Happy Last Day of School!!

It's my last day of work for the summer and I couldn't be more excited. Here's a little something to put a smile on your face!

Happy summer!

- Lindsey

A New York State of Mind

On May long weekend, husband and I had the privilege of visiting one of the greatest cities in the world! It was an incredible, adventure-filled four days and here is my take on some of the places we visited.

#1. Top of the Rock observatory.

This is one of two places that tourists go to see New York from above (besides going on a helicopter tour). The other place that people often go is to the Empire State Building. It is much more well known that the Top of the Rock building (thanks to Sleepless in Seattle and King Kong), but apparently the theme of that building is "wait". Wait in line to get in tickets, wait in line to go up the elevator, wait in line to go up to the second floor, and then once you're finished with the view, you've have to wait all over again to get down. Not for me.

What we loved even better than not having to wait, was the fact that our pictures of the New York skyline included the Empire State Building in it!

Win.

#2. Brooklyn.

We did not spend the amount of time here that I would have liked to, but what a cool place. If it was it's own city, it would be the fourth largest city in the States. It's the birthplace of so many artists, from authors, poets, painters, musicians, you name it. There is also an amazing pizza place in Brooklyn called Grimaldi's. YUM!

#3 Times Square

The first time you see Times Square you think it's quite cool. So big, so flashy. The 2nd, 3rd, and all other times you have to come across it, whether to transfer to another subway line, or meet up with a tour group, it becomes quite annoying. Do yourself a favour and go there once, look around, go for a walk around the block, buy something tacky, and then determine that you never need to go back.

#4 Central Park

Central Park really is a beautiful park. Set right in the centre of the city, it really is an iconic New York attraction. So many movies have filmed scenes here, and it's easy to see why. It's a garden oasis from the busy New York streets. Rent a bike, go for a walk, plan a picnic. Plan a visit to Central Park in the middle of your trip so you can take a minute to breath and relax, while the rest of the city moves 100mph around you. 

#5 The Museum of Modern Arts (MoMA)

If you're super into all things art, you could probably spend a whole day here. However, if you're like me and you just kind of enjoy art, make a list of your favourite pieces at the MoMA, blitz through the museum to find them, stand back and enjoy for a minute or two, then head on out of there because there is so much of New York still to see!!

The above picture is a piece by Andy Warhol.

Below is Van Gogh's Starry Night

Monet's Water Lilies (LOVE this one)

#6 Yankee Stadium

My husband and I LOVE going to baseball games. It's just so different than watching a game on TV (which I find to be quite boring actually). Going to a Yankees game is pretty expensive, especially if you plan on eating there. I think we spent $10 on two hot dogs... eek! But the atmosphere in that place is so exciting. If you go, don't worry about getting a good seat, anywhere in the stadium is a good seat. Get into the game, sing the songs, stand up for a home run, buy a pennant. Don't just sit there, get into it!

#7 9/11 Memorial

This one doesn't need a lot of explanation. It's a very humbling experience. They built fountains where the two towers stood, and the rushing water is supposed to drown out the sound of the city. The names of the deceased surround each of the fountains, and if they were from a certain fire hall or paramedic team, that info is included as well. The fee to get in is by donation, with a suggested amount of $10/person.

#8 Statue of Liberty - Harbour Cruise

I was SO surprised how small the Statue of Liberty was. I remember hearing about it, but it's kinda crazy when you finally see it in person. The harbour cruise is beautiful and relaxing. 

Ok, hubby and I are on our way out the door. Maybe more later!

Build-a-Library Baby Shower

Earlier I posted about a blue ombre cake that I was testing out for my friend's baby shower, and now, a couple weeks after the fact, here are the details of the shower! It was so much fun to plan and was a great success!

Her little boy's room is painted aqua with orange accents, so we wanted her shower to match! Since our theme was "Build-a-Library" we tried to match book names with the food we served. 

You might notice an empty bowl in front of the "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" picture... yea we forgot to put the meatballs in before we took the photo. I trust you all have imaginations and can pretend it's there.  :)

Like the chalkboard sign in the background? Here's my tutorial on how to get a professional look by doing it yourself!

My cake didn't turn out too bad either. I found the cute cut out cake toppers from The Pretty Blog. Such a cute addition!

I was in a bit of a rush to decorate the cake, so it's definitely got its flaws. Notice how the top goes in a different direction than the sides? Oops. Oh well. I was still happy with it, and I know it could have looked even better if I would have taken my time with it. 

Wanna know how to decorate a cake using the petal technique? It's super easy, check out Bird on a Cake's tutorial. 

Like my cake stand? I love this one from Amazon and it's only $17.50

Hope you enjoyed this post!

Easy DIY Chalkboard Art

For the past few weeks I have been working on a gift for a friend, that I gave to her this past Saturday at her baby shower. I was quite happy with the finished product, so that I would share it with you all, and give some tips and how to's on the way.

I have recently discovered a super simple technique for creating beautiful chalk art, and after having successfully made a piece for my home, I wanted to give a gift to a friend. I asked her if she had a favourite quote or verse for the baby, and she gave me Psalms 139:13&16, 

"For You created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb, 

you saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. 

