Our DIY Wedding, Part 2: The Food

Food!  Yup, we love the stuff.  :)  Here's an overview of the food we had for the wedding, and then some.  Except for the cake, the food was made by us, friends, and family.  We could not have done it with out them.  Okay, so let's start.

First, we had a rehearsal dinner on the night before.  For dessert, we set up a s'mores bar.  :)  We used the flame gel cans that are used for chafing dishes for the fire.  We had skewers, marshmallows, graham crackers, and a random assortment of chocolates ranging from hershey chocolate, reeses peanut butter cups, and a variety of ghiradelli squares.  Best S'mores Ever!

On the morning of the wedding, I made these cinnamon rolls.  I used the allrecipes cinnabon clone, made the cinnamon rolls several days before, but froze them before baking them.  On the night before the wedding, I moved the cinnamon rolls to the fridge, and on the morning of, I baked them up.  Delish, and super simple.  I made the frosting the morning of too, and done!

Okay, so now the wedding food.  

First are the appetizers.

- 2 cheese platters (brie, jarlsberg, gouda, babybels, and dubinger, with apples and grapes)

- assorted crackers

- quiche lorraine

- veggie shooters (spinach dip with veggie sticks in a shot glass)

- gravlax (cold cured salmon) with cream cheese

- swedish meatballs

- hot artichoke dip

- french bread slices

Here's a closer look of the meatballs and artichoke dip.

Now for the main dinner. Everything was delicious.  The BBQ Chicken was marinated 2 days before and cooked the night before.  The Beef Brisket was also made a few days before and frozen then defrosted and heated in the oven on the day of.  The mashed potatoes, rice, and veggies were done on the day of (by awesome friends). 

- Roasted Mixed Veggies

- Mascarpone Mashed Potatoes

- BBQ Chicken

- Beef Brisket

- Jasmine Rice

- Mixed Greens Salad with homemade dressing

- bread rolls

- wine (toasted head chardonnay, and section 29 zinfandel)

- beer, water and sodas. :)

Okay, now let's go for the sweets!!!
Dessert

- chocolate fountain
- chocolate fountain stuff:  strawberries, bananas, other mixed berries, and pound cake.
- heart shaped sugar cookies (super awesome design  -- look below for a better picture)
- chocolate crinkle cookies
- oatmeal cookies
- peppermint and vanilla meringues
- coffee

Here's the closeup on the sugar cookies.  (Thanks Emily, I still get compliments on them.  And thanks for all the other cookies and meringues too.)

Lastly, we had cake.  We bought the cake from a local Safeway in the area, and it was perfect, and not nearly as expensive as others we saw when we were shopping for cake.  Along with this, champagne, and sparkling apple cider. Mmm!!!  We froze a small piece of the left over cake and plan to have it for our first month anniversary, cuz the thought of eating year-old cake doesn't sound all too appealing to me.

Well, that's about it.  :)  There was a topper that I was working on for quite some time that turned out pretty good, but because of the daylight, it was a bit difficult to see.  Here's a picture of it when it's lit up at a place where you can actually see it.  Pretty cool, right?  It's just too bad we couldn't get it to show up. Oh well.

I totally forgot this last picture.  We finished off the night with shots of patron and pickle juice. :)  If you like pickle juice, you should totally try it.  The pickle juice has an awesome neutralizing effect. 

Okay, so that's our food post. :)  I intend to prepare one more wedding post on the the stationary. Yup, those were all DIY too. :D  Stay tuned for those.

LED Lit Birthday Card

Today is my sister's birthday. We had a grand time celebrating her birthday this weekend, out and about with family and friends. For her birthday, I wanted to make something cool and geeky. :-) I saw this idea during the last Christmas season, from a post on evilmadscientist.com (I wanna explore that site more).

This is actually pretty easy to do if you get past cutting the acrylic sheet to the appropriate size. This one is about 2" x 3" and probably took me about an hour to do because I was using an exacto knife then moved to a box cutter to try to score it deep enough before I eventually snapped the piece off. This was definitely not as easy as it sounded on the site. (Or I did way more work scoring than I needed to do).

Anyway, here's what I did.

Materials:
- Acrylic sheet 2" x 3"
- 1 or 2 LED bulbs
- 1 battery (cr2032 - I just bought one of those flickering LED candles from the dollar tree and grabbed the battery from it)
- black electric tape
- Design you want to etch out (something simple with not too much detail works nice).
- Sharp hobby knife
- Cardstock to make card

How to:

1. Cut the acrylic sheet to fit the design with a bit of space around (maybe half an inch of edge space). I scored it with the hobby (exacto) knife and broke it off. When breaking it off, please be careful to not cut yourself. Use gloves to be safe.

2. Place the acrylic sheet over the design you want to etch out and tape it together to avoid much movement.

3. Using the hobby knife etch in the design by tracing it thru the sheet. It helps look directly above the design you're trying to trace. Also, nice and slow does the trick. It's not a race - so take your time on the curves.



4. Attach the LED light bulbs so the bulb is against the edge of the acrylic. Make sure that the leads for the LED bulb are aligned... positives are on top and negatives are on the bottom or vise versa. You'll want to make sure that the battery will fit okay and the LEDs will light up. I've found success putting a small strip of electric tape along the bottom of the acrylic, turning it over, then positioning the LEDs on the sticky side of the tape.

5. I added a small piece of tape on one half of the battery and insert the battery between both LED leads with the piece of tape end in first. (see picture). Pull up the LED leads on top of the battery just slightly so it doesn't touch the LED unless gently pressed. This will create a make-shift switch so the battery doesn't drain too fast. Tape the battery to the LEDs on the side that you didn't pull the leads up on. Tape the LED bulbs down as well so their position doesn't move and you're covering the stick part of the tape you placed the LED bulbs on in the first place.


6. Using the electric tape, tape up all the edges. This will help the light from "escaping."

7. Attach the acrylic onto some cardstock then attach to a card however way you find.

8. Put a small button or piece of cardstock on the area that is just above the pulled up LED leads with a small note that says Press Here. Make sure to test it out.

9. Put the finishing touches on the card, and place it in the envelope. Placing the card in where the "Press Here" sign is on top is the best way, I found, to put the card in without turning it on.
(Note: for mailing, I'd place a small piece of paper with a pull tab between the leads and the battery to keep it from being on during the entire trip.)


That's it. Pretty easy, right? Enjoy giving out these LED lit cards.

And Happy Birthday, Frida. :-)