Tis the Season of Bridal Showers - Take 2



I get the distinct honour of being a bridesmaid this fall for one of my best friends. As a bridesmaid, I also have the honour of helping to host a bridal shower, which is exactly what I did a few weeks ago. The Maid of Honour and I hosted the shower at my parent's lake house and we had the most perfect day!

Keeping with the theme of the wedding, the decorations were primarily orange, and we added some yellow in for some summer fun.

We kept decorations simple.

The food was amazing. We asked people to bring certain dishes and they outdid themselves.



Our good friend was in charge of bringing a cake, and she did an AMAZING job!!



Inspired by Jolene and Bakerella, I attempted to make Cake Pops for this occasion. Not only did I lose all the photos of my attempts at Cake Pop making, but my Cake Pops were a flop and turned into Cake Balls instead. They still turned out ok, and tasted delicious if I do say so myself.



With the left over Cake Pops, I made treat bags for all of the guests, complete with the candy decorations that were used in the martini glasses. I lost those pics too. So you just have to trust that they looked quite cute.

Speaking of cute, here is the beautiful bride!



And her proud attendants (minus her sister who lives in Alberta....missed you Doe!)

It was such a fabulous afternoon.....thanks to those who travelled out to the Lake House for the afternoon!!

ADELLE

Baking is My Therapy - Cinnamon Buns

For the past ten months, I have become a master of procrastinating. I am especially good at procrastinating when I have various papers/projects/reading assignments due and I am so stressed that I am losing sleep. This is the time I pull out all my baking supplies and waste even more of my valuable time.

I have also found out in the past ten months that baking can be very therapeutic. I realize that baking is not conducive to any sort of healthy living diet....at least not the recipes I make....but it relaxes me.

And so here goes.

I love baking from this recipe book.

The Cinnamon Buns are delicious.

To start you need to make the dough. Heat the milk (1quart), vegetable oil (1cup) and sugar (1cup) in a medium saucepan over medium heat; don't allow the mixture to boil. Set aside and cool to lukewarm.

Sprinkle the yeast (4.5Tbsp active dry yeast) on top and let it sit on the milk for approximately 1 minute.

Add 8 cups of flour. Stir until the mixture is just combined, cover with a clean kitchen towel, and set aside in a place that is room temperature for about 1 hr.

Add the baking powder (1tsp), baking soda (1 tsp), salt (1tsp), and the remaining cup of flour. Stir until combined. The recipe guru (this isn't me just fyi) says that you can use the dough right away or put it in the fridge for up to 3 days. Give the dough a punch if it rises.

Now it's time to put the rolls together. Roll the dough out on a floured surface. It should be rectangular in shape.

To make the filling for these bad boys, pour 1 cup melted butter over the dough, and spread evenly.





Spread 1/8cup ground cinnamon and 1 cup sugar over the butter. It should be noted that I used way more than this quantity on my cinnamon buns.

Here's the hard part. Starting with the end farthest from you, roll your sugar/butter/cinnamon rectangular shaped glory toward you.

This is the therapeutic part. It is an excellent lesson is patience to roll an especially long log of dough. Especially if your dough has a mind of it's own which mine did.

Pinch the seam together when you are finished.

At this point it should look like one big, long log of doughy, sugary, deliciousness.



Cut the roll into 1.5 inch slices.

Pour a few tablespoons of melted butter into your pie pans. Place the sliced rolls onto your pie plates.

Preheat the oven to 375 and while your oven is preheating throw a towel over your rolls and let them rise for 20 minutes. After that, bake the rolls for 13-17 minutes or until golden brown.

While they are baking I made the icing that the recipe book called for. I highly recommend it. It's a maple icing and it is fab.

In a large bowl, whisk 2 pounds icing sugar, 1/2cup whole milk, 6Tbsp melted butter, 1/4cup coffee, and a dash of salt.

When it is mixed, add 1Tbsp maple extract. Whisk until smooth and add in more of the previous ingredients to taste.

Take the rolls out of the oven, pour on the maple icing,  and let them sit for a few minutes.

These cinnamon buns are slightly labour intensive but relatively easy. This is the first time I have ever made cinnamon buns and I thought they were really good. The Pioneer Woman is such a great cooker/baker/writer. I am obsessed with her website/blog: http://thepioneerwoman.com/. Her recipe book is also very user friendly (and very Boyfriend friendly).

These babies did not last long. YUM. The perfect therapeutic treat.

Happy baking!

ADELLE

















Tis the Season of Bridal Showers - Take 1

Summer is in full swing and I am lucky enough to have attended a number of bridal showers already this summer. Two of these were for my dear friends who are sisters to boot, and I had so much fun I decided I would post some pics from these happy events.

Shower One

The first bridal shower was for the younger sister whom I lived with for a fabulous period of time. The bridal shower was held at a restaurant called The Fainting Goat.

I was so excited to get the chance to go to this restaurant as I had never been there before!!

Prior to this shower, I had never attended a shower that was not at a house/hall, so this was a double treat. Oh yeah, and getting to celebrate with the happy bride-to-be was amazing as well!

