Oh crap.

They're back. I'm in trouble.

(See what I'm talking about here.)

Have a great weekend and happy Halloween!

Photo 1 via Mary Ruffle; photo 2 via Twig & Thistle.

What a fun weekend coming up: Halloween (free candy! mmm!); for those of us in DC, the Rally to Restore Sanity; gorgeous weather (70s in DC?); and maybe even some downtime to take in all the gorgeous fall colors around us. I'm definitely ready.

Hope you all have an equally awesome weekend. See you back here Monday!

xoxo (and boo!), r.

Chocolate pudding cups

Oh my goodness, what a good idea. Chocolate pudding (and scads of fun toppings), housed in a "cup" made from chocolate. Yummm.

This doesn't seem terribly difficult to do, and you could either fancy them up for a grown-up dinner party with friends, or make them fun, messy and purely delicious with kids.

All you do is dip balloons in warmed chocolate...


Let them dry on a baking sheet (you can stick them in the fridge to speed it up)...


...Then *pop!* the balloons and the cups are ready:


Fill with gooey goodness...


...And enjoy!


I want to make these, like, yesterday. I'd fill mine with chocolate pudding, whipped cream (CoolWhip, not the real stuff [what? I like it better!]), oreo or brownie crumbles, and sprinkles on top (rainbow, not brown, of course!). Mmm mmm mmm. I'm drooling just thinking about it.

Thanks to Bakerella for the great photos and inspiration (check out the full blog post here for more pics and details). And let me know if you make these... (if so, I'll be over straight away!)

Sea is for Caramel

I'm about to mess up your breakfast with some eye candy (literally):

The stale granola bar you just dug out of the bottom drawer of your desk doesn't seem that delicious any more? Oops. Sorry.


Sorry, sorry. I just couldn't resist sharing these lovely chocolates. Mind you, I haven't actually tasted them myself - these Sweeteeth chocolates are currently only available at shops and restaurants in Charleston - but the packaging was just too adorable not to post. Doesn't this "Sea is for Caramel" bar fit in perfectly here on sea*life*style?

I hear online ordering is coming soon. Once it does, I'm in trouble, because this “Sea is for Caramel” bar is gorgeous and sounds delicious - and would make a perfect hostess gift. And we all know I'm a sucker for paper, design, little gifts, and candy. Gulp...

Spotted on simple + pretty.

Passover treat?

Typical. Pretty much universally, all kids out there who celebrate Christmas get beautiful gingerbread houses laden with candy and other delicious, commercial goodies; oppositely, only the luckiest of lucky Jewish kids - those with uber-ambitious and overreaching moms - get this:

Thanks for throwing the Jews a bone, Martha Stewart and co. Nice try, but matzo dressed up with dates and macaroons still sucks. The Jews' plight continues... (Ha ha - kidding, of course.)

At least we get to drink a lot of wine at the seder. Four glasses required to be consumed before the meal even begins - woohoo! ;)

Photo from The Crafts Dept. of Martha Stewart.

Eye candy in candy colors

Now that it's officially spring, pastels are popping up everywhere and I am lapping them up. These candy-colored baubles from Irene Neuwirth are beauts, aren't they? They're way, way out of my budget range (the necklace above is almost 20k!), but I'd take any of these trinkets over Easter candy any day...wait, let me think that one over for a moment - I do love candy... ;)

Spotted on Greedy Girl.

It's all in the details: vibrant wedding

Doesn't this candy-shop inspired wedding look like it was a blast? Then again, all of the designs/ideas could just as easily be applied to a birthday party, baby shower, etc. I love the colors, the details and the whimsy!

(And note how mustaches make an appearance again!)

All photos by Red Ribbon Studio; for more photos, go to Style Me Pretty here, here and here.

Late, very late, grammar, and the Candelier

Hello, bloggie friends and TGIF! I'm verrry late today in posting, I know. Fridays are oh so very busy around here and this Friday is no exception. My bad. A peace offering to make it up to you?

How about this amazing Candelier? It's a chandelier made of 5,000 acrylic gummi bears; yummm. It takes about two months to complete just one Candelier, and they're only making 10 ever. I don't know if I could resist reaching up and plucking off a gummi when I felt hungry...after a while my Candelier might get a bit holey (but it's just so cute either way!). A child's (slash my) dream!

