Lovin Sullivan Cakes

Oh good lord I am out of control.

Feast your eyes on these beauties from Lovin Sullivan Cakes .

These are pretty enough to make me want to get married all over again...or make up some excuse to play Betty Crocker in the kitchen.

Hey Cupcake

It's probably the gestational diabetes making me do this, but lately I have been obsessed with cupcakes. This is probably because I am not allowed to have anything sweet and sugary until my sweet and sugary baby decides to make his/her debut, so in the meantime, I have to content myself with pictures. It's safer that way. It doesn't seem that the cupcake craze is abating. There are blogs solely devoted to all that yumminess, and the pictures! If only they made edible laptops.

For more cupcake glory, peruse cupcakes take the cake for interviews with cupcake designer and more delish pics.

(cupcakes by Kylie Lambert and Deb does Cookies)

The Wedding Album

Sunday's behemoth New York Times Style Magazine, when not covering six foot tall amazonians draped in $2000 bubblewrap, covered two wedding-centric tomes worth checking out. Rebecca Mead's One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding isn't available until May, but this investigation into the billion dollar bridal industrial complex sounds like an intriguing read.

For instant gratification, you can pick up Alice Harris' The Wedding Album, of a compilation of wedding pictures from the silly to the sublime, from American celebrities to tribal couples tying the knot. A great addition for the coffee table or a clever gift for that worldy bride to be.

More papery goodness

I weighed the pros and cons of writing about Korean men desperately seeking brides in Vietnam, or sexy wedding favors. It's Friday. Looky who won.

Rosebud Design Studios in Santa Monica, CA is constantly coming up with gorgeous paper products, whether it be wedding or baby announcements or sweet Valentine's cards. One of my favorites is her daily fortune series. How adorable would this be as a wedding favor or tucked away in a wedding welcome basket? Know someone getting married? Give it as part of a shower gift. Or grab a fistful of the love themed fortunes and display them in a pretty cup or holder for houseguests. Get all Martha with them.

Happy Friday!

Paper Junkie

I love paper. In particular, I love paper that has been letterpressed and labored over. In LA, I took a letterpress class and could not believe how thrilling the process of manually setting type with tweezers and running it through a 100 year old press could be. Turns out I'm not alone, because boutique letterpress companies are popping up all over the US, and one of my favorite design blogs - designsponge - has done all of us paper junkies a favor and compiled a definitive list of companies offering custom and pre-made invitations. It's still being updated (I noticed that peculiarpairpress, bellafigura and carrotstick press were among the missing), but if you are looking beyond the traditional black and white on ecru invitations and have a tad more to spend (who needs favors and welcome baskets anyway?) check out the guideguide and drool over all the gorgeous samples.




(invitation samples from KenzieKate and Rosebud Design)

Offbeat Bride

I first learned about this coolio writer-bride when I tentatively dipped a toe into the hooping scene, an excursion that lasted all of about 12 minutes when I found out I was pregnant and could barely summon the energy to unpack a box in our new house, let alone swivel a giant hoop around my ever expanding waistline. Ariel Meadow Stallings is not only an enthusiastic hooper but a writer, blogger and self-described techy geek who has just published her first book, Offbeat Bride. If your nuptials include a getaway in VW bus or you are strenuously avoiding anything taffeta or frilly - or just want a fun read about her anti-Martha alternative planning methods - this book is for you.

Hey - maybe you could even hula hoop down the aisle.

And congratulations to blogger Never teh Bride of Manolobrides on her Valentine's Day engagement. Looks like she's gonna need to rethink that moniker...

Happy Valentine's Day

It's inevitable that at some point today, you will cross paths with a bitter singleton, a cranky sitcom character or other random holiday hater who will point out that today's tradition of foisting cheap, wrapped boxes of chocolates and cheesy hearts cards upon our lovers was really just an invention of the Hallmark Corporation to move some product. And here's where you, enlightened Valentine, can fire right back at said scoffer.

Yes, Virginia, St. Valentine's Day is a bogus holiday, but its roots go back WAY before there was a card aisle at the local Walgreens. Just like on the HBO show, those frisky Romans were having themselves a hell of a time when Christianity suddenly blew into town. The Christian priests were dismayed to find that February 14th found the randy men and women lining up to partake in the Lupercalias festival, where the men would draw names of the comely ladies from a box, identifying their next sexual partner of the year. The story goes that the priests then introduced the idea of the slips in the box bearing the names of various saints, including the invented Valentine, patron saint of lovers, and the men were to emulate the good deeds of the martyrs that fell before them. Silly priests.

