Newsletter: New Vintage Trim Belts

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The Creative Cupcake Annual Bake Sale (in honor of ending our 3rd year in business) is almost ready to go! There are just a few last minute things to take care of that I should be able to finish rather quickly. It's also the time of year that I like to "clean house" so I can bring in even more new patterns and styles over the next few months.

I realized that phasing out a lot of the ribbons will leave the swatches a bit outdated, so I spent the better portion of this afternoon with my eyes glued to the Illustrator grid lines. Updated swatch cards are up -- which means these are the ribbons that we are currently keeping in stock and will not be discontinued:

Anything that we have carried in the past but is not shown is either being phased out or we have already sold out of that style/size.

Not much else to report -- just plugging away at getting things squared away. Keep your eyes out for our newsletter with all the details over the next few days.

To Bienenstich or not to Bienenstich...

We were invited to a dinner party/game night/fun fest tomorrow and requested to bring dessert. Upon learning the hosts will be serving up some fanci-fied lavender squab, lemon scented green beans and Snooty McSnobby Potatoes, I knew I had to deliver. No simple Hi-Hat Cupcakes will do.

I thought... ah-ha! Bienenstich. [with enthusiasm] It has honey so that will compliment the squab nicely.

Then I thought... er, Bienenstich? [with dread]

So what the heck am I talking about? It's a traditional German dessert that's name translates to "Bee Sting Cake". Basically it is a doughy-cake, vanilla cream, and more cake which has been soaked in a honey and almond syrup. Yum! See, I've eaten it many times. For me, an Oktoberfest is simply not complete without my slice of Bienenstich appropriately served to me by an adorable elderly lady in a dirndl.

Side note: I think I'm the only woman in Mr. Cupcake's family who doesn't have a dirndl to call my own. He, on the other hand, grew up with several different pair of his own leiderhosen. Feel free to make fun of him mercilessly because of this. I certainly do.

While Oma (his grandmother) surely had a recipe for it, undoubtedly it is in some box on some shelf in some room that can't quickly be found, so I go online and seek out a recipe. Since there were so many different versions, none of which seemed to be authentic in any way, I took the cake from one, the topping from another and then the filling from a 3rd -- then I Nicolette-i-fied it all into one fantastic recipe. Luckily I have everything on hand so I got started right away.

Since it had to cool for a while, I started with the filling, which I turned into an Almond & Lemon Pastry Cream. Success... and a tasty one at that! With the cream in the fridge, I turned to the cake batter, or really more of a dough.

Here's a little secret -- me and yeast don't quite see eye to eye. No matter how many times the Good Eats sock puppets/yeasty beasties explain it to me, I just cannot get my yeast doughs to rise properly. We won't even get into the Thanksgiving Parker House Roll Fiasco of 2006. I finesse the yeast, carefully checking the water temperature so I don't kill them off en masse. I bloom them with a bit of sugar for 10 minutes to get them nice and full. No luck, and this time was no different.

Plan B. I turned to my Kindred Kitchen Spirit, Ina Garten. Her profiterole recipe inspired me to make a gigantic cake-size cream puff instead of a traditional cake. So one pâte à choux dough later, I made a spiral (some may say, beehive-esque) puff and it turned out perfectly!

Finally, the topping was turned into a Honey Almond Carmel and slowly poured over top.



A-maz-ing! Tell me that doesn't look good. I totally rocked this dessert. [By the way, have I ever mentioned that modesty is one of my better qualities?!] Now if I can only find someone to rock the mound of dishes and appliances it's left in it's wake...........

Edited to add: Since a few of you asked so nicely, I'll post the recipe tomorrow!

Pursue some happiness!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
-- Preamble to the Declaration of Independence

I hope you are all out pursuing some of your own happiness today (seeing as there isn't much liberty going on with our government these days). Ours includes a quick grocery store stop and then an relaxing afternoon home with potato salad and juicy burgers on the yummiest chive biscuit buns ever. Later we will walk an entire block away to watch fireworks being set off over Lake Carolyn across the street.

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

I wasn't going to blog today...

Today was spent organizing and cleaning my studio and I am exhausted. I'm thinking about posting photos tomorrow since I get a lot of questions about where the preppy creating goes down. Initially I wasn't going to show any studio photos until I was finished. I wish I had taken before pictures so you could be as truly impressed with the "progress" as I am. My guess is that many of you reading this will look in horror and dismay at the sad state of affairs that is my workspace/studio/office. Me? I am tickled pink (and green)! After 9 months, I finally have a dedicated work space, which means no more working from my kitchen island! If you squint, you can see me working, there, on the right atop my favorite camel colored microsuade "bar" chairs.

In completely unrelated news: Mr. Cupcake is traveling again this week. The following story may not be terribly entertaining (what a great lead-in!) but now that it's behind us I can sort of laugh at him. Plus, I know some of his co-workers read this very blog and will probably give him flack about it. So... last night one of his flights was delayed for several hours, diverted once they finally got off the ground, and then delayed again getting into his final destination. His flight finally landed just shy of 7 hours later than expected, after 2:30AM. Of course, the car service that was booked didn't bother to show up, even after assuring him they were monitoring his flight and would be there. An hour and a half later (that's 4AM for you folks keeping track), they finally sent someone and he got to his hotel room by 5AM. Poor bastard had to get up for work about an hour later, so at least he'll get some pity when he comes home tomorrow.