And speaking of very late, can you believe I missed National Grammar Day yesterday? Me! Grammar nerd extraordinaire! Boo.

The sign above is a bit of a grammar emergency, but it isn't a dire situation, so we shouldn't have to break (or brake) anything.

I'll be back in a bit with a final post before I head out for the weekend. See you in a bit?

Cheers (and apologies for the MIA day), r.

Summer dreaming and kosher puff 'n' stuff

Me, dreaming of summer (and with the heat in our place cranked up to 85 degrees, because in reality it's still butt cold out)

I know I'm completely deluding myself, but I let my thoughts get away from me for a minute. You see, we're already booking a bunch of plans for this summer (populaarrr. [kidding kidding.]) and I let my brain wander to sunny days. Trouble! It's a cruel joke, really, letting myself think of summer when winter is still very much here, but a girl can dream, right?

So in an effort to get back to reality - without being too jarring to my psyche - I tried to think of something that could bridge both summer and cold, cold winter. What, in the twisted mind of me, could that possibly be, you ask?

Marshmallows.

Sounds weird, I know, but think about it: marshmallows = summer camping trips and s'mores, but marshmallows also bring to mind warm cups of hot cocoa after playing in the snow.

See? Not totally crazy.

Last year I discovered these puppies from Trader Joe's (looove it there, by the way), and I was in heaven:

Photo via Flickr

They're cheeap (as almost everything at TJ's is), have a slight hint of vanilla, and best of all, they're lovely little squares, like this:

Photo via Nutritious Junk

...Which means they were perfect s'mores ingredients. We tried them out while camping with friends at the Poconos Blues Festival and they were awesome. Delicious and I couldn't believe how much better they fit the s'more construction. Don't judge me for the fact that I was super excited about that. :)

But sadly, good old Joe wasn't that into them, because TJ's has discontinued them and they don't seem to be carrying marshmallows at all anymore. Boooo.

Luckily, I just came across these Elyon marshmallows on the design blog, The Dieline, and they're pretty cute too:



Elyon designs Yael Miller of Miller Creative, via The Dieline

Even the barcodes for these guys are adorable:

The best part though? They're both fat free and gluten free, plus they're kosher and not made with any animal gelatin (ick).

So come summer (don't think about it, don't think about it!), I'm going to head over to Whole Foods and give these Elyon 'mallows a try; hopefully they'll puff up to the TJ's version (RIP). Maybe I'll even give them a go in some hot cocoa come Wednesday if we get snow again like they're predicting. ;)

Top photo from hunkydory spring 2010 via This is Glamorous.

Have a great weekend!

Amazing cake found on frangipane

Aahh, Friday. I'm looking forward to a relatively mellow weekend after last weekend's awesome-but-debaucherous activities. We still have tons of dessert left over - an incredible ice cream cake from my birthday party, an untimely delivery of Girl Scout cookies, cupcakes (from my baking experiment) and some other sweets that just need to get out of this house stat! Perhaps we'll invite a few friends over for an impromptu dessert party and see if we can polish it all off. Sunday I'm going to a friend's baby shower so that too will no doubt be filled with sweets galore. I'm really going to have to get my butt in gear after this week is over...

What about you? Any big plans this weekend? Are you still in a sugar coma from Valentine's Day? Hope you have a mellow or fun weekend (depending on which you're craving) and see you back here Monday!

Once you pop, you can't stop

Are cake pops the new cupcakes?

Photo by Youkeun Oh Photography, as seen on Sandy a la Mode

You know how cupcakes were everywhere in 2009, replacing cookies, pastries and even wedding cakes as the dessert of choice for various parties? I'm sniffing a new trend in party patisseries and it's cake pops.



Cake pops by Bakerella


Cake pops as seen on Amy Atlas' blog for Town and Country Magazine, as photographed by Karl Juengel

They're pretty, not overly indulgent, easy to eat (bite-size and only one hand needed!), and probably pretty cost effective, I'm seeing these puppies popping up at kids' birthday parties (think about it - so much less messy for little hands!), baby showers, and on Amy Atlas-esque dessert tables all over the place.

Do you think cake pops will be the next big thing or just a flash in the pan dessert trend?

And in case you're interested in trying to make a batch of cake pops yourself, click on the following link for DIY instructions from the foremost professional cake pop-er, Bakerella (or from an at-home pop-er, Sandy a la Mode).

