Two Beautiful Baby Showers

2CarvedHearts recently had the honor of experiencing 2 lovely little baby showers, one of which we were responsible for! The other baby shower was a great experience since we got to sit back relax and do nothing but have fun and photograph!

This first one took place in Albuquerque’s South Valley on the Londene Farm.

Samantha’s Baby Shower

And here is Rachel’s. You probably remember this cute couple from our last post back in November when we were creating their romantic fall wedding at the Hotel Andaluz!

The theme for their shower was Peter Rabbit. Our focus was on the food and creating a table worthy of Mr. McGregor’s delectable vegetable garden. We also provided lemonade and an assortment of tea displayed with Samantha’s lovely little Peter Rabbit keepsake tea set. We chose games that were not overly time consuming or obvious which could go on throughout the event and even threw in a game for the guys who were invited to attend at the last minute. And the very best part was that the whole thing was a surprise!

Rachel’s Baby Shower

Both events were so much fun to participate in and Rachel’s was a pleasure to plan!

Next up is my baby shower! Stay tuned 😉

Mike and Rachel

I’ve never seen two people look so adorable right at the moment when they are about to shove food in each other’s mouth! 😉

Put it all together and what do you get?

Bridal Bouquet

And now for the magic that was Michael and Rachel’s stunning small budget event… You’ll have to wait until the end of this post for the revelation of the grand total 😉 So far I have posted our decorating strategy and the making of the cupcakes so I’ll start this post out with arrival at the venue. Arriving at 1pm with all the decor, cupcakes, dresses and luggage in tow, of course, the hotel room was not yet available! However, the staff of Hotel Andaluz were exceptionally accommodating, finding a safe spot for all our baggage and allowing us to remain in valet for a lengthy period of time. I met with both the lovely catering manager, Nancy and the event coordinator Genie and was effectively “squared away” in no time! I started in the Library where the ceremony would took place. Remember those craft store finds?

At the last minute we decided that programs were necessary. The bride and groom chose to use the convenience of the internet to replace the expense of paper invitation but with some last minute changes to the schedule we realized that a program of events could save the guests possible confusion. We simply placed these programs, which I generated using Microsoft Word and stealing an adorable photo of the couple off their Facebook page, on a small table near the entrance of the library next to the ribbon wands.

Ribbon Wands and Programs

Rachel’s Bouquet was created using an assortment of fall flowers she selected from the local grocery store. After carefully arranging them and adding a row of red roses in front, we bound them together with floral tape, trimmed the stems, and used a orange glittered tulle and some ribbon to wrap the stems.

Ceremony Decor

I can’t take credit for the deer but the rest was all 2 Carved Hearts…


I combined the faux florals from the craft store and the fresh flowers on the alter for a festive fall hearth. Then I used one of my two oversized shimmering pumpkins along with more fresh flowers in a staggered arrangement complimented by soft opaque tea lights for a complete ceremony backdrop suitable to the fall theme.

Moving on to the ceremony…

Reception

Well it really helped that we had these beautiful casbahs as our canvas. The fall colors were there! I knew it was just a matter of enhancing the room with soft twinkling lights and focusing attention to a dramatic, glamorous play on our fall theme in order to make it appropriate for our formal event.
Little touches throughout the room dressed up the room and carried our theme to every corner…

Little touches

Arranging can be overrated and so can sticking with certain perceived colors to keep with a theme. I set these roses down staggering red over pink to embellish a beautiful glass platter in the room. Though red and pink are not necessarily fall colors, it really worked in this room.

The Sine’s officiant relaxes in the casbahs while the rest of the group mingle in the lobby.

I fully expected to be sitting here now blogging about all the inevitable mishaps we faced during our first wedding event. Fortunately everything went incredibly smooth! The only mistake I made was forgetting to torch the groom’s cupcakes! As mistakes go, this ended up being the perfect one to make. It gave my husband the chance to save the day by running p to the room filling my brand new brulee torch with butane and arriving like the knight in shinning armor I’ve always known him to be to make a display of torching Mike’s cupcakes!

Torching the groom’s cupcakes

Yeah it looked cool (super cool) and planned (dinner and a show anyone?) but what’s more? It smelled AMAZING! The added sensory element of toasted marshmallows… nothing could be more fall!

But enough about decorating. Here is the real proof of the success of the evening…

Myself and the parents of the bride and groom

Rachel and Mike in the Casbahs

Two lovely ladies, Rachel and her daughter, Jade.

The faces of 2 Carved Hearts

If you can believe it, venue, appetizers, champagne, cupcakes, decor, flowers, hair and makeup, plus accommodations for the bride and groom came in at less the $900! I know, we’re magicians 😉

All the photography for 2 Carved Hearts was done by my very talented mother , Marilia Garcia, who I was fortunate enough to have in town for this event. You can visit her at http://www.pixlexia.com for pricing and more information.

Cupcakes!

