La Crème De La Crème

Is it just me, or is food getting increasingly more drab? My mother is one of those people who insists that food is fuel alone - taste is absolutely secondary, and in most cases, unnoticed. I think I got my food genes from my grandmother, who understood when I got married that the only registry I cared about was my ridiculous "I've never heard of that before" knick-knack list at Williams-Sonoma. Pastry scrapers, lemon zesters, tartlette pans? Two hundred dollar LeCreuset french ovens? A twenty dollar Zeroll ice cream scoop? Who would buy me this crap? My grandmother, because she knows - food is way more than just fuel.

I've been to France once, five years ago now, and my all-encompassing opinion of the food there and how it's different was this: It tastes like food. In America, everything tastes like the safe bets... vegetable oil, corn syrup, salt. Are you eating anything remotely sweet? Look on the label... I'm sure it's got the corn syrup. Drive-thru? You can't even imagine how much salt you've been dealt. And as far as the oil goes, I love Chickfila, but... well you know where this is going...

My goal as the Chef de Cuisine of my own home kitchen is to try my best to always start from the dirt and make my way up. One of the joys of my life is picking basil right from the ground to throw into a sauce, or an afternoon in, making my own bagels. I understand not everyone has time to be so "domestic" if that's what you like to call it, but this is what I do for fun. I don't go to the movies - ever - I cook. I don't go shopping unless it's grocery shopping. I get mad when Collin makes me breakfast because I don't get to. And recently, I've been bored with food for the first time in my life because everything tastes the same. Grease, sugar, salt, repeat.

Well here's the silver lining: There is one thing that I know will consistently pick me up if I'm in a food rut. Whipped cream. I don't understand why anyone buys Cool Whip or Reddi Whip or whatever kind of Whip you can find at the store. Whipped cream is one of the easiest things to make yourself, and the difference in taste is staggering. It tastes like whipped cream - not puffy sugar air. In need of some glory this morning, I pulled out my ingredients and decided to share the simple process with all of you.



I use heavy whipping cream with a touch of brown sugar, if I'm using it for fruit or cake. If I'm making some schlag to top off my coffee (pretending I'm at Café Intermezzo), I only use cream.

Today I was just making a little to eat with some strawberries, so I used about 3 Tbsp of cream and 1 tsp of sugar in a small bowl and whipped with a fork. If I'm making more to top a pie or something I mix with a whisk in a stainless steel mixing bowl. If I felt like it, I could have made my own brown sugar (it's just white sugar mixed with molasses to your preference of darkness), but Publix brand was good enough today.





It's important that your cream is cold, and if you need it for a few hours later make sure it stays cold in the refrigerator. It only took me about three minutes to whip this cream up to the right consistency, not to mention it gave me a nice little arm workout. I guess you could use a mixer, but I hate getting all that stuff dirty for a little bowl of whipped cream. I got a little zealous with my mixing and probably went thirty seconds too long, which is why the cream looks a little lumpy (if you go long enough, you start to churn butter), but the result is the same: joy.



My favorite part is that it's actually cream colored. It won't keep in the refrigerator for weeks (or even days), a fact which I find very comforting, and since I make only as much as I need, it doesn't matter. Someone in the internet world: try this, and please tell me it made your life just a teensy bit better.

Invitations: Megan and Jerry

First of all, Megan and Jerry have a lot of friends. 375 invitations, I can't even imagine the final count on the guest list - getting this many invites can be quite a strain on your wedding finances. Megan and I worked together to keep a high standard of quality and lots of her style, without having to spend the whole wedding budget on the invites!



We kept all of the paper choices simple, eliminated postage and envelopes by using a postcard response, and brought visual interest through a calligraphic border instead of extra add-ons that end up bulking up final costs (ribbons, layers, pockets). I also chose to print multiple copies on one sheet: For example, if an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper costs a dollar, and four 4"x5" cards cost fifty cents each, I could cut half the cost by printing on the larger sheet and cutting down.





The invitation is printed on Raw Silk Gold, and the responses and inserts are printed on Dahlia. Both are paper colors offered by Envelopments. The envelopes, Metallic Autumn Hay (which is a fancy name for Ivory), were bought in bulk to cut costs - these envelopes come 250 per case, so I had to buy 125 extra for this order, but even with the overflow it was still much less expensive than the alternative. All pieces are printed in thermography in Pantone Warm Grey #9.









The direction insert was designed and printed after the fact - the actual invitations included the insert printed on ivory cardstock, I printed in black on more dahlia paper for this example. (Map design is an additional fee) However, if these inserts were printed at the same time as the invitations in the same color, it would not have added any additional cost! I also added a Persimmon colored envelope liner in the image below to show the extra effect it adds to the invitations.

