spot to grab a drink. We decided to share their sangria, not realizing how large it was!

It was a FISHBOWL of sangria. While it was delicious, we were pretty embarrassed drinking this right next to a family with two little kids. We did get quite a good laugh out of this later :)

For lunch we went to the most AMAZING sandwich place - ever. Seriously, I can not tell you enough how delicious Meat and Bread was. They had two choices of sandwiches, a pork verde and l'orange duck. Kirk and I made the logical decision and got both so we could split.

As much as wanted to continue discovering places, we went back to the hotel to get some rest time in. I had brought my wedding shoes to wear, and the dress I wore to my rehearsal dinner one year prior :) I thought it was pretty successful that after a year of marriage I still fit in that! PHEW!

For dinner we went to dinner at Black and Blue. We had saw it on the Top Chef Austin season, and really wanted to check it out. I know that that sounds pretty nerdy but what can I say... we really like Top Chef! It was a really beautiful restaurant, and the food was good! We did the whole table side caesar deal with filet and potatoes. We LOVE our steak houses!

We had planned on going out after, but I was EXHAUSTED! Kirk being the trooper he was suggest we get a bottle of champagne, and head back to our nice room and watch the Olympics. That sounded like the perfect night for me being such a tired girl. It is so nice to do something laid back and just have so much fun together :)

Before the way home we had checked out Stanley Park, and it was SO gorgeous! Vancouver is such a lovely city and we can't wait to go back soon!