Aug 1, 2010 Posted on Aug 1, 2010 in DIY | 3 comments

Cupcake Tower (of Terror) DIY

Ask and you shall receive, my lovelies.

Now I’m not gonna lie and claim complete originality on this one- a quick google search will turn up all sorts of similar DIY cupcake stands, varying only by theme and degree of difficulty.

I will say that this DIY is extremely easy, crazy cheap, super fast, and made from items you may actually have lying around the house.  So that’s what I’ve got goin’ on.

Let the cupcake madness commence.

1. Gather your Supplies:

You will need:

Cardboard Cake Rounds- 8”, 10”, 12”, 14”, 3 each

Decorative Paper- 12×12 works for the smaller rounds/wrapping

paper is great for

the larger rounds

Ribbon- 4 yards 5/8” or 1/2”

3 Full Canned Goods- varying sizes

Hot Glue Gun

Zots/Glue Stick (optional)

2. Measure/Cut Paper to Cover the Cans

Use a soft measuring tape to measure the height and

circumference of your cans and cut appropriate sizes of paper. I

stamped mine with this cute strawberry stamp because the

birthday girl is gaga for strawberries.

3. Cover Cans With Decorative Paper

Secure the  paper to the cans using zots or hot glue

4. Hot Glue Three Cake Rounds of Each Size Together

This one is pretty self explanatory right?

5. Cut Decorative Paper to Cover Cake Rounds

Simply use the cake rounds as a guide and trace the various sized

circles onto your decorative paper. Cut out. This should yield 4

different paper circles: 8”, 10”, 12”, 14”

6. Affix Decorative Paper to Cake Rounds

Simply use zots/dots of hot glue/glue stick to adhere your

decorative paper rounds to the top of the cake rounds.

7. Wrap the Edges of each Round with Ribbon

Attach ribbon with a bead of hot glue every 6 inches or so.

8. Glue each Round to a Can

Glue the smallest can to the bottom of the smallest round using

hot glue around the edge/lip of the can. You can totally skip this

step- but it does add a little extra stability!

9. Stack ‘Em Up

Need I say more?

10. Admire Your Work in Action

I was definitely pretty pleased with this last minute DIY adventure and hope that you are too!  And I would love to see the rad themes you come up with to make this project your own!  It’s so easy peasy, I might even make a little stripetastic one (6/8/10”) to display our vegan/gluten free desserts on…

How are you displaying your sweets? And are you offering special options for your guests with dietary restrictions or is that just cuckoo-bananas?

Nov 4, 2009 Posted on Nov 4, 2009 in venue | 1 comment

the dream venue. the reality venue. the awesome venue.

So we’re engaged. What to do next?

Not being a girl with a wedding addiction since age 5- no wedding binder, no pre-engagement wedding blog addiction (i’m making up for it now) no ring, dress, or invitation suite ALREADY picked out. Seriously ladies?

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So it took just a minute for me to be up to speed and start figuring things out.  Being obsessed with all things design/crafty I immediately thought of Save-the-Dates and Invites, and then realized we’d have to have some information to put on those bad boys.

Like a date. Simple enough.  And a city. LA done. And a location? Well… here’s where it gets tricky! Maybe the start-planning-your-dream-wedding-at-age-5 gals were right- b/c it would take a serious, long-term, high-yield investment account, for me to afford my LA dream locations!  Even the less-than-obvious, plain-dead-field w/no electricity options. more on this below.  (and man do i love my hyphens!)

So I turned to my trusty blogs and started seeing what was out there.  And let me tell you- there’s A LOT* out there, and it’s NOT all super pretty, but it’s all pretty expensive!

The equation:

awesome location + booze + amplified music = expensive.

I started scouring the typical wedding haunts, as well as lists of parks, gardens, and outdoor locations; awesome lofts and industrial spaces; little movie theaters. You name it- I emailed ‘em.

Here’s an extremely abbreviated list of places that we, ahem, thought we could afford:

Griffith Park- Wilson Harding “The Clubhouse”

too expensive with bar/catering requirements. cool building though- love those wood trusses.

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Griffith Park- Visitor’s Center Auditorium. Looked pretty in the picture, but $1000+ is too expensive to get married in a parking lot. Yup- that picturesque bit of grass is about 3/4 surrounded by parking.

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Franklin Canyon Park- we thought we had a winner- big open spaces, no amenities, we could have this baby for dirt cheap right? wrong! You get all this NOTHING for $4000!

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Elysian Park- Grace E. Simon- $1600+ for a concrete picnic area and that unnaturally colored water. please.

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Marvimon. (cue angel choir and bring me a hankie) Shhh…this is still my dream location folks. I love, love, love it. Sadly you could put a down payment on a house in this LA market for the same price. folks i contacted were super nice, but with a base fee of $6000 + a bunch of additional fees, (For the location ALONE = no food/booze) this is punk rock style you PAY for. damn sellouts.

*Sorry Mrs. Sprinkle- you know I’m just kidding!  Kinda.  Your wedding was gorgeous and we really should get on that whole running business someday soon…

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Downtown Independant- The site of our first date. It’s super cute and they were super NICE when they finally got back to me.  We already had our heart set on OUR awesome location by then, but maybe we can have our after party here?

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So which one did we pick? Check back in a later and I’ll reveal our AWESOME location in all its glory!