Pardon Me While I Whine

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH*

There, now I feel better.
*No, it's not wrong to exploit my crying baby for my personal gain. I needed a funny picture, dammit, and he was already crying. Oh, stop calling social services. This picture was taken when he was 3 weeks old. Otherwise known as the time when ALL HE DID WAS CRY.

I have to apologize for my light posting. On top of studying like crazy - test #2 is on March 1 - I've also been trying to wrap up Rachel's invitation suite and squeeze in a last minute invitation for our first official (yay!) Carolina Pear bride. Oh, and take care of a 7 month old. No biggie.

The actual work hasn't been kicking my butt all that much. I even have time to watch a little tv. Is it just me, or is The Office back to its original levels of awesome this season? What I don't have time for is blogging. Ugh. On the rare occasion I have time to do something creative, it is almost always at night and I don't have the luxury of good lighting to photograph it. I do have a few posts floating around in my head, but they won't make their way onto the internet until March. But when they do - watch out! - they will happen all at once. Because I'm a terrible, impatient blogger incapable of pacing posts or saving ANYTHING for a future blogging drought.

So yeah, it's either feast or famine with me. Sorry 'bout that.

Do You Pin?

I recently discovered Pinterest and I am in love! Pinterest is a virtual pinboard where you can "pin" anything and everything from around the web.

here's a screenshot of one of my boards

Prior to Pinterest, I was really bad about thinking "Ooh, I might buy/cook/DIY that someday, so I should e-mail the link to myself." From DIYs and recipes to shoes and decor inspiration my inbox was cluttered with stuff for someday. If you know anything about me you should know that I can't stand even digital clutter, so the endless links had to go.

Pinterest is just what the doctor OCDer ordered. I now have a place to store and organize all the links and photos I might want to reference in the future. Even better, Pinterest allows multiple boards so I can keep things corraled into groups: decor ideas, recipes, kid stuff, etc. Be still my Type A heart!

Interested? You can check out my pins for inspiration then start your own boards! It's quite fun.

Another Year, Another Wedding

One of best friends in the world, Rachel, is getting married and she asked me to do her stationery! Here's a peek at her save the dates:



Her colors are yellow, black and white as a nod to Appalachian State University. She and her hubby-to-be both graduated from ASU (but never crossed paths) then finally met at an ASU football game. Following the color scheme, Rachel picked daisies to be one of her main flowers. This girl has loved daisies as long as I've known her, so that was no surprise to me. To play off the daisy, I created this geometric flower pattern and served it up in shades of gray and yellow. I also love, love, love her yellow envelopes! So cheerful!

The geometric flower will probably pop up again in her invitations and programs, so stay tuned!

Introducing: Carolina Pear Paper Goods

This is where I shamelessly plug my new business...

I recently launched Carolina Pear, a paper goods company, with my best friend Brettany. I couldn't be more excited about it!


Our love of all things paper blossomed when Brettany and I designed our own wedding invitations, programs, place cards, etc; you name it, we DIY'd it! After we said our "I Do's" and settled into married life with our hubbies, we still had the urge to create. When friends and family got engaged, we were more than happy to lend a creative hand with their paper goods. Last fall, with many weddings under our belts, we felt we were finally ready to start the business we had always talked about.

As much as we adore weddings, our business doesn't stop there. Carolina Pear offers full service stationery design - party invitations, holiday cards, birth announcements and more!

Our bodies may be firmly rooted in the South - hence the name, Carolina Pear - but we would love to help brides and families all across the country! Please check out our website and feel free to recommend us to those in your life. To make it easy for you, I've added a Carolina Pear button to my sidebar, so you don't have to go rooting around the blog to find the link!

The Tale Of The Deconstructed Pound Cake

Since he's not a fan of regular cake* the hubby requested that I make a pound cake for our Super Bowl party and I agreed. Considering I have seen at least one pound cake at every single bake sale, family reunion and church picnic of my Southern childhood I figured it couldn't be that hard. Wrong.
*Crazy, right? Who doesn't like cake? Although, I hate bacon so I guess we're a match made in weird-food-aversions Heaven.

Not only was I going to make a pound cake, I was going to make it from scratch and bake it in one of those fancy fluted pans. I fantasized* about having a perfectly brown cake and having my glaze perfectly drip down the ridges of the cake.
*Yes, I realize fantasizing about a cake makes me a big, fat weirdo.
Emphasis on fat.

not my pound cake

I searched the internet and found a pound cake recipe. I gathered my ingredients, diligently followed the instructions and baked my cake. 80 minutes later my kitchen smelled good enough to eat and my cake was done. With my beautiful pound cake within my (oven mitted) reach, I read the recipe's last step: allow cake to cool 15 minutes in pan; glaze cake. THE RECIPE LIED!

If you only let the cake cool 15 minutes then attempt to move it to your pretty, pretty cake stand, this is what happens:

why God, WHY?

The whole thing broke into a crumbling mess on my counter. Moments away from chucking the whole thing into the compost bin ("I can't serve this, it looks AWFUL!") I tasted a huge chunk reasonably small bite. It was divine; everything I had hoped and more. Maybe it was the late hour, or maybe it was the fact that I am the LAST PERSON ON EARTH who would let some cake go to waste, but I said:

FUCK IT, I'M GLAZING IT.

New life motto, perhaps?

And so this perfectionist served an ugly, yet delicious, pound cake to her friends.

P.S. If you read the recipe, you will see it tells you to cool the cake then it tells you how to make the glaze. Maybe if you follow the recipe in order, your cake is plenty cool by the time you move it and you don't have my problems. However, if you're not supposed to be all Type A and make the glaze ahead of time, they should really say so.

I Can't Hear You Over The Sound Of My Happy Dance

You know how I told you guys I was famous before? Well, I lied. I'm way more famous now.

I submitted photos of our snow house to ohdeedoh, Apartment Therapy's kids division. They loved it and featured it this afternoon. That clicky noise you hear? That's the sound of my happy dance. What, your happy dance doesn't involve tap shoes?

I'm Not A Crazy Cat Lady, Really I'm Not

Saturday night we had a friend over for dinner, so I had to do a little tidying in the living room before she arrived.

Not two minutes after I uncluttered and polished the coffee table, this happened:



I shooed her away and re-wiped the table, then this happened:


Sigh. At least they look cute on the furniture.