Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Paris in winter lunch




It is with great excitement that I can reveal Anya's "Paris in winter" party held last weekend.


Thank you to the wonderful Amy Atlas and her team for featuring my party today, I am beyond thrilled and happy :-)))



I love Paris in the spring time


I love Paris in the fall


I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles


I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles………………….

and so a theme was decided upon for my daughter’s 11th birthday party.

My daughter Anya ADORES & LOVES France, especially Paris and the Eiffel tower and begged me for a Paris party this year. Since this theme has already been done to death I wanted to give her party a funky and modern twist without blowing the budget sky high. Lets face it, if this is going to cost me hundreds of dollars to create I might as well save up a little more to buy a ticket and visit the actual Paris. A lot of the elements for this party was homemade and we tried to incorporate quite a few wintery touches since its very cold down here in Melbourne, Australia.



We started with gorgeous invites created by Jennifer Birkhead Design and to make it more fun for the guests Anya and I made envelopes from colour copied Paris street maps topped with Par Avion (free from the post office) and Eiffel tower stamps (free download from Google images). Jennifer also created all the cookie and dessert table tags to match.



Since our Paris theme involved the actual French colours (funny how nobody has done a Paris party in French colours before) I ordered some inexpensive French flag bunting from Ebay and various French ribbons and paper mini flags to be used on the dessert table. I also knitted a blue, white and red square flag garland to hang from the fireplace to emphasise the winter theme. I didn’t want to go out and spend extra money on vessels and platters for the table so instead I bought some styrofoam square cake dummies and wrapped them in white wool before crafting the two main cupcake and pop stands you can see on the table. I also used empty, clean chickpea cans to hold my cookies and macarons and once again wrapped the tins in white wool to dress them up. I even used chickpea cans and empty juice bottles as vases as centerpieces for my dessert table and lunch table which I covered in fake fur (the cans stuck on candleholders) and red wool (the bottles on the main table). The background is a Parisian wall decal which can be (and was) easy to remove.



Mademoiselle Anya unwrapping one of her tres chic pressies all decked out in her Parisian finery (clothes from Pumpkin Patch's Paris range)




Close up of the Eiffel tower and snow cookies all displayed in wool covered chicpea cans!




The Pièce de résistance was the Eiffel tower cake made from double chocolate sponge cake filled with chocolate buttercream and covered in fondant, yummmmm. Everything on the cake was edible (except the ribbon, flag and feathers).




Vanilla and coconut "snow" cupcakes and edible choc Eiffel pops. All displayed on my handmade cupcake & pop stand.





Some of the food we had for lunch was French pancakes, croissants with ham and mini bread rolls (Petit pain) with cheese. The dessert table had mini white hot chocolates with marshmallow moustache stirrers (the girls loved these!), a cheese (fromage) platter, raspberry macarons on sticks, Eiffel tower snow cookies, vanilla and coconut snow cupcakes and Eiffel tower pops. Guests were inspired by Edith Piaf singing French songs on the CD player in the background while playing games such as “name that Paris landmark”, “Paris bingo”, “find the moustache” and painting their nails in French coloured nail polish.




Can't have a French lunch without French raspberry and vanilla macarons! These macaron pops were for the children.





I loved how the living and diningroom looked after it was decorated, it looked like a French cafe overlooking a window with the Eiffel tower in the distance. Tres Bien!




For the main lunch the girls had these mini French pancakes.




Vanilla & coconut "snow" cupcakes were a hit at the dessert table.



I scored some lovely striped plates from Bed, Bath & table for only a mere $3 each, Le BARGAIN!



What is a Parisian lunch without flowers I say........ bought these lovely red carnations and silver leaf filler from Camberwell flower market and just added some feathers. I added these blooms to my fake fur covered can vases and stuck them to my candle holders for "drama".




I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles.........found this gorgeous ruffle umbrella at my friend Lil's shop from Lily Chic Events and had to have it!! Isn't it just devine? Oo-la-la!!



Mini hot white chocolate drinks in mini cafe cups (I embelished each cup with a French phrase) with marshmallow & moustache stirrers/swizzle sticks. The guests loved these the most!



