Bright and Beautiful

Bright and Beautiful

I promise this is not evolving into a party blog...I'll leave that to the experts. My dear friend Coco is having herself a little party this weekend to celebrate the 10th anniversary of her 30th birthday, and her husband Jim asked me to help out with "the look". Coco is a natural beauty, she is kind, sincere, and a appropriately goofy. When we lived in Montclair (Oakland), we were their down-the-hill neighbors, our kids are friends, and we spent several days a week at each others houses. Our moving away was pretty hard on both of our families, so we were beyond excited when Jim took a counseling job at the junior college up here - they'll be our neighbors once more this summer! Right around the time we moved, Coco bought the supplies for us to make one of my paper lanterns together, but we never got around to it, so I'm surprising her with this gilded version for her birthday. The party is at Campovida's Oakland tasting room, a reclaimed wood and brick clad space, located near Jack London Square. I went for a Kate Spade inspired palate of gold, fuchsia, royal blue, and teal. I found these sparklers in the same colors for a little late-night fun, and we're doing a photo booth including big white C O C O prop letters set against a pretty gold sequined backdrop. The be-tasseled lantern will hang prominently with more draped garlands and some giant clear balloons filled with gold confetti placed around the room. To make the paper lantern watch this video tutorial, glue in a second layer of smaller papers, and apply multiple light coats of gold metallic spray paint, and check out the how-to for tassel garland below.

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This Is 40

This Is 40

On NYE we threw a little shindig for Adam, who celebrates his 40th birthday next week.  The guests were a collection of his old friends from high school and college, and his new friends from Petaluma. This very handsome picture was taken in the photo booth (instagram #adamis40). Today I want to share with you, 40 of my favorite things about Adam Jennings...

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Thirtysomething

Thirtysomething

I'm in the middle of two projects right now, one that I'm working on for Apartment Therapy's Holiday DIY Gift Guide, the other a new iteration of the paper lantern project that involves collecting hundreds of leaves.  I hope to bring you at least one of those by next week.  In the meantime, here's what we were snacking on this week.  I followed my usual peanut butter cookie recipe, and added a couple of ingredients to the mix to give them a little something more, one being baking cocoa, the other cracked sea salt. The result is a soft at center, crispy at the edges cookie with a peanut butter cup flavor. Here are some glamour shots of cookie eating and the recipe.  Have a great weekend!

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Wild Man

Wild Man

Another year, another animal party!  This year instead of the farm we explored the wild side at our local wildlife museum, which happens to be just blocks from our house.  A parade of preschoolers marched, then ran through the exhibits of amazing taxidermy, pet tarantulas, and learned the difference between turtles and tortoises.  After our tour we headed back to our house for some pizza and cake, and playroom destroying mischief.  For decor I decided to go simple, using Wylie's animals as the main attraction.  I borrowed this idea for party hats from Oh Happy Day, subbing tinsel pom-poms for crepe paper, hanging some parachute style from paper lanterns over the buffet.  I also tried my hand at the cake arts this year, making a "Tortuga" in honor of Wylie's favorite show Wild Kratts. After a collective three year old meltdown at the conclusion of cake time, the kids headed home with birdseed ornaments to feed the wildlife in their own back yards. Done!

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Long in the Sweet Tooth

Long in the Sweet Tooth

As the years trudge on, we've had to make more effort to stay youthfully svelte, and post holidays some extra effort is usually in order. This is hard to do when celebrating the old guy's birthday.  It's especially hard when his favorite cake flavor is chocolate. I pieced together a recipe from a few different books yesterday and came up with this deep dark chocolate cake. I'm not afraid of sticking some unexpected ingredients in a mix to bolster flavor, and meet dietary needs, so you'll just have to trust me, it was decadent.  I garnished ours with dark chocolate covered cherries for the kids, but espresso beans would be a perfect addition for this grown-up cake.

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