One more V-Day post...

This is the last V-Day post for 2010, I swear!

Just thought I'd share the (semi)final product of what I ended up making for B for his V-Day sweet treat. I combined his favorite - carrot cake - and my desire to bake cupcakes and it turned out pretty well. The mini carrot cupcakes with cream cheese icing were delicious, though my first-ever attempt at icing them using a pastry bag (it was a zip-lock baggie with the tip cut off, mind you, and not a real pastry bag) didn't go over as well. Here are the semi-sloppy preliminary results:



And the cover-up attempt with pearl decor and V-Day colored gumballs:


I only iced half of the cupcakes - evidently going the pastry bag route means using up much more icing than with the good ol' knife-icing method - so I am going to give this another shot once I have more icing in-hand (later today). Hopefully batch #2 will be a bit more pretty.

Being the boy that he is, though, B didn't care about the aesthetic appeal and was excited just to dig into them. We each enjoyed one for brunch yesterday, so overall the experiment was a success. Thanks for the suggestions and happy (now over) V-Day!

Valentine's Roundup: DIY treats

"Happy Valentine's Day" banner by Kristin Rees of Blonde Designs

Good morning, happy Friday, and happy almost Valentine's Day! Since today is the second-to-last day to pull together any V-day surprises you might be planning, I thought I'd share some of the cuter Valentines I've seen around the interwebs in case you're inspired to do some last-minute crafting.

I already posted about what I'm planning to bake B for this holiday, so I thought I'd focus on actual Valentine's notes here - not baked goods, not prezzies, but the actual cards - though some have a little sussy attached. And I realize that a lot of these will be best suited for kids (to give to friends, to family or to bring to school), but I thought all of them were cute enough that they'd appeal to anyone. And, hey, they've got to be better than the sappy store-bought offerings you've resorted to buying in 11th hour desperation (or the cheesy/silly 'N Sync cards I gave out several years ago). ;)

First up is a brilliant and easy idea. Snap a pick of your kid (or yourself) making a fist, print out the photo, cut a slit in it, insert a lollipop, et voila!:



Top photo from Design Mom; second photo from Five Under Five; third photo from 24-7-365, the project originator

Here's another twist on the lollipop idea, and it fits right in with the moustache trend that seems to be everywhere right now:


I shouldn't be surprised that these moustache and lips Valentines are so awesome; they were made by Angie Gubler of Blonde Designs, a Martha Stewart Omnimedia alum (jealous!).

I think this next project would appeal to slightly older kids - but I still like them too! The ever-creative Design Mom made these "wild" Valentines two ways: on the card, attached with string, and sewed up in a little cellophane bag. Overachiever! :)



Also, why do all of these creative people's children look like models? Isn't this little girl (different from the other blondie above) adorable? I love the handmade felt heart headband too:



Her mom Katiedid made both the headband shown in the first two photos of the group above, as well as little bracelets (directly above) and packaged them on hand-addressed cards (shown directly above) to give to family and friends.

Last, I do have a grown-up offering to show you. Benign Objects created these DIY matchbooks of coupons; you can download the templates from her Etsy store and then put them together yourself - they'd be perfect to give to your love:



I will take one coupon for the foot massage, please.

Aren't these adorable Valentine's Day projects? It might be a bit late to do them this year, being that V-day is approaching quickly, but I'm filing these ideas away for future years for sure. If you decide to make any of these (or just something cool of your own), please send pics - I'd love to see! Happy crafting!

You be triflin'

For the wine judging we're throwing this weekend (read more about it here), I'm thinking of making a trifle. I've never made one, but it doesn't seem too hard, and it's soo pretty. Here's the ideal looking trifle:

From Marta Stewart of course.

I'm sure in reality mine would look more like this:

Inspiration and possible recipe from Marta Writes.

Note that the second one is not from Martha, it's from Marta. It's too perfect, really: Martha's is made with fruit; Marta's with candy. Martha's is perfectly evenly layered; Marta's is a bit haphazard. Martha's has liquer-soaked cake; Marta's uses regular ol' brownies made from a box mix. I love Marta. :)

So what do you think, friends (I'm looking at you, S and S)? Should I attempt a trifle for Sunday's party? Or is that just too much after copious glasses of red wine? I'd also need to buy a trifle dish, but that's another story...