This past November I had the pleasure of designing a wedding invitation suite for an amazing Old Hollywood wedding held at the Ebell of Los Angeles. It was such an elegant affair. The venue fit the style of the event perfectly. I custom designed all of the paper products for the bride, including the wedding program fan, envelope liners, menus, dessert cards, thank you’s, and more. :)
Photos courtesy of Amy Stone Photography
This week I tried two new things in the kitchen. First, I tried one ingredient banana ice cream. I have always had a very sweet tooth, and ice cream is definitely one of my major weaknesses. Since I don’t like chocolate, peanut butter & bananas have always been my “rich” flavors. So when I saw this super simple recipe for 2-ingredient peanut butter banana ice cream (without sugar! without cream!) I just had to have it. Instead of blending in the peanut butter, I swirled a small spoonful in after blending. I didn’t get a very great photo of it, because it started melting and Micah and I wanted to eat it right away! :)
Recipe:
Peel and slice 4 bananas into banana coins and place on a plate. Freeze them for 1-2 hours. Put frozen banana slices into a food processor (or powerful blender). Blend them, scraping down the sides every so often. It’ll look lumpy at first, but keep blending, and it turns into creamy banana ice cream :)
Then, this weekend Micah and I woke up early and decided to have some fun with pancakes. I made the pancake batter extra thin by adding a little more milk so that I could pour it into a squeeze bottle to make fun shapes on the pan. To get the best shapes, squeeze out the outline of your shape and then fill it in quickly.
This is our dinosaur pancake :)
Here is our caterpillar and butterfly pancakes
Pancake recipe:
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup milk (I used about 1 1/2 cup to make it thin)
2 eggs
2 tablespoons canola oil
Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Add wet ingredients and mix. Spray non-stick spray on your pan and begin your pancake creations, flipping when you see bubbles (that was Micah’s job) :)
Baking is like magic. Yep, I said it. It’s magical. Out of nothing (well, nothing significant when standing alone) appears something delicious. Flour, sugar, butter…throw together and POOF, desserts! I’ve always been a super frugal girl, so I joke with my husband Josh that baking is like creating free food – the BEST! Since there’s always flour, sugar, baking ingredients & butter in the house my brain doesn’t put monetary value to it, it’s just like the most amazing free food ever. :) Lol
Yesterday we hosted our small group for the first time, so I made it my mission to wow everyone with an array of delicious treats. I’ve always loved having people over and sharing time over good food, but over the past year I’ve really jumped head first into a passion for entertaining guests, cooking & baking.
I figured it’d be easy if everything was relatively bite sized (real intention: laziness motivated by not having to wash 15 sets of silverware!) I made my old stand-by, Lemon bars, which are an easy fix since I have an abundance of lemons dangling off the lemon tree in my backyard. I’ll post that recipe a little later, because the main focus is the mini-pies I made for the first time. Which ended up much better than I had anticipated (I was nervous about these little guys).
For these mini cherry pies, I used regular muffin tins. They are SO simple. Just store bought refrigerated pie crust and a can of cherry pie filling. I followed the tutorial from Sew Sweet Stitches, which walks you through a from scratch cherry filling. I didn’t have time to make the filling from scratch with everything else I was doing, so I settled for canned but they was seriously great.
I had half a container of fresh blueberries in my fridge, so I used the remainder of the pie crust dough to make these mini blueberry pies with a lemon streusel topping. OMG my new favorite! I took this recipe from Pillsbury and modified it a little bit. Instead of using their coconut streusel topping, I created a lemon streusel to give them some zippiness. Then I drizzled them with lemon glaze.
Lemon streusel:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Lemon glaze:
Combine 6 tablespoons of powdered sugar with enough lemon juice to make a thick glaze. Drizzle over cooled pies.
(Photo credit Jessica Burns)
And last but not least, my third dessert was a new one that my amazingly talented foodie friend Jessica introduced me to. They’re Martha Stewart’s Strawberry Shortcake cookies and they’re one of my new favorites. You can find the recipe and an awesome photo-journey walking you through the steps of making these wonderful little treats here on Jessica’s blog. :)
Happy baking!!
