A birthday full of firsts

After a grueling two weeks of commuting between Monterey and Santa Clarita, I can officially say that I have survived! For the past two weeks I have been spending the majority of my week locked in the library and the rest of my weekend locked in the kitchen, but I am free! Don’t get me wrong, I love going home to bake and feel so honored to have customers that will let me do what I love…but girl has gotta sleep sometimes! The next week will be dedicated to flower shopping, clothes shopping, and endless amounts of coffee before I head home yet again.

But before I get ahead of myself and start rambling about all the fun stuff that’s coming, I want to let you guys in on what I’ve been up to in the kitchen. Well mostly, I want to show off all the goodies I made last weekend! I drove home last weekend for a baking order for one of my clients who was celebrating her son’s first birthday. A year ago I made the baked goods for the dessert table at her baby shower and I almost fell off my chair when I heard that it was time for a first birthday already. She sent me some images of baked goods she had in mind and I knew this was going to be so much fun because….ELEPHANTS!

If you know me personally, you know how much I love elephants so I was all on board for this order before she even asked me to do the order. First was the smash cake! Anyone who has been to a one year old’s birthday recently has seen what a show the smash cake is, so I was so excited to get to be a part of the experience in one way or another.

 

The color scheme for this whole birthday was hands down, one of my favorites I’ve ever done. The bright reds and blues, with the grey tones gave all of the desserts such a modern and sophisticated look, but still kept everything very fun. Next came the cookies and cupcakes. There needed to be two different decorated sugar cookies so that guests would have something to much on at the party and a little something to take home with them too. One of my favorite parts of this order too was the connection to the baby shower. I made a mini carrot cake for the baby shower so the parents requested carrot cake cupcakes and I just loved that there was a connection between the past and the present.

 

And finally, it was time for the cake! The centerpiece of the desserts is always the big cake that everyone gets to cut into. I made a two tiered cake and kept the same color scheme going. With the help of my very talented mother, we sculpted a little elephant to place on top of the cake and bring the whole theme back around. The cake didn’t turn out exactly as I had imagined, but I actually ended up liking it much more than I had originally thought I would. Even though I didn’t get to set up the dessert table at the actual party, I decided to put it all together to make sure that everything looked good together.

 

And just like that, it’s time to get back to the library and hit the books. I am going home once again this weekend, so there won’t be a Flower Friday post this week, but there will be another baking post after the weekend to look forward to! Hope you all enjoyed your weekends and that your Monday’s aren’t too painful!

XO, EE

Flower Friday {number fifteen}

Friday finally rolled around this week and I cannot even tell you guys how ready I was to go to the farmer’s market! I haven’t been able to go for the past couple of weekends because I’ve been commuting back home to Santa Clarita on the weekends to bake. But this Friday I jumped out of bed and was itching to get to the flower tent. I went a little later than usual this week, and let me tell you: huge mistake! Less flowers and more traffic the later it gets in the day. But it was a lesson learned and I will definitely be sacrificing some sleep to avoid that chaos again.

Even though my normal flower vendor was looking bait bare this week, I scored with some more dahlias this week. But I didn’t want this week’s post to look exactly like my last Flower Friday, so I grabbed a crazy bunch of eucalyptus too! Before I say one more word, I need to warm you guys: Eucalyptus is a pain in the butt. I love, love, love how it all came together, but it took a while to scrub all the sap off of my fingers. With that being said, let’s get to showing you guys what this market trip was all about!

 

Instead of grabbing a bunch of different colored bunches of dahlias, I tried to stay with a pink and orange color palette. The pink is keeping me in denial that summer is actually over and the orange is reminding me that it’s okay because fall is just so pretty. I immediately snipped the rubber bands off the bunches and mixed them all together. I grabbed two mason jars filled with water and threw the stems in haphazardly. I trimmed the crazy looking ones and then tackled the eucalyptus. I didn’t even come close to using all of it, but I filled in the empty looking spots and ended up LOVING the color combos. The contrast of the bright orange and the pale green of the eucalyptus is already making me smile every time I walk into the room.

Have a happy weekend everyone and come back later this weekend for some looks into what I’ve been going home so much to do! And a special thank you to my favorite tag alongs who came to the market with me this morning and snapped the candid shots of me doing my thing this morning: this gem and my trusty paparazzi boyfriend, S!

 

XO, EE