New Venture...Dessert Tables!

 

I'm happy to finally share with you a new part of our business...styling dessert tables.  We are working with Paula LeDuc Fine Catering to create custom dessert tables for special events.  Paula LeDuc is providing all of the delicious desserts and we are working with her to personalize the desserts and  presentations.  If you have been lucky enough to taste Paula LeDuc's food you know that everything she makes tastes as amazing as it looks.  This table is from Tyler Florence's birthday celebration.  The party was planned by Laurie Arons Special Events and was at Tyler's newest restaurant, El Paseo, in Mill Valley, California.  It marked the debut of the restaurant {the restaurant was a still a construction zone that day},  El Paseo provided a preview of their menu and Paula LeDuc created the sweets.

The desserts & table mirrored the rustic feeling of the newly refurbished restaurant.  Laurie worked with Paula LeDuc to have desserts that were hearty enough to stand up to the delicious chophouse food they served.  She also picked desserts that are some of Tyler's Favorites {mini pecan pies a nod to his southern roots & banana trifle}.   One of the first things to go was my favorite "Paula's 'smores"  {far left photo}, they are homemade graham cookies with chocolate ganache and meringue on top ... yummy!

Also on the menu, the cutest little apple turnovers, spiced cupcakes, cookies and ccmade carmel corn.  The desserts were in the main dining room which converted into the dance floor after dinner with DJ Dojah spining the tunes.  The mini desserts were the perfect size to eat in between dancing and socializing.

I am so lucky to have found a business that combines two of my favorite things - food (desserts to boot} and paper!  Hopefully there will be many more to share soon...

p.s.

at left is Sammy Hagar, co-owner of El Paseo, I'm lighting the candles on Tyler's birthday cake.  Sammy sang happy birthday to Tyler!

Photography by Meg Smith

Kathryn + Ryan's Day of Wedding Details

Kathryn Storke, the founder of the wedding blog, Snippet and Ink, is one of my favorite brides that I have worked with.  Since she is immersed in all things wedding, I thought that she was going to want to oversee all the details of the  day.   It turned out she was the quite the opposite.  She had the perfect amount of input of as to what the day would look like and a few specific items of she wanted to include.  She allowed her Wedding Planner, Jenna Lam, of Laurie Arons Special Events, and her vendors to carry out her vision.  One of my favorite things that Kathryn has on her Snippet and Ink are inspiration boards. She showed us several items that ultimately ended up on her own inspiration board.  This really gave me an idea of what she was looking for and got the creative ball going.

In Ryan's hands is the little wedding program.  I blind letterpress printed the wreath logo on the front cover, the inside had the important details of the service and it was sewn together with red thread to give it a hint of color.

The escort buttons were something that Kathryn had seen years ago in a Martha Stewart Magazine,  I too, remember seeing them and thinking it such a fun idea. We were lucky to have calligrapher, Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls, who lives in San Francisco work with us on the project.  In keeping with the vintage feel of the venue, I used antique style postcard spinners to display the buttons.  Each card also provided a table number for each guest.  It was so fun to see even the bride and groom wearing their buttons and the guests enjoyed having a keepsake with their names in beautiful white calligraphy by Maybelle.

Below are the menus that continued the wreath theme from the invitations.  Instead of printing the logo, I had a custom rubber stamp made with the wreath and I used a glue stamp pad and then sprinkled glitter onto the image.  It was really the perfect little sparkle to add to the table. The beautiful table settings had a festive holiday feeling without having too much color. Maybelle added the guests name atop the menu to act as a place card.

The photo booth added to the vintage feeling of the evening.  I made a curtain as a surprise for the bride + groom to work with the decor of the room.  The "guest book" was a photo album that we customized with  photo corners so that the guests could mount their photo into the book and write a little note beneath their photo.   I loved seeing that book full of photos & notes leaving with Kathryn + Ryan at the end of the evening - what a great way to capture the fun.

Of course the dessert  table was probably my favorite thing to plan.   We styled the table and added the personalized touches to the amazing desserts from Perfect Endings.  It was so much fun that we have added dessert styling to our list of services we offer to customers (more on that to come)! 

photography : Elizabeth Messina, event planner: Jenna Lam for Laurie Arons Boutique Events, ,  calligraphy: Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls, venue: Presidio Social Club,  floral design: Kathleen Deery Designs, Desserts: Perfect Endings