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Sneak Peak on KalinMineCraft B-day party

Aneliya Kochneva — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:02:00 +0000

I remember how excited I was when I was turning 10. Double digits! However, it was bitter-sweet for me, since that was my last birthday to be celebrated. At least that's what my parents said for many reasons, I remember the next one I celebrated was my 15 B-day, when incidentally I found out that the Art high school I was accepted in is moving and I won't be able to attend it anymore, but that's another long story. In any case, on my 10th birthday I was extremely excited for one reason- for the first time I was going to choose my own cake. Because it will be my last birthday to be celebrated, my parents decided to let me choose whatever cake I want.ANY cake I want. I couldn't sleep with excitement. After a deliberation and many sleepless nights, I ordered it-a two tier chocolate covered cake ( I never saw a cake like that in my life before) with three white roses on top. It was perfect! The roses were made out of fondant of course and I've never seen anything so delicate and fragile that was going to be eaten afterwards. Little did I know, that years later I will make cakes like that myself.In fact I was so mesmerized by that cake that I was convinced that I will order the same exact cake for my wedding. Talk about planning when you are 10, heh..

I cannot believe how time flies...Now my son will be 10 in a week. It seems like yesterday he was my little baby, sleeping on my stomach, making the cutest baby sounds you've heard and smelling as nice as only babies can smell. I can't wrap my head around the fact that he will be 10. I just can't or maybe I don't want to. It is a bitter-sweet moment again and there was more than one tear shed when I began planning his birthday this year.I mean, I always want to please him on his b-day and I always go along with his ideas on themes and stuff. I never had that growing up and I want it for my children. I am always excited to do it and although sometimes I complain how much work it is, how much effort it takes, it always warms my heart to know that my kids got something they wanted in celebration of the fact that they've been born and became a part of our family.

This year's theme I embraced wholeheartedly and I couldn't wait to start organizing. As you can imagine, there wasn't a lot of choice with Minecraft Birthday Party supplies, so I had to make them ( yeah, what's up with that Mohjang, we should talk!).
You can deduce my impatience from the fact that I began the preparations three weeks before the actual birthday, and YES, I CANNOT WAIT to share them! :-) So, NOT as usual, I will let you have a sneak peak and see some of the things I prepared for the B-day party:

What's a party without invitations, right?

What are invitations without envelopes? Creeper envelopes, yay! I'm just glad the kids were not home when I made these, because my cursing supply was exhausted by the printer's lack of cooperation.

And here you can see the whole shebang, except the decorations of course,they will be in the next post.

Isn't this cool???The gum spiders were probably one of the most time consuming things, because I had to come up with a pattern for the legs and then cut them by hand.

The Creeper Juice is just Sprite that I've changed the labels of.

Who doesn't love Hershey Chocolate bars? I decided that Steve on the front and back of the chocolate will be best.The Steve on the front is actually made of card stock and glued separately, so it's sticks out a little that gives it a bit of a 3D effect. On the back it says " Kalin's Epic MineCraft Birthday Party". I really like how these came out.

And since I promised in the invitation that we'll "blow up", we would need some " TNT" for that, right? The strawberry Twizzlers came in handy and the transparent boxes I got were just perfect! I wish the printer ( again) cooperated more and the color of the print outs I made could actually be recognized as red, not as a bloody orange, but what can you do.

The pins were pretty easy to put together. I think the actual pins were $3 for 5 pins and you can put any picture you like in them.

The "emeralds" and "diamonds" are just sugar sticks. I'm so glad I thought of it.

The Enderman goody bags are one of my fave, I just hope they are strong enough to fit everything in them.

So, the plan is to have the green T-shirts that you saw behind painted by the kids with "Creeper" on the front. We'll see how that's going to turn out, especially if the weather is not nice and we have to be inside. In any case, I am looking forward to sharing the rest of the decorations and the cupcakes.

Ta-Ta for now!

A.

Dinning in with style!

Aneliya Kochneva — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:29:00 +0000

I love going out to dinner. Of course I have favorite places, but I like trying new things as well, but I've noticed I'm less "adventurous" when the kids are with us. So, dinner dates are perfect time to find out some awesome hidden gems that otherwise we would have missed and I am always looking forward to them. I have to admit that it's a bit of hit and miss with the quality of the food and often we do not go back to places we've visited just to give them a try. But that's OK. We've found plenty of excellent places around that deserve a second, third etc. visit.

However, going out is a great, great idea, when you can actually do it.
Most of the time everything works out as we planned. Sometimes though, things are not exactly falling into place. Like for example, your two kids suddenly getting sick.
It happens.
We could have pushed things a little and we could have gone out, but honestly, since my semester is over ( and the new one starting VERY soon), I was dying to prepare something fancy at home. Therefore, we took it a sign and my sweetheart and I decided to stay in.

