Cake: Oh the beautiful mountains... Switzerland

We can never be too happy to say good-bye... 

but we can definitely make a fun and memorable farewell.

Inspiration Photo

Caked!

Details and Raymond's Kingdom

Cake: Meister Watch Lover

They say it's easier to find gifts for ladies than men... 

Cake can be your sweet answer to what MEN want :) 

I'm sure it doesn't apply to all, but they also say men are simple (it's a good thing!)

 What a wonderful gift idea for a man who loves his watch!

Favourite Watch

Watch is Caked :)

 

 

 

Detail

Happy Birthday to you!

Cake: TOAD-arific!!

Strong arms for some serious swings! 

Farewell Henry...

Quebec City Part II: Coffee Love

Happy Sunday!

On Friday, I talked about my love for dark coffee and Cafe Americano on my post HERE. I visited two more shops for my daily coffee and wanted to share the photos with you today. While La Brulerie St Roch was a cozy shop with exposed brick walls and a splash of burnt orange on walls framed with dark wood, the next shop was simple... but oh so beautiful!

Paillard was such a large beautiful shop (did I say that this shop was beautifully simple yet?), with high ceiling, white decor with beautiful moulding and accents of black and red. You can't really see from my photos but while there were tiny round tables in the front, there were large picnic table style seatings all across the back. There were pastry sections in the front, gelato section on the other side of the front, and food and coffee at the back.

My turnip soup...  interesting but good

Half eaten peach strudel

Cappuccino and chocolate croissant. 

I came home and realized that I didn't take a picture of my Americano and cheese bagel I had :( The coffee was too watered down for me, as I do like it strong... but it was still good... and I was too busy looking at this beautiful spacious shop anyway.

On our last day we explored and walked all the way across the Battlefields Park finishing our walk at the Musee National des Beaux Arts du Quebec which took us over 2 hr. Trying to find our way home... we walked on Avenue Cartier and saw this sign outside. SOLD! We were in :)

Picardie was such a cute little shop, and most importantly I thought their logo of red riding hood was adorable!

Even on their fridge...

We took a break here and enjoyed our coffee and some sweets to go with it...

Tiramisu with Chocolate Spoon!

Almond paste Croissant

My Americano

Nick's BOWL of cappuccino. Look how small the sugar packets look!

One thing I noticed about Quebec City was that there were so many bees... inside and outside of the shops. The only people minding those little things flying around seemed to be just us...  I saw a bee fly out of one of the croissant baskets at Picardie... Either way, my Americano was EXCELLENT. Dark and creamy, and Nick seemed like like his bowl of cappuccino as well :)

Thanks for reading about my love for drinking coffee today :)
Have a wonderful Sunday.

Quebec City Part I: Coffee Love

Nick's Capuccino at La Brulerie

Last month, in September, Nick and I had a chance to make a trip to Quebec City for a weekend. Initially we planned to make it a road trip to stop by the Thousand Islands ON on our way to Quebec City and then drive to Mont-Tremblant QC, but we decided to keep this trip simple and stayed in Quebec City for the entire weekend.

I've been to the Old Quebec City as a field trip in Jr. Highschool days, but sadly enough, I didn't remember much except the cobble stones. So we did what we needed, and that was a simple 2 hr walking tour of the Old Quebec City from HERE. With our "passionate" french tour guide who made it clear that she was pro-Quebec independence, we walked for almost 2.5 hr and it was well worth our time and money. I won't be discussing about the history on this post but if you're interested in reading about the history of Quebec City, there's a short summary HERE and HERE.

As a coffee lover (coffee pumps me up and gets me through the harsh days...), I tried to look for different coffee shop/pastry shop/boulangerie in Quebec City to try out.

Here are some photos taken from the lovely shops that helped me charge up for the day:

Their large selection of coffee beans

My Americano at La Brulerie

La Brulerie St Roch was conveniently located near our hotel. Even though I drink my coffee black most of the time and enjoyed it, I haven't gotten into espresso shots yet. At special (or new) places, I like to try Americano... look at that fluffy foam :) That's my Americano!


So what exactly is Americano? I knew that Americano is made with a shot or two of espresso with addition of hot water, but I wanted to find out a bit more about it. I've been enjoying the drinking part.. and now I'm interested in WHY!

According to my sources here and here, the name Americano originated from World War II, when American soldiers in Europe added hot water to espresso to enjoy their coffee in their accustomed style (drip coffee). Americano refers to hot water being added TO the extracted espresso. When the extracted espresso is added TO hot water, it's actually called Long Black! Apparently people who like their foam (crema) undisturbed they would order Long Black. You can still get Americano with proper foam on top by pouring the hot water into the extracted coffee VERY CAREFULLY... like mine :) I've noticed that there really isn't a standard proportion of espresso to hot water and different places will serve it differently. In my experience, when I ask for Americano at shops when it's clearly not on their menu (but they offer espresso shots!), they put too much water. I prefer my coffee STRONG...  and I had just that at these shops I've visited.

Oh, and did you know that when you're buying bags of ground coffee you're actually buying stale coffee? What I mean by stale is no longer fresh. Your cup of coffee is truly "fresh" when the coffee is consumed within 5 days of roasting, 3 hr of grinding and 15 min of brewing. The first sign of stale coffee - BITTER TASTE. Surprise!!! Of course, majority of us do not own a fancy roaster... or have time to roast our own beans at home (I am guilty of this, as when I need coffee I need it NOW). I buy already roasted beans and grind them whenever I make a cup at home though. My next mission is to try roasting it at home.

Anyways, we both loved our coffee at St. Roch La Brulerie and their sanwiches were great too!

What to eat...

yummy!

In house Coffee Roaster! The bags of roasted beans were nicely organized with dates written on them.

