Guest book ordered

Esther and I wanted a little something more personalized than a guest book w/ blank lined pages, so we opted to use blurb, a great online custom book making website. You can download some very intuitive software and work with either a template they provide, or whip up your own 'from scratch'.

Just ordered it tonight, so we don't have it in our pre-wedding frantic hands, but you can flip through the first few pages of it...virtually, of course.

click HERE!

Bachelor Fishin' Weekend

My buds and pop took me down to Newport last weekend for my bachelor party...we rolled in to our rented house Friday night, and went out for a great laid back dinner, hit up 7Eleven for some breakfast staples, and watched the sox game back at the house over a couple beers.

The next AM, some scrambled eggs with a bit of de-seeded crazy bastard jalapeno, bacon and english muffins started the day off right.

Prior to the trip, I had strongly urged the guys to forgo the raunchier options in in lieu of something that had the potential to be a little more vertigo and nausea inducing...so, after breakfast, we left the house at quarter of 7 for the docks, they had chartered day boat for a fishing trip.

We brought a cooler with some ice and some great beers, hoping to swap out the contents with some unlucky marine friends

...and though our captain said our take was pretty light, it was more than enough food for the guys. We hauled a bluefish, a just-over-the-size limit striped bass, and two black sea bass. Pop was hauling 'em up left and right, but mostly smaller stuff. J, Kev and I seemed to all come in behind Pop, but B...poor, poor B. He caught one lonely, measly, itsy, bitsy tiny 3 inch baby scup, despite our constant admonishing for him to catch a real fish.

I'll leave you with some shots from the day, and (WARNING) carnage, and beautiful simple meal that followed.

now, a little food porn...

Started the meal with the above bluefish cakes + quick homemade aoili.

Then on to the crusted striper, pork belly braised (homegrown) blue potato, and grilled summer squash from my pop's garden. What a great meal...

Cake stand from a tree

After looking through quite a few images of how a wedding cake could be displayed, we wanted something that looked relatively natural, but with design elements that really could tie alot of other aspects of the day together. We decided on individual/different cakes displayed separately on wood platforms.

The various cakes would then have piping that mimicked the green branch on our invite stationary, and various other natural floral additions would be made. Not sure if the frosting would be a white, or more of a natural ivory color...probably the latter.

During a trip to Acushnet this past weekend, my dad showed us the cake stands that he and my Uncle Richard created by rough cutting sections of a tree trunk with a chain saw, then planing them to level (very important, though I suppose we could always just shim them, if they are less than perfect).

They still need to dry out a bit next to the dehumidifier in my parent's basement, then we'll take a stiff wire brush to clean off any excess bark and lose material, maybe then lightly sand, and probably spray a coat of poly or maybe just rub w/ a bit of tung or linseed oil. The individual cakes will be on the usual bakery cardboard foundations, so no worries there about cake compatibility.