Van Gogh Water Lilies

Pretty in Pink

When it comes to cakes, frosting, and decorating, I, hands-down, always prefer piped decorations over gumpaste or sugarcraft work. Why? While I do think you can make extraordinary, beautiful things with sugarcraft, it's more just for the aesthetics than anything else. Well, I mean you CAN eat the layer of fondant and the sugar flowers if you really wanted to.....but really, anything buttercream is going be much tastier. In the world of food, taste > looks.



I'm all for trying to strike a balance between both the pretty and the practical, and buttercream allows me to find that. I also like the imperfect look of piped, buttercream cake - it feels more homemade... and looks more edible too.




I made these cupcakes for my boss' daughter on her birthday and decided to try something new with the buttercream, instead of doing the same ol' swirls. So I search around the ol' faithful internet and found a great video tutorial on how to make these flower designs on cupcakes using just a regular piping bag and two different petal tips (sigh...I really am a huge fan of YouTube). Anyways, a couple of practice cupcakes later and I had a whole mess of flowers crowding me in the kitchen!



It's a really easy technique to get down, and I recommend it if you're tired of doing swirls but want something that isn't too fancy. The only thing I couldn't really do is to get that two-tone colour going the whole time (the petals are supposed to fade from white to pink, or white to purple), and it's probably because my frosting was way softer than what they use in the tutorial so it all got mushed together in the bag. Check out the vid below! :)

Meg + Will's Wedding

Okay, okay, so I know I said I was going to post up all these wonderful pictures of France, but man, I got lazy in trying to sort through edit them all. You know when you have a huge pile of work you need to go through, and it just seems so daunting so you just procrastinate (which of course, makes everything worse...). In the meantime I've been wanting to show you all some other stuff I've been up to since France, but of course, being the perfectionist that I am, I wanted everything to be in perfect, chronological order so it made sense, but then everything keeps getting pushed back.... and back... and back..........

Well, bah! France posts are just gonna have to take a back seat for now, 'cause I'm moving on. Seriously, I must, otherwise I feel as if my blog is going to wither away again. I'll come back to France here and there, though.



Alrighty! So a couple weeks back I worked on a wedding project for Meghann and Will which was a lot of fun. While Will is from here, Meg's from the Big Apple, so they had this cool "NY-meets-Canada" theme going on. And can I just say here that I was so happy to work with their colour of RED? Whoo!!! It's such a refreshing change from all those pale, pastel girly colours that most weddings use.



So this wedding was also tres cool because I got the chance to integrate some 3D decor elements into the usual stationery design. I combined a floral centerpiece into the seating card display which I thought would have a great "wow" factor.




There's a ravine in my backyard, which is where I found the branches I would need. James helped me to cut them down to size and spray paint them black. We ended up using a whole can of spray paint, even though there was barely any surface area to cover (this was also my first time spraying, and boy... does it smell like TOXIC. phew!!)



To hold the actual seating cards, I got four black box picture frames from Ikea and removed the glass. Originally I was going to have little tent cards, but I didn't have enough space in the frames to hold 130 cards total, so after a bit of brainstorming, I got the idea to use an accordian fold to prop up the cards instead.



I wanted to have crystal jewels strung and hung down from the branches (so they would shimmer in the light), but the only ones I could find sold in bulk at the craft store were those cheap, plastic looking ones. So I veto-ed that and made a last-minute decision and go with adding some tiny white blossoms to the branches instead.






The wedding was to be held at a museum in Ottawa, and being unable to attend, Nancy (the groom's sis) and Joe swung by my place to pick everything up. I set up the whole sha-bang in my kitchen so they would see what it should look like, and took pics to email as well. And while I'm pretty sure I looked like a sleep-deprived, half-dead zombie when it was done, I was SO psyched to see it all put together. Yay!! I thought the branches turned out particularly nice. I mean, even without the white flowers and the tulle it looked quite nice - so nice in fact that I went out and bought the exact same vase again so I could make it again and decorate my room. :)

Chicken run

June had five chickens at her place, so I got to eat fresh eggs daily. They were so cute! They come scurrying around your feet whenever you come out because they think you have food. And at night, they all cuddle together side-by-side in the coop to stay warm :)

Natural Beauty

June's place, Charolles (central France)

Photographic memories

France. Wow, it seems like ages ago that I was there. Isn't that funny how that happens? It hasn't even been a month since I've been back home, and my journey in France feels almost like a distant dream.