I’m so excited to share that OnToBaby has featured Micah’s 3rd birthday party this week! Check it out and share it with your friends and family! :)
xo
Kiira
I started planning this birthday party in my head a few months in advance while perusing the internet late at night. So I had plenty of time to make hundreds of those little yarn pom-pom balls. I love taking inexpensive items & jazzing them up with the help of the craft and hardware store. I think I probably went to Michael’s 4 or 5 times throughout this process. The good news is it’s only about 4 blocks from where I live so it wasn’t a huge deal :)
The invitations and all the paper goods I designed and printed myself, even the envelope liners!
I’ve been on a chalkboard-paint kick ever since Thanksgiving when I created chalkboard coasters for each guest at our dinner. I bought an ornate frame from Ikea, primed & glossed it with bright green spray paint to make it candy-coated, and painted the center with chalkboard paint. I am in love with this frame. All the brightly colored bunting flags I created for super cheap! I bought 8.5×11″ pieces of felt in each color (they’re only 29 cents each!) and some white string. Each piece of felt makes 10 flags, so with 7 colored felt pieces I had a ton of flags and was able to create several long strands. The white letters are also sold at the craft store and already have adhesive on the back. Super simple, and all the flags were under $10!
The food and dessert was the main event. I wanted to keep everything miniature…mini sliders, mini hot dogs, mini donuts, and such. I’ve been collecting soup cans for months because I wanted to do a dish served in individual cans. Micah and my husband love tater tots, so we did seasoned tater tots in cans and they were a HIT!
For dessert I made rice krispy pops because the idea of making cake pops seemed too daunting what with all the other things I had planned. (I ended up making about 20 little cake balls with the tops of each cake layer when I was leveling them out and I must say they turned out pretty good). We bought the wooden dowels from the craft store and cut them to size for the candy popcorn balls (which I ordered from Kernel Encore) and I created the little flavor flags too. The cake I colored with actual fruit (recipe here) which was one of my favorite items. I loved that each layer had a flavor…strawberry, blueberry, lemon, orange… I also did a layered jello in mason jars using this recipe, which was rather time consuming but well worth the effort. Who knew you could create white jello with gelatine and sweetened condensed milk?! I’ll be using this technique for years to come.
I saw some gorgeous cake plates by Iacoli & McAllister, but they are super expensive! Instead, I shopped around my local thrift stores for several different sized candlesticks. I primed them and painted them with high-gloss spray paint and they look so great. The red one looks so shiny like a candy apple! I found completely flat white platters (I didn’t want the angle of a dinner plate) at Ikea for under $10 each and I used gorilla glue to secure each plate to the top of each candlestick. Presto, I have hundred+ dollar cake pedestals for under 20 bucks each which I used for the cake and dessert pops.
The photo collage idea was inspired by Martha Stewart. We have so many amazing photos of our little guy taken by our good friend Amy Stone, and I wanted to share them all with everyone at the party. It also was a conversation topic, a timeline of Micah’s 3 years, from being a newborn, to walking, his first trip to Disneyland, to potty training, all leading up to now. I bought glossy photo paper and printed these all on my inkjet at home and cut them out to arrange them in the shape of a 3. Another very affordable decoration idea. Overall the party was a giant hit and everyone left in a giant sugar-induced coma :)
Printables, Styling, Food & Desserts: Kiira Turnbow of eyeheartprettythings
Photography: Amy Stone
Craft Supplies: Michael’s & Home Depot
A few of my favorites that I designed for our family this year :) I’m in love with the photos Amy Stone took of our boys. Absolutely beautiful!
Merry Christmas!
I’m so excited to announce that I’ve got a few more t-shirt designs selling at Kohl’s this month! Check them out :)
Fourth of July is right around the corner! I am so excited to spend the long weekend with family and friends. Recently I designed some wedding invitations for a styled wedding shoot inspired by Vintage Americana. The shoot was captured by the very talented Amy Stone and styled by the amazing Jessica Burns. I am so excited to work with these girls, and the shoot was picked up by Green Wedding Shoes!
I designed these vineyard styled wedding invitations for my friend Kimi’s wedding last Fall in Santa Barbara Wine Country. It was so beautiful and I was so happy to be there for such a unique and wonderful event!
eyeheartprettythings 