We stayed here for a very long brunch, watching people walk, taking pictures of this cozy shop and planning our day.

Notice this is a part I? yes, there will be a part II, showing pictures of two other places we enjoyed getting coffee from: Paillard and Picardie

Happy Friday! Thanks for reading :)

The Wedding Story: Happy 1st Anniversary + 1 month

White Cake to celebrate....



11th of 09 2011
Time flies...

One whole year plus one full month since we tied the knot last year.

Happy 1+1, Love!

I still feel like it just happened and I can't stop being grateful for all our lovely friends and families who's helped us get through the day. To plan and execute the biggest party we've ever hosted... with so much laughter even after sleeping for only 3 hours the night before :)

There are so many memorable things but the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about our wedding is always the bird. yes. the CRANES. not 10. not 100. not 1000. Two thousand and fifty one paper cranes folded by boys and girls who loved us THAT much. Nick folded paper cranes in the subway, at work, at home, and before sleep. I am pretty sure our friends also did....

Here are some pictures of our prepping process before they were glamorously placed inside and outside the tent on our wedding day....

Thought we'd figure out how many cranes we needed per string...
and how many strings to cover the head table area...

Lonely...



The day before the wedding - the cranes were assembled and strung onto lots and lots of twigs.
EVERYONE in action!!


Then there were these that were hand made by the girls...
I didn't even bother counting how many we had to cut, fold, trim, wire, and then SEPARATE. I'm sure our tongues were yellow and gray.

Yellow, gray and white tissue paper pompoms

These were lying on the grass at one point.... until...

Our dear friend and a wicked Wedding Planner HERE
cut these ribbons the night before and helped us set up for our Ceremony backdrop.


This photobooth was made from two sheets of plywood, pretty wall paper (two designs), and 2 ikea photo frames
(left frame was a black frame from Ikea that was transformed with a can of yellow spray).
This art is rubbed with my father-in-law and my husband's sweat and love :)

I thought of another "cool" idea. I wanted to truly thank all my guests by giving them something with a touch. So I decided to paint on each and every porcelaine cup.
They looked even better wrapped :p
But I'm sure my friends were scared when I asked them to come over and "hang out" (aka help moi)







Flowers by Apop Events. Gorgeous!

So many people loved our invitation. Beautiful job by Palettera




Us goofing around as soon as we sat down :)

And then something really exciting thing happened!! Thanks to our AWESOME SUPERDUPER photographers Vanessa and Jess from Boyfriend/Girlfriend Pictures we were featured in Fall/Winter 2011 issue of Wedding Bells! and not only that... we made the cover page for the Labour of Love Real Wedding Story in the print. If these photos weren't enough for ya, see our Wedding story HERE.

One long blog... thanks so much for reading :)

Cake: Pinked!

Hot pink shoe cake for you, Happy Birthday Eva!

Chicago Antique Market Part 2

The day that we decided to visit the Chicago Antique Market was very HOT. Scorching hot. I actually got my one and only "sunburn" that day and I gotta say it was WORTH it :)

The show had indoor and outdoor portions, and the indoor had many of the antique accessories and one of a kind, hand made accessories. Most of the furnitures were outside and even though it was a hot day there were so many people walking around...

me goofing around with this vintage "octopus" hat

SERIOUSLY considered renting a truck to ship this back to Canada. These steel cabinets are not just any regular furniture. These were found in a basement of a post office in Germany after the World War II. The building was bombed but these babies were still intact! They were then refurbished and only a limited number of them exist.

Another obsession of mine... Basket/Container Transformers (BCTs!)

just like the ones from here and here!

closing... and closing... and...

Tada!

Last but not least, these are bottle cap art furnitures.

I was a bit hesitant to post these photos up because I actually couldn't find my vendor and artist information that I have collected. Although I posted these up and sadly could not link to their website at this point, I will update as soon as I find them and hopefully you can track some of these awesome vendors down! Keep checking for updates :)

Chicago Antique Market Part 1

On a sunny day in June this year attended what I thought was the next best thing to my trip to Saint-Ouen Vernaison Market in Paris (see it HERE). We got to catch one of the 2011 season dates at the Chicago Antique Market at the Randolph Street Market.

When you visit their website here, this is the first thing you'll read:

"The Randolph Street Market Festival is home to the world-renowned Chicago Antique Market & Indie Designer Market. As seen in Travel & Leisure, the NY Times, Lucky Magazine and featured on TV news shows and web casts, the Randolph Street Market Festival is considered “a mecca of cool”, “the best hot spot for antiquing”, “the best Chicago venue for people watching”, and “the Barney’s of Vintage”. Celebrity designer Nate Berkus says, “I love this market…the quality is incredible!” As one of Chicago’s most happening monthly parties, Randolph Street Market has become the summer destination!"

Although I can't say I've been to Barney's enough and have followed the celebrity interior designer Nate Berkus, I must say, this antique market was quite IMPRESSIVE. It was BIG, with quality items and the prices were SO reasonable. I am pretty sure that next time I go, I'm going to plan it out so that I can take a U-Haul truck or some giant van to carry some of the lovely things I have found there. Unfortunately all the things I loved were too large to carry in our SUV this year so instead I brought home some pictures of my loves.

Here are some pictures that I brought home to share...

some lovely vintage frames... seen them too many times? Probably not with this price range! ($20-$60)

This painted chest caught my attention :) So adorable!!

This was the tent of GOODIES with the adorable chest.

As you've seen it here my obsession over drawers and containers never let me down.

These drawers were small enough to fit a few keys in each.

Now if I had a big house with over 90 doors to lock... or a small house with 90 doors

I would probably hang this by my front entrance.

If you're visiting Chicago and love antique shopping (or looking), you should take a look at some of the upcoming events here and check it out!

Check back for more goodies soon! Thanks for reading :)