Baking Fail x 4!

So, this is probably karma because the other day Billy told me he would never make cookies and I told him they were easy. So now I have ruined 3 batches of cookies and a batch of cupcakes. Don't worry, I am undeterred and I have back-up eggs & butter. Might need to run to the store for some sugar though.

Accidentally doubled the almond flour in my mocha macaroons without doubling anything else (and forgot about them in the oven while I was helping Kristy with her dress). They came out something like a chocolate biscuit. Would be delicious with coffee or crumbled into ice cream, but were very, very dry for a stand-alone cookie.

Then I made some sunbutter to use in place of almond butter in some chocolate chip cookies. Well, the grapeseed oil (which is green) somehow didn't mix well enough or something, so there were odd green flecks in the cookies. Not so appetizing. Aaron thought they tasted weird and Mike thought they tasted like some sort of power bar. Not the kind of glowing review I was hoping for.

Next I tried making some coconut flour linzer cookies. I apparently gave poor directions to Aaron so he creamed the oil & butter together then added the eggs - no sugar - so we added some sugar late in the recipe, and then possibly way too much coconut flour, because no matter what we did, the dough was too dry and crumbly to roll out. We tried adding more eggs and some water, but it stayed a dry mess. It did taste good though! We put it in the fridge to maybe salvage later. I really wanted to make those cookies but I am not sure this failure was all our fault.

Not learning from the last three failures, I started in on some cupcakes - which I have made twice before. Ought to be a slam dunk. Forgot to add the honey. I think I just made some lemon vanilla breakfast muffins...

I will try again tomorrow.

Cookies update - updated

Sounds like we'll have lots of delicious cookies. Aaron and I built some beautiful dessert stands to hold them, but I don't think we'll have room for all of them.

Made from thrift store platters & vases + epoxy

Taken:
Grandma and Aunt Pam are bringing Chocolate Chip Cookies!
Aunt Anne will bring Gluten-free Peanut Butter cookies!
Jenny and Aunt Gwen are bringing Walnut Crescents, Peanut Butter Brownies, and maybe Oatmeal!

I'll be bringing
Mocha Macaroons,
Coconut Flour Linzer Cookies,
Almond Butter Chocolate Chip, and
hopefully Lemon Cookies/Bars.

And I also hope can find some black sprinkles to decorate Aaron's sugar cookies that Kristy bought him for Christmas (they're Beaver cookies).

Suggestions:
Chocolate chip
Oatmeal cranberry
Peanut butter (Aaron's favorite)
Snickerdoodles
Shortbread
Ginger snaps
Gingerbread
Molasses
Sugar cookies

Dresses finished

The dresses are finished. I told Laurie I would mail hers to her, but I'm not sure it's necessary. And the ruffle hem was voted down, so there's nothing left for me to do to them.

I hope they like them. If you're curious, there are videos on what those long straps are for here.

We might be geeks

Our wedding required the purchase of a tool. If a project requires a tool, it's a valid project. In this case the tool was a soldering iron, which is not nearly as cool as the saw he bought for the last project, but oh well.

This is Aaron soldiering LED leads to pennies, which he has pre-heated in our toaster oven. He is about halfway done with the LEDs and batteries for our 43 paper lanterns.

Updates

I have been taking pictures of stuff like crazy to put on this website for my own amusement, but it took me over a month to get them out of my camera! I supposed that means I'll just condense all the pictures and comments into a single post.

I had to take two pictures because the top row of beer 

was obscuring the rest in my cavernous trunk

 We picked up some of the beer since we didn't want the wine to feel too much pressure. We were going to get the beer at Grocery Outlet also, but we happened to go down the beer aisle in Freddy's and they had an amazing deal so we filled up a grocery cart and made a lot of strangers jealous.

our test LED lantern 

Big stack of paper lanterns 

I never thought it would be the decorations that would get Aaron enthusiastic about the wedding, but I also probably wouldn't have guessed we'd geek out and decide to make our own lighting. Against our whole local thing, all the components are from China, but it was fun ordering massive amounts of LEDs and batteries from sketchy websites.

warm white light

We also got LED string lights. This may disappoint Chris because it means we'll only need one extension cord - you can hook 41 strands of these together end to end.

an "adequate" coffee mug

I broke our favorite mug,  which my supervisor had given me, and when we went to the store to find a replacement, they had giant mugs in the pattern we picked out for our dishes! We were really excited and bought two. I have to say, I can't drink that much tea between the time it is cool enough and the time it is too cool, but they are great for soup and Aaron loves them for Saturdays which are apparently too-much-coffee days.

doesn't like to be seen without a cap

I started on the cake toppers. I made a cap out of sculpey clay for the guy. The ease of painting gray hair on his head was just another reason to wish girls looked as good in short hair as guys do - the convenience of short hair even extends to crafts. The girl one is still indecent so she can't get her picture taken.

We're pretty sure we're wrong, but we think we have all the big stuff taken care of and all the rest is gravy - stuff we want to do but can blow off if we get overwhelmed between now and the wedding. Less than 5 weeks!

Photographer Update

Hey all, this is just an update to the photography situation. In the "join in" post we mentioned Ryan agreed to be our photographer. Then we realized we don't really have the gear to do it properly - and that would end up being pretty stressful for Ryan and us, so we decided to hire some professionals.

Ashley Forrette and Aaron Courter are going to "capture our special day." We met them yesterday morning at a coffee shop (they even bought be bacon) and had fun getting to know them.

I think the formerly-camera-shy Aaron is very reassured and he'll be even more so after the engagement session when he sees how much fun it can be to get your picture taken.

I can't pick on Aaron too much, because many of you know that growing up I was an extremely uncooperative subject, and over half of our photo-ops resulted in tears. Why in the world I should pretend to be happy and pretend to like my sisters after hiking to the top of some trail just because a camera was pointed at me, I never understood.

Venue Information

We're getting married at the masonic lodge.

 check out the pretty balcony

There is a  parking lot kitty-corner from the lodge that should be available Sunday.

10636 SE Main St.
Milwaukie, OR 97222

We are also planning to have a shuttle van of some sort so no one has to worry about driving home. The last thing we want is for someone to get hurt or in trouble as a result of our wedding reception.

We got our first response card!

We are so excited, we got our first response post card! It says from Joseph, but the handwriting is legible and the spelling is correct which leads us to suspect Whitney. So the current guest count is 2 adults. Actually Aaron hand delivered his family's invitations, so the real guest count is 10 adults and 2 babies. I wonder if that means we need high chairs?

We also picked up the wine today. I know most of our friends prefer beer, so that will be the next step. It is really difficult to estimate how much booze to get for a party this big. People tend to drink more at a wedding, and you get more people feeling fancy and drinking wine. I guess the thing that makes it the most complicated is that we are used to having parties where everyone drinks, so the estimates we get from the pros for a party where not everyone is drinking seem really low.

Next step: dye my beautiful white boots gold!