Invitations: Stephanie and Seth, Pt. 1

As promised, here's a look at the first round of stationery I'm doing for Stephanie and Seth: Save the Dates!



Working on these for Steph and her fantastic fiancee has been so much fun for me - I've known her for about eight or nine years now and it's been incredibly special to be a part of the celebration that her and Seth are planning. It's also been great to work with someone who I know so well... it's sometimes hard to think of styles or ideas that fit a couple, but I think these invitations come close: classic, refined, simple, but not at all boring - that's exactly how I would describe their personalities!





Postcard save the date, printed on 100lb Cougar cover in Natural White, and inked in Deep Plum (Pantone 262).





Finishing the save the dates has made me so excited to start working on the invitation set! The wedding is in October, so expect pictures of Part 2 in a couple of months!

Can't Get Enough: John Robshaw

Well, I know I promised my next post would be about weddings, but I'm still waiting on some finishing touches for those posts, and I had these pictures today, so I thought I'd do a quick post in between.

As most of you know, I work at a fabulous little boutique called No. Four Eleven in Savannah, GA. We carry lots of fun bedding and textiles, but one of our most popular designers is John Robshaw. If any of you read Lonny Magazine, which you should (the summer issue just came out this week!), you'll see an abundance of John Robshaw's textiles in its pages.

Needless to say, these items do very well in the store, but when we don't have just the right thing, I put my skills to the test to make it happen! This week I've converted lots of Robshaw items to fit the needs of our customers.



First are these four boudoir pillows (12"x16") converted from one euro sham (26"x26"). The customer loved this fabric, but didn't need one huge pillow on her bed. She preferred to have four small pillows to accessorize her club chairs. Using the front and back of the sham and a nice thick white linen for the reverse of each pillow, I was able to make this wish come true!





As a side note, I'm still completely obsessed with my rose plant, and I cut these blooms and brought them into the store. It's better for the plant if I cut them off, and I figured they would keep me company at work this weekend!



These next pillows were made for a beach house sofa, and were converted from a queen-sized bedskirt! I was able to get 2 20"x20" pillows and one long 14"x24". The print, called "Gent's Stripe" in the color "Ink" looked so fun in these pillows, and I can just imagine them on a white slipcovered sofa, maybe in a sunroom? I would have ideally liked to add some light pink cording with a pink zipper as a fun detail, but maybe I'll just have to make that for myself one day, right?





After finishing these two projects, I'm kind of addicted to repurposing leftover linens and I've been starting to look for some on ebay to convert. Have any spare sheets that would come back to life as throw pillows? Any tired pillows that seem like they'd rather be cotton napkins for your next barbecue? Send them over!

Garden Update

In the summer, a garden is an ever-changing place. In the winter everything stops and pretends like it's dead for a few months... but once the sun starts to get hot and it rains every afternoon... one day makes a big difference.

I thought I'd just add a little update to my previous post about the garden. Soon after my last post I made a few changes, and definitely for the better! (Also, notice the new header - my gorgeous pink hydrangea after some Savannah afternoon rain)

My vine-y thing I couldn't remember the name of was periwinkle! Unfortunately, I paid some attention to it when I realized that it had gotten some kind of white mold. I'm still not 100% sure if this was white mold or mealy bugs, but either way, I didn't feel like I liked that plant enough to deal with it. Periwinkle is super invasive and mine almost never flowered - I was sick of it. Anyway, I pulled all of it up, changed all of the soil in my planter, and gave my coral impatients two white impatients friends, and what a difference it has made! Now that they have room to spread their roots, I have a hundred blossoms on these buddies every day!



I also can't believe how fast the dahlias have been growing, and I'm still waiting to see my first flowers. This picture is a comparison from last post to now:



My very sad roses from FTD's throwaways had a little bad spell. Soon after my post, all of the blossoms faded and the whole plant seemed to be getting much sicker. I took the pruning shears to every branch that seemed dead, and after I had cut off all my old blossoms, it looked pretty bleak. However, that gave my plant the rest it needed to create new, healthy buds, and now some very beautiful blossoms!





Finally, after making my mango salsa, I realized that I would love to be able to harvest my own juicy tomatoes to make salsa all summer, so I bought a plant! I chose the Beefmaster hybrid plant for it's large, heavy fruit and good harvest over the season. I don't have any tomatoes yet, but just today I noticed three little buds that will grow into 1lb tomatoes before I know it!



Now I'm sure everyone is tired of my garden for now, even though I'm still infatuated with it, but my next few posts will be of more relevance - weddings! Images of Megan and Jerry's invites are soon to come, as well as Stephanie and Seth's save the dates!