PDX Wedding Celebration: ChiChi Gets Around

Everyone loves our sweet little chihuahua, ChiChi. Sure, she barks when people she doesn't know well first come over, but she's just doing her job of helping to keep us safe. Once many guests start coming through the door she stops and instead starts checking out who's going to hold her. She really got around at our wedding celebration

ChiChi all dressed for the party in her aloha shirt.

PDX Wedding Celebration: Let Them Eat Cupcakes

The cupcakes for our Portland wedding celebration was one of our favorite parts of the day. When we had our amazing tasting at Cupcake Jones, we knew there wasn't any other cupcakery that we wanted for our celebration at home. Their cupcakes are amazing, come in so many different flavors, are completely made from scratch and use as many local ingredients, as possible. Plus, they are all around super yummy! They will even deliver the cupcakes to your door and set them up for you, if needed. We opted to have our maid of honor, Nicki, set them up for us, but we're so grateful for the delivery. If you are in the Portland area and are wanting cupcakes for any event, you will want to get them from Cupcake Jones. There is no other cupcakery  that we would want to use and can't say enough good things about them.

Thanks to Nicki for setting this all up for us!
Gorgeous chalkboard signs done by Amanda.
Yes, she is available for hire to do them for you, too. 

PDX Wedding Celebration: Eats & Grindz

The last thing we had to do to get ready for all of our guests was the food. One of the most important things! Again, we wanted to reflect the Hawaiian Islands in the choices we made for our food. We brought some food items back from Maui with us and planned the rest of our menu around foods you would find on the Islands.

Getting the food all set up before our guests started to arrive. 

PDX Wedding Celebration: Favors & Good Cheer

Even with a celebration after the wedding, it was important for us to have a little something to give to all of our guests that celebrated with us at home. It was also important to us to have that gift reflect our wedding in Hawaii. With that in mind, we brought back macadamia nut Kisses that you can only get in Hawaii and Honolulu Cookie Company's Hawaiian shortbread cookies for everyone.

Favors table for guests to grab a bag and fill with Hawaiian treats. 

PDX Wedding Celebration: Setting the Stage

We know we've been promising more recaps from our Tiki Wedding Extravaganza for a while now and have kept you all waiting. We wanted to make sure to share our photos and video with our close friends and family first. Yes, there IS a wonderful little video that my friend, Brea, made for us. It's simply perfect. Since we still have one very important person to share them with, our Maid of Honor, we are going to kick-off with the recaps for our Portland wedding celebration.

Our Portland wedding celebration was held at our home, Knotty Cakes Ranch. We made lawn signs that were put out to mark the way through the neighborhood to lead guests to our house. It can be a little confusing trying to find our house the first or second time that someone comes over and we wanted to make sure that everyone easily found the way. And by "we made" the lawn signs, I mean, I gave our Maid of Honor the info and she did all of the graphics work.

Lawn signs leading the way to the reception. 

Introducing....

Moloka'i, Maui & Lana'i; our new chickens. Yup, you read that right! We finally got chickens. We are officially urban farmers and we love it!

We'd been planning on getting some chickens for a while now. Our original plan was to get them next spring when we'd also be putting in our raised garden beds. However, some friends of ours had some chickens that they needed to get rid of so we offered to take them off their hands now. It was a bit of work getting everything ready for them, but it was worth it and we are so glad we did.

Drew had to work fast and build them a chicken run so they'd be able to get out of their coop during the day, but not rip up our yard. Have you even seen how fast chickens can rip up a yard? They did damage to our's just while he was building the run.

Project Knotty Cakes Ranch

There seems to always be some kind of project happening at Knotty Cakes Ranch. Recently, we were trying to figure out which direction we wanted to go with a new front door. We even posted a blog about it. Would you believe that we ended up not going with any of those doors? Ha!

We made a huge, 6 page list of all of the house projects we still have left to do. Some of them are easier items like picking the colors for our home office and we've already checked that one off the list. Others take a bit more time and effort like replacing the flooring in our kitchen and bathrooms. We sure will be glad when the ugly linoleum that's in those rooms now is gone, but it's going to be a bigger project to do it all and we still have to figure out what it is that we are even wanting to do. And what kind of tile we want to use.

Would any of these look right in our kitchen?
{source}

Saying Good-Bye to Summer

And we thought things would slow down once all things wedding related came to an end. Who were we kidding? Things have been non-stop since the at home reception. As much as Drew and I would like a weekend to just cuddle and watch movies the whole time, if just hasn't happened. Instead, I launched my own home business, we've been working on more Knotty Cakes Ranch projects, we've been going through all the wedding and at home reception photos and having a bit of a social life (outside of the wedding), again.

We've started preparing the yard at Knotty Cakes Ranch for the arrival of cooler temperatures. This requires cutting back many plants, like the banana and ti leaf plants, wrapping their stalks in burlap and putting mulch around the base to help protect them from frost. It's ironic how as we've been preparing the yard for winter our hibiscus plants have been blooming like we're in Hawaii.

One of many hibiscus from our backyard. 

Engagement Party 1 Year Ago

We can't believe it's already been one year since out engagement party. Especially since that means that our wedding is in less than 4 weeks now. WOW! Less than 4 weeks to go!