Centuries later found the writer Chaucer commissioned with writing a poem for the engagement of King Richard II to Anne of Bohemia (how fab does THAT country sound?). It's been debated that in the poem, Chaucer either made up or invoked a medieval belief that February 14th was that day that birds of early spring chose their mates. This utimately led to an amusing belief that the kind of bird one saw on that day would predict the profession of their husband to be:

Blackbird: clergy or (Episcopalian) priest
Robin: sailor or nautical man
Goldfinch or yellow bird: wealthy man
sparrow: farmer or country gentleman
bluebird: happy man
crossill: argumentative man
Dove: good man
Woodpecker: no husband for you


With a reputation like that, it's a wonder woodpeckers haven't gone the way of the dodo.

Whatever your plans for the "holiday," revel in its silliness and mock it for its pretention. Just make sure you get yourself over to Walgreens tomorrow for all the discounted candy.

For a fascinating rundown on how Valentine's Day is celebrated around the world, visit Wikipedia's entry

* Valentine picture from Rosebud Design Studio

Aphrodisiacs - it's what's for dinner!

If you're like tens of thousands of couples in lurve, tomorrow will find you packed into a dimly lit alcove, straining to read menus with words like "prix fixe" and eavesdropping on all those other amorous duos who similarly got their acts together and remembered to a book a reservation before the morning of Valentine's Day thank you very much. Or you can be like adventurous two-somes who have spurned the hottest reservation in town in favor of making a little culinary love concotion with the help of the Food Network, some swearing and a hefty bottle of cooking wine. Whatever your plans for expressing that deep burning love for that special someome, it typically involves food, followed by the express hope that the feeding will continue long after you've left the table. What's your idea of food for scoring? Some slow cooked risotto perhaps? A 70% cacao bar of the darkest, sexiest chocolate flecked with ginger and hints of toffee? Or how about some testicles?

Robert Siestema has written a saucy little piece in Salon today about the history of aphrodisiacs, pointing out that the more the food resembles a sex organ, the more likely its been consumed in the name of getting some action. That said, bon appetit!

Potato forks

Sunday's NYTimes reports on the rapidly growing trend of eco weddings with some handy advice on how those of us who have already taken the plunge can still find ways to repair the environment from our grubby little hands and feet.

Like using biodegradable potato forks. Rationally, my mind is telling me that this is like a regular plastic fork that is hardy and functions like any other, but I so want it to be more. Like a mashed potato fork. Because what would be a more enviromentally friendly way to finish a meal than by eating your fork? With a little gravy?

Yum.

In the doghouse

One of the great things about having a dog is that I rarely have to sweep my kitchen. Murphy's favorite trick is pretending like he's a trash compactor, grabbing errant scraps of food as I prep away on the counter. (Just make sure they don't get any raw onion. I learned that one the hard way.)

Oh, and make sure you don't have your $5000 wedding ring and diamond earrings lying about either. Apparently dogs like to snack on those as well.

Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance

For our civics lesson today, we turn to the state of Washington where a few Seattle(tons?tonians? ites?) have made headlines with the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. As their mission statement explains, the alliance:

"...seeks to defend equal marriage in this state by challenging the Washington Supreme Court’s ruling on Andersen v. King County. This decision, given in July 2006, declared that a “legitimate state interest” allows the Legislature to limit marriage to those couples able to have and raise children together. Because of this “legitimate state interest,” it is permissible to bar same-sex couples from legal marriage."


blah blah blah equal marriage for all rhetoric, right?

Well, then they explain the initiative's rather, uh, unique measures:

"The way we are challenging Andersen is unusual: using the initiative, we are working to put the Court’s ruling into law. We will do this through three initiatives. The first would make procreation a requirement for legal marriage. The second would prohibit divorce or legal separation when there are children. The third would make the act of having a child together the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony.

Absurd? Very. But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions which make up the Andersen ruling. By getting the initiatives passed, we hope the Supreme Court will strike them down as unconstitutional and thus weaken Andersen itself. And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric."

Pokey and provocative or a waste of taxpayers time? At the very least it should be a fascinating piece of political theater...