Oh how I love cupcakes! It’s almost hard to imagine that they were once reserved for kiddy parties! We now see cupcakes everywhere including the most formal weddings and events. But make no mistake while you could easily run to the corner store and transform any Betty Crocker cake mix into your own cupcake master piece the elegance of the cupcake comes with the precision of making them from scratch, frosting and all! Once you get it right you’ll never want the box stuff again.

Now, I’ll be honest the cake batter is… well a piece of cake, for the most part that is, you do still have to worry about keeping it moist and not too dense. But the real battle is the frosting! Sure you could always go with your basic buttercream frosting, it’s easy reliable and has the right consistency for pipping but what you’re missing is flavor… unless you have a sweet tooth on steroids this stuff is equivalent to stuffing a hand full of pure sugar in your mouth and trying to swallow. I like to substitute cream cheese for some of the sugar but the consistency is just not fluffy enough for pipping. Really the only way to go is by adding a meringue base. This eliminates the need for, what seems like, buckets full of powdered sugar by adding the light fluff from whipped egg whites. The draw back is this type of frosting really needs to be made the day of and should not be refrigerated for long periods of time. So here I am at 7am developing my two frosting masterpieces!

Making Frosting Magic

Can you guess that it’s my beloved Kitchenaid mixer I wanted to show off in these pictures and not my morning hair style?

Swiss Meringue Buttercream in the pipping bag

It’s a dirty job but I totally love doing it 😉

For the Sine’s wedding I created two types of cupcakes. For the bride, a pumpkin cupcake made with pure pumpkin puree, brown sugar and the fragrant spices of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and all spice! For the icing I went with a swiss meringue butter cream flavored with pure vanilla extract. I don’t usually enjoy the taste of buttercream icing, however, the addition of the meringue and the omission of all that powdered sugar made this icing creamy, fluffy… well basically heaven in a pipping bag! I used my star point for piping and was able to achieve a rose pattern for my pumpkin cupcake bouquet. Annnnnnd here she is!

Pumpkin cupcakes with swiss meringue buttercream frosting

See what I mean about the perfect pipping consistency ?

Pumpkin Cupcake Bouquet

For the groom, I channeled his love of the outdoors and went with s’more cupcakes! These rich and delicious treats start off with a graham cracker crust, a luscious layer of bittersweet chocolate morsels, moist chocolate cake, then finished off with a fluffy white cloud of marshmallow meringue frosting.

Marshmallow Meringue Frosting

Ta da!

Groom’s S’more Cupcakes

So, what’s a s’more cupcake without the toasted marshmallow, you say?…. Stay tuned 😉

Creating the Sine’s Wedding

The greatest treat a wedding planner can receive is permission from their bride and groom to have full reign for the styling of their wedding! Not only does it let us go crazy getting our creative juices flowing but it really helps us with the budget factor as well. The Sine wedding is a perfect example of how a very generally laid out theme (in their case, fall) can help relieve some of the financial burden that must-have decor can bring. The approach we took with this event was to purchase very few craft items that only served to re-enhance the theme but mainly using fresh produce and flowers from – prepare to be amazed- the local grocery store! Here’s what we used 🙂

Flowers from Smith’s

Craft Store Basket

Here we used an inexpensive craft store basket and some floral foam to create the base for our cupcake bouquet.

Craft store floral enhancements

Just a few faux high quality floral enhancements really popped our fall color theme!

Craft store ribbon

We found four stunning rolls of fall colored ribbons that we used for our congratulatory wands. I really favor this method to the sometimes very messy alternative of throwing confetti.

Shimmering Pumpkins

Finally these beauties were created using a $2.50 can of glitter spray paint to add a lovely shimmer to real pumpkins purchased from the grocery store! Did you notice the cupcakes? We’ll get to that later 😉

Fun At The Parade!

Our table at the Carnuel Parade and Fiesta

Today we got to meet so many new people and we had so much fun! Here are few pictures of some of the handmade items we created for the event 🙂 If you would like to purchase them we now have an Etsy page! http://www.etsy.com/shop/2CarvedHearts

Monster trick or treat bags

We love these fun monster bags! Perfect for trick or treaters but honestly I think I know some kiddos that wouldn’t mind carrying them around for any use!

Halloween spider, ghost and pumpkin lights

We were so happy with how these turned out! Perfect for decorating any space since they are battery operated and do not need to be plugged in. They have such a lovely shimmer through the tulle 🙂

Parade Wands

These were a big hit! A great idea for any party or festivity and for the bride and groom’s exit rather then the mess that comes along with throwing confetti.

We can’t wait for our next event!

Carnuel Road Parade and Fiesta!

2 Carved Hearts is excited to take part in our first local event! We will be a featured vendor at the annual Carnuel Road Parade hosted by the Harwood Arts Center in Old Town Albuquerque. The Event takes place this Saturday starting at 11 am and goes on throughout the afternoon. We will have a booth outside of the tents

Annual Carnuel Road Parade and Fiesta

featuring some of our lovely handmade decorations in the theme of fall and Halloween. So come by and visit us, bring the family, have some fun and get a better idea of what our wonderful little establishment has to offer!

http://harwoodartcenter.org/ss/carnuel-road-parade/