The Maid of Honour rented the restaurant so that we had it all to ourselves. Except for the bartender.

The restaurant decor went well with the bright, Hawaiian-themed decorations of the shower.

The restaurant supplied the bridal shower guests with a table full of delicious afternoon snacks.

Fresh fruit, veggies and dip.....

Garlic hummus with homemade pitas and bruschetta.

And chocolate covered strawberries.

All the guests sipped on Sangria which was delicious. A perfect sunny afternoon drink.

My favourite snack (other than the Sangria of course...can I consider Sangria a 'snack?) were the tiny little cake squares with delicate little edible flowers. The napkins even matched the cakes!

We played fun shower games, and for a person who doesn't care for most traditional shower games (insert toilet paper bridal gown game here) that is a huge compliment! The Maid of Honour did a great job of planning!!! Here is a pic of the beautiful bride.

We had such a wonderful afternoon, and I definately want to go back to The Fainting Goat for a lunch or supper meal to try out the rest of their menu.

The lovely bride and groom got married two weeks ago. Congrats to the beautiful couple!


ADELLE

Girl's Lake Weekend

A few weeks ago my mom and I had our 2nd Annual Girl's Weekend. We spent 3 wonderful days at our Lake House and despite the not-so-ideal weather we had a great time.

The forecast said that it would rain all weekend so our first stop before leaving the city was to get posh rubber boots so we could trudge through the mud in style.

When we got to the lake we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things and discovered a hot dog BBQ outside the grocery store. Mom had planned a beautiful supper, but neither of us could resist the smell of BBQ.  So instead of a classy supper we had this:

Hot dogs fully loaded. Our chardonnay classed it up.

I invited a few girlfriends over for supper the next night so mom and I began preparing the food. I decided to take rhubarb from the garden and make rhubarb apple crisp for dessert.

To start, cover the bottom of a glass bake pan with diced rhubarb and apple slices.



Pour 1/4 Cup orange juice over the rhubarb and apples.

Gather the following ingredients:  1/2cup quick cooking rolled oats, 1/3cup Splenda sweeter, 1/4cup whole wheat flour, 2tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp orange rind, 1/8tsp salt.



Combine em' all together.

With a fork, stir in 2Tbsp margarine and 1Tbsp vegetable oil until well blended.

Spoon this mixture over the rhubarb/apple mixture.

Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes or until apples are tender.

Serve with ice cream or plain ol cream.

Delicious.

When the girls came over we had a feast of BBQ chicken, corn on the cob, fresh bread and veggies galore.

We also had gluten-free chocolate chip cookes

And fruit parfaits.

Oh yeah, and a few Skinny Girl Margaritas.

We had a great time catching up, visiting, and eating.

The rest of mom and my Girl's Weekend consisted of reading, shopping, eating, and chick flicks.

Supper the following night was equally as delicious as the previous night.

For an appetizer we had crab-stuffed mushroom caps and some vino.

Then we had crab-stuffed shrimp and coleslaw combined with some left overs from the night before.

And of course some rhubarb apple crisp.

After supper we curled up with some tea and enjoyed watching the sun go down.

All in all we had a fabulous Girl's Weekend, with only one male crashing in on our girl time.

I hope you all have a great weekend!



ADELLE

Resolution Check-In

It's already JUNE....2011 is half over which means it is time to do a New Year's Resolution check-in.

At the start of January, I made 11 goals for 2011. I feel that if I write goals down and put them on my blog I am slightly more likely to accomplish some of these goals. Either that or I will look like a total failure to my 3 friends who read this.

Oh well....here it goes.

11 Goals for 2011

1. Run another half marathon and set a PR sub 2:22:13. I have officially registered for the Queen City Marathon in September. Until then, I will be doing the Moose Jawg at the end of the month if I ever get my butt out training!!!

2. Take a cooking class. Look here, here and here. 

3. Floss (I am terrible with this!). I hate flossing and I hate this goal. It is NOT going well. I have a dentist appointment in August so I really need to work on making flossing a part of my daily routine.

4. Go on at least 1 trip. Nope, though the BF just got back from going to game 5 of the Stanley Cup Series in Vancouver. GO CANUCKS!!!

5. Complete between 4-6 classes towards Masters degree. I have class Monday/Wednesday, then I will be done my 4th Masters class!!!

6. Expand interest in photography! I still enjoy taking pics but I haven't found a lot of time to make this into a  regular hobby.

7. Keep in touch with friends who live outside of Moose Jaw....and here in MJ for that matter! I am thinking my out of town friends may have some things to say about this....though I did get to Rosthern twice since January!!

8. Continue reading for enjoyment. Finished my 12th book today. Here is my fav so far, and this has made reading much more accessible.

9. Try meditation to quiet my mind which never shuts off. Ultimate fail.

10. Go skydiving. Not yet but I want to oh so badly!

11. Continue blogging a few times per week. And my last blog post date is....May 14th. Ok, I'll work on this.


I can't decide if doing a resolution check in was a terrible and depressing idea or not. Clearly I have some work to do, but truly my classes have been taking everything out of me.

Cheers to the next productive and exciting 6 months of 2011!!

How are your resolutions going?



ADELLE