The odd thing was that I had a terrible night's sleep last night. I got 2 hours, tops. As someone who could sleep soundly while doing a handstand in a monsoon, this was a bit frustrating. Damn sympathy sleeping issues. He'd better gain some significant sympathy pregnancy weight when the time comes!!

Newsletter: New Summer Headbands!

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It didn't fit?!?!?!

Mr. Cupcake just arrived home from a 2-week, 3-city trip and had a Lord & Taylor bag with his luggage. Of course I start to envision what lovely gift was to be mine until I come to find out that he sadly didn't, in fact, buy anything from the department store. Instead he had ordered Girl Scout cookies from someone in his office who then delivered them in said bag. Naturally, the prospect of crispy Thin Mints perked me right up and I began to jokingly tear through his things to hunt them down. That was until he uttered the words no woman wants to hear:

"I don't have them anymore."

Um. Why not?

"They didn't fit into my luggage so I got rid of them."

You did what?!

"You wouldn't have wanted them all crushed, anyway. Would you?"

He said it so innocently I almost didn't want to hurl knives at his manhood. Almost. Of course I would still want them, pulverized or not. I'm sure they could have fit somehow. They're freakin' Thin Mints, for Pete's sake. Their compact size is in their name!

Needless to say, we will be purchasing a new, larger, garment bag very soon.

Happy Wednesday!

Sometimes when creativity hits, I guess you just have to go with it and not question. No doubt my blissful San Diego trip has something to do with my state of mind. Today was a busy day and I got a lot accomplished, which continues my particularly productive week.

Here is the fabric initial letter I talked about yesterday:

I'm not as crazy about this one, even though the font is kind of quirky, but I think it's because of my fabric choice. Right along side it is a pink and green paisley mirror I made and I am IN LOVE! I still need to apply the acrylic sealer to it but it came out even better than I expected, though the picture doesn't quite do it justice. The edges were done with a pink/fuschia pattern that you can't really see at this angle. Crafting is so addictive, I can't wait to see what I do tomorrow!

Tomorrow I should be able to share my last initial (for now--I can't stop!) as long as I can hunt down the right copper colored ribbon.

Over the past month or so I've been spending bits of time re-organizing my studio. I realized I just have WAY too many ribbons. Seriously, I can't even begin to explain the tens of thousands of yards that don't even have the decency to chip in for their share of our rent! So because of that I'm going to be discontinuing some of my patterns (don't worry, there are more fabulous ones on the way for Fall). Bring in my Etsy Store, which I've generally used to sell some of my materials overstock. Today I listed a few sets of headbands (from 2 to 4 per set), all at 25% off what they are usually listed for on the site.

Oh, yes, and I re-did my entire site design! Stop by and check it out when you have a chance. There are still a few minor things I need to work on, but I got the bulk of it done today. When we installed a new shopping cart system last year, I wasn't crazy with the final design. I loved the logo/color scheme and Eva's new preppier outfit but I knew what our limitations were at that point so I tried to learn to love it. That never quite happened. There may be slight tweaks here and there, since I'm sort of learning along with the update process, but I feel 100% better about how it looks today.

I'd love to hear what you think -- what you like, what you don't, what can make it more user friendly: easier to navigate, find what you are looking for, etc.

Update: Initial letters

Here are the letters I talked about making on Sunday. The last one is my favorite because of the bezeling along the edges -- the fabric pattern really makes them pop out in person.


From L to R: Oxford Stripe paper, Olive Acanthus paper, Robert Kaufman's Sugar & Spice fabric. Both papers are from the Amy Butler collection for K&Company.

So yummy -- I went out last night and picked up 2 more initials! I used a striped fabric remnant I had on one and beautiful blue and copper paper on the other. The fabric one is finished and drying. The second one I have to go out and find a copper-ish colored ribbon (the one color I don't have) to overlap along the edge, but in a different way than in the first picture above.

More photos to come tomorrow. Now that it's almost 7:30pm I think it's time to head back into my studio and finally get some "work" done!

It's a Crafty Day in the Neighborhood

Fresh off of 2 weeks of much needed rest, relaxation and restoration, I spent today in my studio. After I packed up the orders that came in since Friday's batch, I ran some crafty errands which included a stop at Michael's. I went with the intention of picking up a new pair of scissors for "around the house" since I am very territorial about my scissors and their specific uses. Heaven help someone (ahem.... Mr. Cupcake) who tries to cut out a newspaper article with any of the clearly labeled pairs in my studio, which we fondly refer to as the Fabric Scissor Incident of 2005.

Certainly, I cannot just walk out of a craft store with the one item I went in to buy. I don't think I have it in me. During my crafting binge (hey, it's better than chocolate -- well, almost), I found myself in the wooden-things section. Something inspired me to pick up 3 initial C's of different shapes and sizes, remembering that I discovered a pile of scrapbooking paper in the depths of our storage. There is a technique that I saw that involves gluing the paper onto the front of the wooden shape and then sanding off the edges, giving it sort of a shabby chic feel. A few aisles later, I saw the new Amy Butler line of scrapbooking goodness and into my cart went some paper.

One I did in Oxford Stripe paper, another in Olive Acanthus paper and the third, which was beveled along the edges, in a Robert Kaufman fabric I had a scrap of on my desk. All 3 came out beautifully -- I'll post pictures tomorrow when the lighting's better -- and are now at home on our wall of initials.

I love how accomplished crafty days can make me feel!