Every moment was laid out, before a single day had passed."

Beautiful. 

So I started planning out my design by using photoshop, and tested out a whole swack (that's definitely a word) of fonts that I found on the internet. After finalizing the layout, I went garage sale hunting for a frame that I could paint... that's when I found this gem:

Why someone would give this treasure away is beyond me. It only cost me $2. :) 

Since chalkboard paint on canvas didn't have the desired effect I was looking for, I went to Home Depot and purchased a 2' by 2' piece of hardboard that I had cut down to size. I still had a can of chalkboard paint that I had leftover from the wedding, so I got straight to it, and I didn't prime the board or anything. 

Yes, I did paint indoors, and on top of our beautiful rug. But I was careful... I promise. 

TIP: After you paint with chalkboard paint and it's dry, you need to take a piece of chalk and rub it over the whole thing. You can use a wet rag to wipe it all off after, but you need to do this in case you want to use your chalk sign more than once. If you don't, and then you decide you want to erase your first chalk sign for another, "ghost" marks get left behind and it's not useable. 

Now here's the real trick. To get your desired image on your chalk board, without having to rely on your steady hand and fourth grade knowledge of drawing with chalk, you follow these simple steps: 

#1. Print your template to size. My chalkboard was obviously larger than a letter sized piece of paper, so I "cut" the image in photoshop into small pieces so that I could put them back together, like a puzzle, once they had been printed. Google helped me on this one. Just look up "printing a large image onto multiple pages in photoshop".

#2. Tape or glue all your images together so you have a combined image that is exactly to scale.

#3. Cover the back of the paper with your image in chalk. You can use the side of the chalk to make it go quicker. 

#4. Carefully place your image on your chalkboard, so that the smeared chalk is on the chalkboard, and the image sits where you want your chalk image to be on the board. 

#5. Tape your image onto your board, and then, using a pencil, carefully trace over the letters. Be careful to stay within the lines. The chalk on the back side of your paper will rub off, leaving you with an outline of your image that you can easily go over with a fresh piece of chalk. 

Here's what my image looked like after I had traced over the letters: 

It's not perfect, but it is WAY better than if I did it all by hand. 

Step #6 would be to go over your image again in chalk to brighten it up and fill in any spots that you missed... then...

#7 ---> best tip <--- use a q-tip dipped in water to clean up the smudges. 

Doesn't the finished product look professional? Or close to it? 

I cleaned the image up a bit more before I presented it to her... but I was quite pleased with myself. 

My friend's nursery colours are aqua and orange, so I purchased some aqua spray paint and gave my garage sale frame a make over. 

Once it dried, I put my chalkboard art into it's frame and voila!

Feel free to email me or comment if you have any questions!

Lindsey

Ombre Cake

      In a couple of weeks I will be hosting my very good friends baby shower and I want to make it special. She lives about 12 hours away by car, so we only get to see her a few times a year, and those moments are special. She is coming down to see her mom for mother's day, so it's the perfect opportunity for us (her friends) to throw her a baby shower!

     Her and her husband found out the sex of the baby already, a boy, and so I've been planning for weeks on making her shower the most special it can be. I've been looking at lots of different internet sites on what other people have done for showers and so many sites showed these amazingly beautiful cakes. I've never tried making a real cake before, besides those boxed ones that you just slather in the store bought icing, heedless to how it looks (and let's face, you really only made the cake so you could lick that delicious frosting off your knife).

    However, being the girl that I am who likes to figure things out herself, I attempted to make my first homemade cake with buttercream icing.

I was pretty happy with my first attempt, and considering I ran out of icing, I'm pretty happy with it. The buttercream recipe I used comes from Brooke at The Little Delights in Life and the idea for the ombre came from Linda's beautiful pink ombre cake, which I found on her website: Bubble and Sweet.

Here's what it looked like before the icing was all smoothed out:

    Again, you can see how I ran out of the icing, I would have made more, but I didn't have any more icing sugar and this was only a tester anyways. I put the cloth underneath the cake board to keep it from sliding as I iced it. 

    My husband was delighted that I was only a tester as he was looking forward to having a slice of "hombre" cake! :) That's what he thought it was called. What a cutie. 

For those who might be wondering how I iced the cake, I just used small ziploc baggies and dropped about a 1/2 a cup of coloured icing into (I would have used more if I had it). Also, to make the dark blue icing, I added a small drop of black food colouring to my medium coloured blue. 

Looking forward to making a few more testers before the baby shower, and also to show pictures of the final event!

Happy Monday!

Vanilla Black Tea Macarons

So I wanted to make sure that I actually knew how to make a beautiful macaron, and that it wasn't just a one time fluke.

And what do you know it? I can!

Here is my beautiful Vanilla Bean black tea macaron with honey buttercream filling, and what's even better about them is that I made them with the Vanilla Bean tea from Might Leaf. Mmmm… so good. It's a black tea infused with Madagascar vanilla. 

Using the recipe for my "Macaron de Paris" you add 1 tablespoon of tea leaves (after they go in the food processor) to the almond meal mixture, making sure to sift it as well and throw away any larger bits that don't make it through. 