For the guests to take home they each received a mini wool felted postman’s satchel with poppy brooch containing an Eiffel tower cookie, a notebook bought from the dollar shop then covered in Paris street map paper, a stripy pen, Eiffel tower necklace and vintage airmail letter paper and envelopes (downloaded and printed for free) from Linda at Tortagialla.



My daughter loves to write letters so the free printable letter set was especially appreciated by her.




Eiffel tower snow sugar cookie with edible Eiffel tower image.



One of the favourite items on the dessert table was the cheese platter!




Forget napkin rings, just wrap some wool around your wooden cutlery, add a cute wool felted brooch with ribbon and viola, you've gone from cheap to chic!




Close up of the raspberry & vanilla macarons I made, these were for the parents that stayed for coffee.



It was only a small lunch of 6 guests who sat at the main table, this kept the lunch intimate and manageable.



Even my youngest daughter Liandra got into the swing of things.



See the red bottle? I used two empty juice bottles, wrapped them in red wool to jazz them up a bit and used them both as vasses on my main table. How easy and cheap is that!!


Don't forget to join me on FACEBOOK and tell me what you think :-)) or you are welcome to leave a comment here if you wish.

xxxx

Leoni

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Lala bird cake, cookies and pops

This weekend I was busy completing this cute cake, cookie and pop set inspired by Alannah Rose's lala bird stationary. The cake was made from 3 x stacked chocolate mudcakes and filled with chocolate buttercream, then covered in white choc fondant. The bird topper is also made from cake which has been covered in milk chocolate before being covered in red vanilla Satin ice.


With the leftover mudcake I made these matching bird pops, aren't they cute? I love birds!




Here are the matching bird sugar cookies.....




Now for some exciting news, dessert Queen and styling Guru Amy Atlas is considering coming to Australia!!!! You all know how much I LOVE Amy Atlas and how much she has inspired my dessert tables. In fact, it is almost a year ago to the day that I created my very first dessert table that was heavily inspired by Amy!! I would LOVE to meet Amy, so if she's also your hero and you would love for her to visit us, please click HERE to register for Amy's mailing list. Don't forget to fill out the "How Did You Hear About Us” section and selecting the country “Australia". Lets make Amy's inbox go into meltdown ;-))


Friday, July 8, 2011

Ice cream shaped cake

A few days ago I was asked to create a cake to exactly match a stationary design for a 40th birthday, this is what I created. Although a fairly simple cake to make it still was tricky to try and make the cake look like the sketched ice cream. This particular cake was a double chocolate sponge (not a cake I recommend for carving!) filled with Choc fudge frosting. The cake consisted of 4 x 8' inch square cakes, stacked then carved using a cardboard template I created.

It was quite large in the end, as you can see it sitting on a 14" square cakeboard covered in fondant.



Monday, July 4, 2011

Rapunzel-Tangled and flower fairy cake

First of all a big congratulations to Michelle Harding who won the Lily Chic Events Winter warmer giveaway. Enjoy your prizes Michelle :-)

Well another busy two weeks have passed as you can see from the photo's. July is a very busy month for our family as we have no less than 6 family birthdays to celebrate, 2 of those birthday belong to my youngest and eldest children. So lots of baking for me lol

The lovely cake above however went to a good friend of mine today, her daughter Lili is 5 today and since her own oven was out of action I volenteered to make the birthday cake as pressie. The design came from Debbie Brown's new book called Gorgeous & Gruesome, I love this book and have been itching to make a cake from it. This cake was called the flower fairy princess, I loved her flowing hair and all the gorgeous flowers sprinckled over the entire cake. It's not a massive cake, only 1 x 6' inch round on the bottom and 2 x 4' inch round cakes to make the tower. The majority of work went into the figurine and flowers and I loved how they turned out.

Here is a close up of the fairy, I am happy with how her face turned out.



This cake was made for my youngest daughter Liandra, she turned 3 on the 1st July and desperately wanted a Tangled/Rapunzel cake. I am not usually a fan of character cakes so opted to make the tower more like the fairytale rather than the movie.



Close up of Rapunzel..... yes, I even made Pascal ;-)



Liandra wanted Flynn Rider on the cake and since I was not keen to make the figurine I stuck an edible poster on the tree instead. Overall she was very happy with cake but she did ask me where Max was (I made his head with the intention of making a bush with his angry head sticking out, alas there was no room on the cake so his head became a cupcake topper instead lol)