Jamie & Ryan's Amazing Sailor-Themed Wedding!

Oh, love. It is a truly beautiful thing. I got to be a part of the super amazing and super special wedding of beautiful, vivacious Jamie and silver fox handsome Ryan this weekend, a sailor themed wedding held at Granville Island Hotel's Dockside Lounge. Jamie is the extremely talented vision behind Fort Design Co., a web and graphic design company. With Jamie and her incredible and gorgeous sisters (there's four of them all together!) behind the helm (sailing reference! High five Rich!), we just knew this wedding would be nothing short of spectacular!

The sisters put sooo many details into this wedding, and so many family members and friends pitched in to make the wedding tons of fun, and full of love. Jamie herself made all of the fabric mini flags and mini banner for the cupcake stand. There was also, among so many things, an origami making station, homemade marmalade to take home as favours, pecan chocolate tarts and mini apple pies, cutely designed magnets featuring Jamie's kitty, mini folded sailboats everywhere with little fortunes inside, homemade tissue paper pompoms... the wedding was a tear-inducing affair, and let's just say my friends and I are still recovering from the party, heh heh...

For the cupcakes, I ended up making a mix of 150 mini and regular sized cupcakes: a vanilla buttercream topped chocolate cupcake, Coconut Dream-- a toasted coconut-topped coconut cupcake with creamcheese frosting, and a vegan chocolate ganache cupcake. The wedding theme colours were blue, orange and red, so I did a matchy-matchy thing with the cupcake liners. And also... Jamie made the CUTEST little height-specific version of her and Ryan (Ryan is very tall) for the cupcake stand out of plasticine... note Ryan's "silver fox" hair... ! Ahhhhdorable!!!

Fifth photo down and last photo of the crazy cool couple taken by the amazing Amy Pelletier, the official wedding photographer of the day! The rest were snapped by yours truly.

Seriously, Jamie and Ryan. You guys rule. Happy happy matrimony to you, and thank you for having me be a part of your party times!

Black Forest Cartoony Cupcakes

They don't look too foreboding and black foresty though, do they? They kind of look like Pink Forest cupcakes! I love how cartoonish these turned out; half with pink buttercream blobettes (I keep using that word but it's the best thing I can think of to describe the frosting shape!), half of them dipped in fancy hot pink mini round sprinkles. I also thought the pink ones ended up looking like my pal Cuppie, pictured here with an orange kitty. Cuppie is the ridiculously cute cupcake buddy illustration created by Cakespy's super-awesome Jessie Oleson!

I made these for Becky, who ordered them for her boyfriend Michael's birthday party. These cartoony Black Forest cupcakes are dark chocolate cupcakes with a maraschino cherry in the middle, topped with pink buttercream (I used the syrup from the maraschino cherries to tint and flavour it) and a shiny, glossy red syrup-soaked cherry on top. Those red cherries always remind me of Shirley Temples, or fancy drinks you would get as a kid when going to a fancy steak restaurant, a cherry and maybe a slice of pineapple poked with a colorful plastic sword hanging across the top of your multicoloured, extra-sweet drink...

Modern Buttercream Piping

I made 200 of these little Coco Cake chocolate and vanilla mini cupcakes for Engine Digital's 7 year anniversary part-ay! I also made 150 handmade flags using my well-loved vintage and designy craft paper collection. So hard not to buy more paper, more, moooorrre! Engine's logo is an orangey red colour, and their accent colour is light blue. I just love the look of these modern colored blobettes, like a pretty candy sitting atop lovely cake.

Jellicle Songs For Jellicle Cats

Rest In Peace to ChubChub, our beloved kitty. 2000-2009

Cats the musical. Ridiculous, right? But still, Grizelda crooning those powerful notes, it can really tug the heart strings.

Sad news in Cat World-- we lost our sweet, chubby kitty Tako last week, passed away to fat cat heaven. Tako, aka ChubChub, was adopted by my then-boyfriend Rich 5 years ago from the SPCA. She appeared to be a bit of a gong show; she was an obese, dandruff-laden (we learned later that she got dandruff within minutes of being stressed out), long-haired black cat with white paws and a white "bib" that Rich always said looked like a tuxedo trying really hard to be tugged closed. She also had been de-clawed on all four paws by her previous owner, and given up to the SPCA. She would still ghost-scratch our couch though, making a pleasant and slightly hilarious "shoosh-shoosh-shoosh" sound as she did it.

She practically filled the whole cage when we went and picked her up that first day from the SPCA, cats meowing everywhere but ChubChub sitting there like, well, a black blob. She had a funny tiny little meow that didn't match the visual fur-and-fat overload of her body shape. She hated plastic bags, loved Tickle Me Ernie's shorts filled with catnip, and loved to eat. ChubChub lived a really good life, loved to pieces by her main man Rich T.

On a more cupcake-related note, I made black cat cupcakes for Jake's girlfriend Liz's surprise birthday party! He sent me pics of Oscar the cat, Oscar is a black cat with yellow green eyes, and apparently was named Oscar for his love of eating garbage!! So yes, cats are amazing and hilarious little fluffers.

We'll remember crazy old ChubChub and her funny little ways. Here's to cats!!

xo

Oscar the black kitty cupcakes, made for Liz's birthday, ordered by her BF Jake!

Cupcakes in box... HAPPY BIRTH

DAY LIZ!

Blim Market! Coco Cake Cupcakes!

I had a lovely time at my Coco Cake Cupcakes table, catching up with old art/craft buddies and meeting some awesome new people at last weekend's Blim Community Art Market! Come on out to the next market which will be on October 18th. I will be there once again, with flavours to be announced closer to the date! Please come early though, as I was sold out by 1:30pm. Aiyahh! Not the most flattering Chinese Pumpkin grey cardigan photo of me above, but look at my smile! Yay, meeting blog readers and cupcake fans was lots of fun! Thanks to everyone who stopped by, all of my loyal customers, (especially a little nutbar in a pink party suit-- my niece Kensie!!) and thanks to my BFF Amy and husband Rich for helping me!

Talk to you all soon! Some hilarious Coco Cake times coming up this weekend, stay tuned!
xo