Initially, I was actually hesitant about taking my camera - I already had a super heavy backpacking bag, plus my purse, and I really dislike carrying my clunky camera bag around. And I wondered if I would be too busy touring to bother taking pictures. But I'm glad I did. Looking back on the pictures helps me to remember the little details of my trip that I probably would've forgotten about otherwise. I suppose it's true what they say - a picture's worth a thousand words.

I just about filled up my memory card so I've yet to organize them still. I'll post some up as I go through them. It's nice to be back home, but I certainly do miss certain parts about France - the beautiful rolling countryside, the long summer days, the super-convenient Paris metro system, the fabulous bakery and patio scene, the nutella crepes, the dinner salads... the impeccably-groomed Parisian men. :)

Still, it's good to be home.

First morning in Paris

Blink, blink.

The sun beams through the open windows and I hear the clatter of pans in the kitchen below me. I shuffle between the freshly laundered sheets, too comfortable move, and then realize that I'm finally, actually in Paris.

It's the mid-way point of my four week journey in France. After spending my first week in the countryside near Charolles, the following in the metropolitan city of Lyon, it already feels like I've been gone for such a long time.

Travelling alone has been an interesting and insightful experience so far. The first thing I realized is that I feel less inclined to go visit all the fantastical tourist sites that one automatically assumes to see when in France. The experience of visiting something like the Musee des Beaux Arts in Lyon turned out to be rather anti-climatic, and I expect the same to occur when I visit the Effiel Tower, The Louvre, and so on.

On the contrary, I'm that finding most of my enjoyment is coming simply from my observations about French culture.

For example, between 12pm and 2pm, almost all the shops and businesses in France close to enjoy lunch. Lyon is known as the cuisine scene of France, and at mealtime, restaurants open and their patios are flooded with locals enjoying the beautiful weather and fine food. As someone who's quite used to eating in front of a computer screen while multi-tasking, I'm still finding it hard to stretch a whole two hours just for lunch. I can't imagine any city in North America doing such a practice. I feel like our economy would have a meltdown or something even if it tried to.

I was also taken aback by the size of their coffees here. Tiny! About the size of an espresso, and accompanied by packets of cubed sugar. Now, since I don't like to drink a lot of coffee, I happen to find their tiny cups to be the perfect size (and maybe also because I also have an affinity for miniature things). Interestingly enough though, I met a French woman here who thinks that French coffees are too small and believes that the Americans got it right with their huge cups.

So currently I'm located in Mont-montre, which is north of central Paris near the Moulin Rouge. I managed to snag a last minute apartment on craigslist the day before at only 30 euros a night, and I'm relieved that I won't have to spend another two weeks in a crowded, stuffy hostel. I won't be moving in until tomorrow so at the moment I'm staying next door with the apartment owner, Hakima... Moroccan descent, born in France with good English, and about as bohemian as you can get. We arranged to meet at a cafe, and there she was, wearing a floral-printed skirt, beer in hand, and having her portrait painted by an artist friend. Eyebrow raised, she called to me across the street in her thick French accent, 'Iz zhat you, Alee-cee-ah?'

Hakima is really interesting. I've never met anyone who had such a laissez-faire personality before. But she's incredibly nice and is letting me use her laptop for the time-being, and did my laundry for me this morning... so I was able to have clean clothes for the first time in two weeks! I met her friend Carine yesterday and we hit up a local bar last night. The French here love dogs, and Carine was able to bring her huge German sheppard into the bar with us without a problem (he sat obediently under the table). The lively, rowdiness of the bars here in Paris caught me by surprise, as I found Lyon to be much more tame. Lyon reminds me of Toronto, actually... you know, nice but boring. Paris is definitely the more hip-and-happenin'place to be, with lots of young people out, especially in this area of town.

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel intimidated here. The air just feel so... French. I actually hate carrying my camera around, it just really makes me stick out as a tourist. I think the worst combo is the camera + the map + the Help-I'm-Lost expression. Being asian has already granted me lots of uncomfortable stares while in France so far as it is. Ah well, so far I have found French people to be way friendlier than Quebecois, which is a relief.

Till next time, a bientot!