We thought it'd be fun to re-visit our engagement party and re-live that fun day filled with friends and family. Mom threw the engagement party for us at our house since most of the guests live closer to us. She thought it would be easier for all of them to attend. It was also closer for family driving down from Seattle.

Invitations to our engagement party were sent out and the day for the party finally arrived. Mom and Maid of Honor, Nicki, came up early to set everything up for the party. Mom even made a Paradise Delight cake with layers of guava, lilikoi and lime all topped with whip cream and guava glaze. Drew helped them set some things up while I was off being a proper bride-to-be getting my hair done all fancy.

I'll let some photos from the party tell you the rest of the story.

Mom putting the finishing touches on the cake. 

Dress Fittings- Wedding Party Edition

A couple weeks back we had our first dress fitting. No, not Drew and I. That's just silly. Nicki, Amanda, Mykie and I. Yes, we are talking my wedding dress. No, I won't be sharing that with you. Instead, I'll be sharing what our wedding party will be wearing. All vintage Ui Maikai dresses from Hawaii made of barkcloth fabric covered in hibiscus and plumeria. LOVE!

I spent many months looking for these three dresses. I wanted Amanda and Myk to have something that went together, but wasn't exactly the same. I wanted Nicki to have something that went with the girls' dresses, but was her own since she is our Maid of Honor. Ideally I wanted the girls to have dresses with a white background and blue flowers, while Nicki's would have red flowers. That's not exactly what happened.

I found Amanda and Myk's dresses really quickly. And for great prices. Both of them were under $20! Not bad considering they were vintage and they are dresses for a wedding. However, finding Nicki's dress was a whole other story.

Tiki Around Portland

We know, it's been a really long time since we've posted anything about tiki lately. It's not that we don't still love it, we've just been busy. Planning a wedding, restoring a house, landscaping a yard and building a basement tiki bar is kind of a lot to do. However, we've made sure to slide in a bit of tiki here and there as we go. We wanted to fill you in on that tiki time, as well as give you the scoop on some great tiki coming soon to Portland.

First of all, our basement tiki bar is coming along. We are just thrilled with how it's all coming together. It's amazing to be able to finally unpack and have a home for the items I've been collecting for over 17 years. Sometimes I can't believe how nicely everything is fitting and how all the silly little things I've kept all seem to be finding a purpose. No, we don't have any pictures to share with you. You will all have to wait until the official opening of the bar to get a sneak peek inside.

A couple weeks ago, the two of us were in a fun vintage fashion show at Trader Vic's Portland. Drew and I wore our matching vintage Hawaiian wedding set to model for the show. The house was packed and it was such a big success that there is talk of another one in the future.

Waiting for the fashion show to kick-off.
Thanks to Kirstie Rall of Kirstie Write Make-Up Artist for the cute picture.

Christmas 2010

What a great first Christmas we had at Knotty Cakes Ranch. We all got up early and had our own Christmas morning, just the three of us (and animals), before having to get moving on brunch and others started showing up. We all got gifts we loved and enjoyed our quiet morning together before the Christmas hustle and bustle came through the front door.

Christmas morning.

Looks like we were good this year!

To hold us over until brunch we had some gingerbread cupcakes and Tom n Jerry.

Amanda giving Radish some love.

Now that's a heavy stocking.

YAY! A vegan beef stick!

Nice 'stash.

Not the ring that was hoped for...

Foot arch supports? Santa = Fail!

It sucks when there's nothing left in the stocking.

Nice Forbidden Island calendar.

Drew's new coat.

Drew loves Chi Chi.

Perfect gift!

Our gift from Amanda was in the freezer.

YAY! It's-It's! Amanda actually found some in Oregon.

Chi Chi had no problem opening her gift.

Chi Chi wants her gift now!

Cupcake wasn't too excited about opening his gift.

Cupcake is so good about Chi Chi always attacking her.

Chi Chi's Christmas collar.

Very happy with the Christmas brunch we made for everyone.

Sitting down to Christmas brunch.

Can we eat, yet?

Even more presents under the tree! Time for present opeing round 2.

Suzie, Matt and Amanda waiting to open presents.

What is it?

Could it be?

YES! Skates! Leopard print!

Lise was happy to hold Chi Chi the whole time we were opening presents.

Love the huge tiki carved spoon and fork set from Matt and Suzie.

Drew, Suzie and Matt.

Drew did good with the gifts this year. Great new velvet painting.

New salt and pepper shakers from Gramma and Grampa.

Christmas Brunch

Since this was our first Christmas at Knotty Cakes Ranch we decided to have Christmas brunch at our house. We invited some family and a few friends that didn’t have their own Christmas plans. The brunch was a lot of work, but it was all worth it. The food turned out great and everyone really enjoyed it. Aunt Bea was even talking about it the next day as being some of the best food she ever had. You know that made us both smile. We are looking forward to having Christmas brunch again at Knotty Cakes ranch on 2012.

Menu: Eggs Benedict, veggie pies in a blanket, mushroom gravy, roasted autumn vegetables, bagels with fixings, latkes with fixings, field roast, cranberry sauce and asparagus with balsamic syrup. All homemade.

Blanching the asparagus.

Caramelizing the onions.

Sauteing the brussel sprouts.

Reducing the balsamic vinegar.

Chanterelle mushrooms for gravy.

Clementines, pomegranate and homemade cranberry sauce.

Perfect flowers for our brunch. Tropical with a touch of holiday flair.