Holiday Decorating Ideas

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.  So I thought I'd give you a few ideas for decorating for the holidays and keep the explanations brief.  I will add more photos as I take them this year but this is a good start. Some photos are easy and simple and some a bit more detailed. You will notice some of the same things on the tables with items taken away or items added to give a different look with little decorating.  It's more of a simple approach for me to make the holidays easier by not making those days too overwhemling by decorating. These photos are for giving inspiration but feel free to message me with any questions.  Happy Holidays, Celebrations and more.

Valentine's Day~

 

(Even though this above was my daughter's baby shower, I love it for Valentine's also because of the pink and the hearts on the table.

Porch/ Outdoor Valentine Dinner.

Simple silver cups filled with potted hearts from the 99c only store, flowers and candles.



 

I find all the red I can in my home and work it in for Valentine's day but I'll reuse some of the red for Patriotic decor too.

 

 

And for a really large group...

 

Mardi Gras~

 

Beads and Masks.  These you can find at your 99c only stores or make masks with feathers and cardboard paper.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

St Patrick's Day

 

Candy always adds great color.

 Balloons in my light, streamers and plates and napkins from our 99c only store...

 

 When all else fails....dress the dog!

I reuse the same candle holders and left green beads from the Mardi gras table.

 

Here's a cute little shamrock I found at the dollar store.

 

 Easter~

 

 We decorate Cupcakes to add to the cuteness decor!

 

 Sometimes just simple flowers will do along with a few eggs.

 

And more cupcakes!

Some of the same candle holders, green things too, left over from Mardi Gras and St Patrick's day.



Mother's Day~

Flowers and tea

 

 

Above is the kiddo table.  Simple, no fuss, but something just for them.

 

 

 

Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day~

 

 

 

 

2014

 

 



Thanksgiving~

 

I used fresh fruits, veggies, sunflowers and printed Thanksgiving sayings for the tables. I also made a banner out of white computer paper cut into long triangles and hole punched to hang on a string.

 

 

Christmas~

 

 

 

Father's Day~ coming soon

Halloween~Coming soon

Gluten Free Sponge Cake

 

Welcome to spring, almost.  You might still have layers of snow on the ground but fresh fruit, fun BBQ's and daylight savings time is well on its way soon. It's a time for some that allergies are in full bloom so why add to the problem when you are gluten intolerant or dairy intolerant.  So be ready to Celebrate with this delicious gluten free recipe that anyone will enjoy, especially those with the most tender of tummies. 
Need a dairy free topping to go with that deliciousness?  At the end of this you'll see a fabulous dairy free whipped cream recipe link too. (You'll love it dairy free or not.)



1 Cup GF Flour (recipe below)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 Cup sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 Tbs water
1 tsp flavoring ( vanilla or almond )

Mix all dry ingredients.  Add wet ingredients and mix until smooth.  Pour into 8 or 9 inch dish sprayed with oil.  Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

 

 

Serve with your favorite berries and whipped Cream

 

 

Here is a favorite whipped topping I created that you may want to try.  It's divinely delicious and dairy free vegan.

 

http://mydeliciousvegandiary.blogspot.com/2014/02/whipped-cream.html

 

Gluten Free Flour recipe:

2 2/3 c coconut flour

2 2/3 c garbanzo flour

4 c white rice flour

1 1/2 c tapioca flour

Mix and store in an airtight container.

 

 



Lemoncello

 

 

Lemons are one of my favorite fruits.  I love cakes, cookies, candies and lemon pie.  I guess you can call me a Lemon or even citrus fanatic.  There is nothing like the fresh burst of citrus in everything that takes me to the feeling of Spring or Summer. When I look at the majority of things I cook and bake, most things contain some part of a lemon, whether it's juiced, peeled or zested. Today I am using just the peel but I'll save my fruit for a pie or juice later down the road.
Lemoncello is an Italian after dinner drink. My variation of this traditional yummy drink will be a Vanilla Lemoncello.

You can use Lemoncello in Frosting for cake or cupcakes or drizzle over pound cake too.
 Enjoy.

Vanilla Lemoncello

3 cups Vanilla Vodka
Zest of 8 lemons
3/4 cup simple syrup (or boil down 1 c water and 3/4 c sugar until just slightly thicker than water, it should yield about 3/4c.)

First zest freshly cleaned lemons. I  used organic Meyer lemons. (The first time I made this I cut the peels instead of zesting however too much of the white flesh of the orange peel can be bitter tasting.) This time I wanted a smoother taste. I zested the lemon peel and put all of it into a glass container with lid. I added the vodka and put it into a nice dark area for 4 days. If you have patience, the longer it rests, the better the taste, but I like mine just fine on the fourth day. On the fourth day, use a paper coffee strainer or a fine mesh sieve and strain all the peel out. You want a nice clear look so strain again if necessary. Add the approx 3/4c of simple syrup. At this point, refrigerate over night.  Yep, that's it. Pretty simple isn't it.
I freeze shot glasses and serve the lemoncello this way but I rim the glass with sugar first.
Once I left the lemoncello in my refrigerator for 8 months and it was so smooth and delicious that I'm tempted to only try a little shot glass full and the rest can...well rest in the fridge awhile, a long while.