Since the venue was all set, I moved on to the menu. By now you know I'm a sucker for fish, so the menu was entirely fish, except the dessert of course. Then again, I had this excellent Pouilly-Fuissé chilling in the fridge for the past month, waiting for the opportunity to be enjoyed with some succulent seafood, so I really had no choice, you see.

Since we hadn't had salmon recently, I decided to go for it and here is the menu that I came up with:

Starter:
- A homemade salmon pate in endive cups
- smoked salmon parcels
- A cucumber stuffed tomatoes
- A roasted red peppers cream soup
- A Sliced avocado
- Almond stuffed green olives
- Marble rye bread with herb butter

Drink:
Pouilly-Fuisse with lemon rind.

Main course:
( Unfortunately, I couldn't take a picture of that, because I served the food and I completely forgot)
- Pan seared salmon
- Grilled asparagus with pine nuts
- wild rice mushroom risotto served on a giant portobello.

Desert:
- Filled lobster tails
- chocolate covered strawberries
- Raspberry delight ( my creation made with coffee flavored mascarpone cheese, fresh raspberries, crumbled brownie thins, whipped cream and dark chocolate)

Some of these are my own recipes, but I also used some Pinterest inspiration too. :-) If you would like to check them out : Roasted Red Pepper Soup, Smoked Salmon Parcels, Salmon Pate, Lobster Tail Pastry

So, a blanket and a couple of pillows on the ground, a small coffee table, a movie and you're good to go. Staying is is not as bad as you might think, just a little creativity and a good company and you'll have be best "night in" ever.

Have fun!
Annie

Bittersweet photo shoot

Aneliya Kochneva — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:44:00 +0000

I was beginning to worry that I am not going to be able to take any pictures of the kids with their grandpa because of the weather, but we were lucky. Yesterday felt like a real Spring day and we took advantage of it to go out and do the photo shoot like we were supposed to.

It's funny to see the gang with their sunglasses on, enjoying the sun just a couple of weeks after we had snow.

I have a couple of black and white shots that I simply love. I wish I could post all of them, but this post is getting entirely too long already.

Funny faces and smiles, that's what I wanted to see in this photo shoot. I have to admit not all of them were excited when we started ( read that my son was grumpy and not very cooperative), but honestly, who could keep being a grump when the weather outside was so gorgeous?!

I have to admit I kept sniffing at their shoes, because there were dead fish on the bank of the river and I was terrified the smell will transfer to the car.

The little "rock star" didn't miss the chance to shine again. Since before she even knew what a rock star is, she's been saying she would be one when she grows up. That, and an artist " like Mommy". Her words, not mine. :-)

Some of us got tired, some of us got hungry, but I was very happy that the kids got to finally spend a nice relaxing day outdoors with their Grandpa.

When we were at the park I didn't pay attention on what was behind us. So, when we started to leave and turned around, I saw this flag. I don't think I've ever seen it there before, but in the eve of the Boston events, I felt the need to take a picture of it.

We are happy that Grandpa visited with us, we see him so rarely. It is sad that he is leaving, but one thing we will keep forever is the memory of the fun times we had together this year, until the next visit.

Happy Easter, 2013!

Aneliya Kochneva — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 17:07:00 +0000

In general, my family is supposed to celebrate the orthodox Easter, which is May 5th. However, since we moved to the States ( more years that I would care to actually count), we have embraced the idea of "international" holidays, combining traditions from Bulgaria and US.
This year, Easter in the US is much earlier than previous years. Since my father-in-law is visiting us for a short period of time, we decided to celebrate Easter tomorrow, instead in May ( or maybe we'll celebrate it in May again, that's the awesomeness of having international cultural background).

The kids had a blast coloring eggs with their Grandpa ( their first time ever).

They did awesome, didn't they? I just love Ellie's portrait of her and Kalin on the purple egg. Check out the green MineCraft creeper in greenish-blue.

I also had a blast creating magic in the kitchen involving tons of baking as usual:

Easter breads...( check out the recipe here)

Easter sweet croissants...( check out the recipe here)

And banana cream pie, which unfortunately didn't get to take a picture of. It was eaten as soon as it was cool enough.

Tomorrow we'll have Easter egg hunt, traditional Bulgarian "egg fight" and American Easter lunch with glazed ham. Hurray for international traditions!

From my family to yours, Happy Easter, no matter which day you celebrated on or if you celebrate it at all! Be happy!

Rhapsody in Blue

Aneliya Kochneva — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:45:00 +0000

I am delighted to show you my latest hat design. When the customer approached me earlier we were discussing hats in black, white and teal as a combination. These are the designs I came up with for her:

However, upon closer inspection of the pictures, I realized that the color of the dress my customer ordered for her Derby outfit is not black as we initially thought, but dark brown. Alas, my suspicions confirmed once she received the dress, it was indeed dark brown. So, a new design was in order.

And here is to the real thing:

I hope she likes wearing it as much as I did making it! :-) I love the combination teal and brown, just one of these things that simply "work" together.

Off to the next project!

Annie