For the filling, I made honey buttercream, using this recipe from yoo-eatz.com. 

I of course had to bring out the china and brew myself a cup of tea to go with it. Husband said these were even better than the last, and I think it's because after I brought them out of the oven, I left a lot of them to rest upside down, which I've read can help. Hmmm.... 

Anyways, I am constantly on the look out for any exciting macaron recipes that I can try. So please, if you see anything, send a link my way!

J'adore Macarons!

Ever since a good friend's birthday less than a month ago, I have been wanting to try and make my own macarons. We went to lunch at the Little White House's Salon Cafe and for dessert enjoyed the most lovely "Macarons de Paris" -- so I thought I would give it a try. 

Wow. It was much harder than I thought. My first batch turned out awful. They were flat, lifeless little morsels. They actually didn't taste too bad, but the beautiful thing about a macaron is that they not only taste amazing, but they look incredible too, and mine was not up to standard.  

Here is what my first batch looked like: 

After every failed attempt, I combed through the hundreds of websites about making macarons, trying to find an explanation for what I did wrong. What I did find was that there are a thousand-and-one different ways for making macarons.

Some say that you need to use aged egg whites, others say you need to let the piped macarons sit out before putting them in the oven. There are even some websites that give you crazy detailed instructions for every step, like putting them in the oven at 300 degrees for 10 minutes, then lowering it to 280 for 5 minutes, then at the 16 minute mark you need to stand on one foot and hop, while you raise the temperature to 285 degrees. Ok, so I might have made that last bit up. But seriously people, what works for some might not necessarily work for others. I learned that the hard way. 

I did find one website that seemed to help best. The author's name is Stella Parks, she is a professional baker who loves what she does. In her blog, she breaks down the top 10 myths about making macarons and I was relieved that I wouldn't have to try the thousand-and-one different ways I found on the internet. Instead of 1001 tries, it just took me 4!

I have to admit, when I put my fourth batch of macarons in the oven, I sat next to it with the light on. I just wanted to see those beautiful little "feet" form! About 1/2 way through baking, I saw them. I called hubby over and asked him to check, in case my vision had been impaired by my aggressive internet searching. He confirmed it. I was elated. Seriously. Is it weird to get that excited over food? Hmm...

Here is my beautiful, vanilla buttercream filled macaron. Mmmmm...

Check out those gorgeous "feet"!

Ok, so I really don't want to add one more macaron recipe to the world wide web, but I've had some friends ask, so I'm going to give you the recipe I used and what worked for me, but I am in NO WAY saying that this is THE way you make a macaron. Like I learned from Stella, you just have to find what works best for you. 

I didn't want to massacre hundreds of eggs while I fiddled my way through, so I changed some of the recipes I found to suit using just one egg white. 

Macaron Recipe: Makes about 10 macarons

1 egg white, room temperature

3 tablespoons berry sugar {same thing as castor sugar}

3 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons almond meal

1/2 cup icing sugar

1 - Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

2 - Pre-heat your oven to 280 degrees. Move oven rack to middle of top half.

3 - Sift almond meal and icing sugar. This was a frustrating step, but it really makes a difference. See how smooth that last macaron came out? It was because I paid special attention to sifting it. My almond meal was purchased from Trader Joe's and I found that a good portion of the almond meal, about 25%, didn't fit through my sieve. Instead of trying to force them through and waste my time, I just threw the larger bits out and added more from the bag (side note - I tried processing the larger bits of almond, but I found that it made the almond meal more "sticky" and they still wouldn't go through the sieve).

4 - Whisk egg white and berry sugar together until stiff peaks form. This took me a while (almost 15 minutes!), but I used an electric hand mixer. If I had a KitchenAid mixer, I think the peaks would form a lot faster. *also, some people say you need to slowly add the sugar while your beating the egg white. I didn't do this and I think it turned out just fine. 

5 - After your stiff peaks form, add your favourite gel food colouring and mix for one more minute. 

6 - Now comes the hard part - the macaronage. This part takes practice. I would recommend checking out this YouTube clip to see what your mixture should look and flow like. Add your sifted almond meal/icing sugar mixture to your egg white and fold the mixture. You know your mixture will be ready when it slowly falls off your spatula like lava, and can eventually incorporate back into the rest of the mixture. Again, check out the video. 

7 - Once your macaron mixture had been perfectly folded together, add it your piping back, and pipe out circles about the size of a quarter. They will spread out slightly. Tap or bang your baking sheet on the counter to get out any bubbles that might be trapped in the macarons. This is one step that MUST be done.  

8 - Put your macarons in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes. You know they will be done if you tap on a macaron and it's nice and hard. Also, if you try and take a macaron off the parchment, it should come off cleanly. If not, put it back in the oven for a couple of minutes. 

9 - Let the finished macarons cool on the baking sheet for 5-10 minutes. Fill with your favourite filling: nutella, jam, chocolate ganache, or my favourite: vanilla buttercream. Click here for the vanilla buttercream recipe that I used. 

10 - Eat and enjoy! They say that macarons are best after one day and I would have to agree, so put the macarons in the fridge and take them out the next day so you can enjoy them to their fullest!

- Lindsey