And just to mix it up, I'm going to make a blood orangecello and grapefruitcello too.

For these recipes, use regular or vanilla vodka, zest from 3 grapefruits or 8 blood oranges. Make the same as above.

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Brownies

 

 

How about a fudgy wudgy gooey chewy Chocolatey Brownie?  How about a Gluten Free Brownie Recipe along with a Gluten Free flour recipe also?

 

For those of you suffering from allergies to gluten, holidays and celebrations can be quite a drag when all those glutenous gorgeous desserts are just haunting your every move.  I know my sister who just began having issues with gluten will cheat once in awhile but then suffers for it.  Then the others in my family that have celiac cannot cheat...period.  So that's where this recipe comes in handy. Let's all celebrate and enjoy whether we have to have gluten free or not with these delicious fudgy brownies...

 

...and I'm pretty sure that no one will guess they're minus gluten.

 

...and that's a good thing!



Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Brownies

1 1/4 cup Gluten Free all purpose flour (my recipe is below)\
1/4 tsp instant coffee powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cup sugar
5 oz Baking Chocolate
12 oz butter or margarine (1 1/2 sticks)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
1/2 cup chocolate chips to add to batter


Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease bottom of 8x8 or 9x9 pan.  Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl.  In a microwave proof bowl, melt butter and baking chocolate for a minute. Stir. Continue microwaving for a minute at a time stirring in between until chocolate is melted into butter.  Add to flour mixture and mix until combined.  Separate egg yolks from whites and add yolks and vanilla into the brownie mixture and stir until combined.

 

Whip egg whites by hand for about 1-2 minutes until half of it is frothy. Add to brownie mixture along with extra chocolate chips and fold in until incorporated. Spread in pan and bake for 35 minutes.

 

Once done, cool completely.  These need to "set up" completely. Once set up, remove from pan and cut off edges. (Eat all edges before anyone notices.)

Serve...

 

 

Gluten Free Flour recipe:

 

2 2/3 c coconut flour

2 2/3 c garbanzo flour

4 c white rice flour

1 1/2 c tapioca flour

 

Mix and store in an airtight container.

New Year Clock Cakes

Happy New Year! Woot woot....Cheers!

 

A few years ago I made these simply adorable "Time Cupcakes"  and had to share the most simplest of ideas for a New Years treat.

 

These Southern Red Velvet Clock adorned cupcakes are perfect for the "Big countdown" and take minutes to decorate.

 

So how did I make all these gorgeous time pieces you ask? Rice Paper, that's how.  Our local grocery store has a bakery department that offers cakes made with your photos.  If your local bakery offers "Photo Cakes" made with your photos, then you can get these clock photos made there.   For one sheet, it costs about $8 depending on your store, but if you need to order these online, there are places that also do it for about $8 too.

 

What I did~

I went online a did an image search of clocks.   I copied clocks to my picture file on my computer and then transferred them to a picture document.  I made sure that I had at least 16 photos on each page and then took that page into the bakery to have it copied onto rice paper.  I simply cut out the clocks and placed them in the center of my frosted cupcakes, pushing them down slightly.  It was that simple and they were that cute! 

*note~ Rice paper can dry out and become brittle so you do not want to let them sit around for days.

*note~ You can also do photos of your family member that is celebrating a birthdayand put them on cupcakes too.  I did this for my hubby's 50th...

 

 

That's my hubby when he was so little.  Isn't he a cutie!

 

 

Okay, so you may be looking at the band photos and thinking...What? How is this related to a cupcake post?  Well you see, the band below is "100 Monkeys" and had some popular actors in it.

 

 Jackson Rathbone (Twilight Movie Actor as "Jasper") and Jared Anderson who is well known as the chicken sandwich in Burger King commercials and many other movies too.

 Here are my cupcakes, back stage with the band.  Yep....

(Yikes, one is falling! Casualty!)

...and here I am, back stage too. Boy was I stoked to be there! And I'm hoping they loved my cupcakes too!

Elves On The Shelves Part 2

I love Elves on the Shelf. Nothing makes your Christmas countdown a little more merry than these  happy cheery guys. And when it comes to home, office or business, I love coming up with new ways for bringing happiness to my children, family, friends and customers.  Here are a few ideas that we created for my Pizza Factory Restaurant but most are just as easily adaptable to home also.  Be creative and let the Christmas spirit flow... 

 

 

This year I really wanted to do a little something different than we did last year.  I decided to do a Pizza Factory 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway using things I had at my Pizza Place or something Pizza related as you'll see below with the Chocolate Pizza.  My customers and Pizza Fans have been jumping on the band wagon and getting into the "Christmas Spirit" by commenting and adding great messages to our Posts. Feel free to check out our facebook page for all the neat comments, some of them being really entertaining and some being powerful when chatting about Bullying, a cause close to our heart.

 

www.facebook.com/pizzafactoryphelan

 

 

I'm starting with the biggie!   This was our 12th day of our 12 days of Christmas giveaway.  Who doesn't like free Pizza?  And for a year, well, that's a whole lot of dough!  I posted this contest at midnight and a few hours later, we already had so many comments to win.  This was the most fun we've had in many years.  Normally our business would give to the Angel tree and buy gifts for a few local children along with jackets.  Though we still did and had a lot of fun with our Angel Tree kids, the 12 days contest left me feeling so excited and happy for our winners.

 



 

 

Our 11th day giveaway was for this wonderfully delicious and sweet Chocolate Pizza weighing in at 1 lb, 8 oz. I also threw in some cookies that we bake at our restaurant.  What really sparked the Sweet day was this little apron that was sent from a talented apron maker Aimee Broussard.  If you need one, click here to check out her link.

http://aimeebroussard.com/shop/holiday-aprons/

If they're out of stock, be sure to check back next year to pick one up.  They're too cute! (and magical!)

 

 

Then, to top it off, my sweet Auntie Sissy from Texas gave me this A-dorable mini mixer clock.  Talk about elf heaven!  

 

Look at those mini cookies.  My son walked in a saw them and couldn't help but smile.  Then he asked me to bake them since he wanted to try elf cookies. To make them, I took a little extra dough from my left over cookies to make these along with aluminum foil that I folded into a cookie sheet.

 

On our 10th day of Christmas, I gave away a $10 gift certificate that I classified as a whole lot of dough.  Below is our "Dough ball fight" that corresponded with the giveaway.  "Someone got hit with a whole lot of dough.  Maybe you'll be hit with some too!"

 

Here is something I actually have been seeing a lot of lately.  Yep, the wrecking ball.  I had to borrow the idea.  For my day 9 of the giveaway, I gave away a $9 pasta dinner but said we'd not allow this little guy to "Wreck" Christmas if they told us their favorite Christmas song and why.

 

For our 8th day of our Christmas Giveaway, we gave a medium pizza along with our $8 anti-bullying shirt.  If you really want to see a powerful community spirit, check out our facebook page for the comments to this post specifically.  It was so good that I ended up giving a pizza bread to every person that left their good ideas to support a bullied person. It was really heart warming on a very sad and touchy subject.

 

 

On day 7 of our giveaway, we decided to give Five dollar bucks to 7 lucky winners. 

 

 

On day 6 of our giveaway, this is where I introduced the elves into our posts.  Prior to that, I just posted the giveaway items with a photo of the food, to mix it up a bit.  Here is the elf pointing to the giveaway.  This day happened to be for a 6 piece serving of Chicken wings.

 

Day 5-  was a $5 gift card to promo that we just started selling and taking them.

Day 4- was our world famous Spumoni Cupcakes, a 4 pack of them.

Day 3- was a 3 topping mini pizza

Day 2- was a 2 topping mini pizza

Day 1- was a 1 topping pizza bread

 

All in all, this was by far the most fun that I've ever had with these little elves. If you have a business and use these ideas, you are sure to get a few more followers to make it worth your time.  However, we did it so we could bless our customers, keep it fresh and keep it full of excitement.

Make sure to check my previous elf on the shelf ideas that my daughter put together for us last year.  They're fun, witty and talented!

 

http://celebratemywhimsy.blogspot.com/2013/11/elf-on-shelf.html

 

Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year!

 

Cupcake Tip

Have you ever wondered how Cupcakerys, Bakerys and Sweet Shops have big beautiful cupcakes but no matter how you bake yours, they're much smaller.  Well, I have a secret for you.  It's not you.  It's not your oven, and it's not even your batter. 

Nope. 

I've been baking cupcakes for a long time.  And when I started professionally with my company "A Sweet Cure Cupcakes,"  I asked a lot of questions but unfortunately never found my cupcake liner supplier to have the right answer.  Generally they showed me a catalog with all sorts of sizes of liners but  never offered much more than that.  Then one day, low and behold, I saw liners in a store classified as "Texas Cupcake liners." Say what?  I love Texas!  We all know that everything is bigger in Texas too.  However when I questioned the lady at the checkout, she said this is how the pros do it.  This gives more cake to your cup and makes your cupcakes bigger, plus you can charge more for them too.  
So I came home and got right to work.  I baked them up and compared them. 
Now....
I'm one happy cupcake maker and my customers are even happier.

 The end (until we meet again!)

 

Happy baking, eating and cupcake making...