Recent Posts

Libations, Recipes

Creamsicle Cocktail

Hoping to look a little more like C-3PO and a little less like R2-D2 this summer?

Then enjoy a low-calorie cocktail in place of those creamsicles you loved as a kid.

Ingredients:

1 part Orange Vodka
2 parts Whipped Cream Vodka
1.5 cups Orange Mango Cascade Ice 2 Calorie Water

Mix together in tall glass (with ice, if preferred). Garnish with an orange slice.

Not on a diet? Reduce the whipped cream vodka to one part, and add a scoop of your favorite vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt!

This recipe was created for Cascade Ice’s “Skinny Cocktail Creation” contest. Like what you see? Go to their Facebook page and vote for my drink! The winning blogger receives a cocktail party, and voters have a chance to win Cascade Ice as well. (And although I first tried it for this contest, I’ve gotta say… Cascade Ice is pretty good!)

Lifestyle, Weddings

A Geeky Wedding: Tips and Tricks

Guys, wedding planning is tough. I’ve planned large events before and thought I’d have a good grasp on it, but things are a lot tougher when family, emotions, and your own money is involved. If you’re a control freak like me and choose to plan your entire wedding yourself, here is a LONG post with some tips and tricks for you to keep in mind. Hopefully it will help you save (whatever’s left of) your sanity!

Enter Contests
There are thousands of wedding contests going on, ranging in prizes from some cute invitations to tons of money. Enter them all! I entered the “I Do with Mirassou” contest from a Facebook ad, and ended up winning $10,000 for our wedding! I also won a couple of smaller gifts by going to wedding events and entering contests on wedding blogs.

Go Ahead, Invite Them

We decided we’d invite some random celebrities and companies to our wedding, thinking we might get a letter back from them or something. However, Timmy, the monkey mascot from ThinkGeek, actually came to the wedding (with his date Tux), and the zombies from PopCap Games sent us a very nice wedding gift of a bunch of swag. And yes, we did get some letters as well, including one from the Obamas and one from Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately, GLaDOS (of Portal fame) never responded.

Do Your Research
If you’re planning your wedding on your own, make sure you’re prepared. Take a look at other weddings, read vendor reviews, and look up etiquette and traditions (so you know what you want to keep and what you want to toss). Make sure you’re examining the pros and cons for all of your options. For instance: want an outdoor wedding? Keep in mind you’re going to need to organize rentals for chairs, tables, porta potties, and a tent if it’s supposed to rain!
Some of my favorite wedding blogs/sites are as follows:
100 Layer Cake
A Practical Wedding
Offbeat Bride
Style Me Pretty

Make Compromises
You and your family/fiance/vendors/budget will not always agree what’s best. And you’ve got to be willing to compromise. Figure out what the one or two top things are for you and your wedding, and be willing to budge on the rest. I’ve never been a big flower person, so I was ok cutting that budget and going really basic if it meant we’d have more money for excellent food. This is an important day in your life, but it really is JUST one day.

Look Outside The Wedding Industry

Want to get married in a venue that normally doesn’t do weddings? Call them up anyway! It may end up being cheaper and more unique than readily-available venues. Same goes for bakeries, catering companies, and dress stores. My bridesmaids’ dresses came from Nordstrom. They were better quality and less expensive than your typical “bridesmaid” dress.

Shop Online
Oriental Trading Company and Amazon were some of our best friends during the wedding planning process. We found the last bits of decor and other necessities there for way cheaper than anywhere else. I also got my flowers online in bulk for cheaper than my local florists could get wholesale!

Plan for the Marriage, Not Just the Wedding
After the wedding’s over, you’re going to be MARRIED. Make sure you actually want to be stuck with this person for the rest of your life! A Practical Wedding posted an amazing list of questions you should go over with your fiance. We did, and I honestly felt our love, respect, and trust for each other grow afterwards.

Make It Personal

Weddings can all start to look and feel the same after awhile (watch Wedding Crashers if you don’t believe me!). Make sure you have some personal touches to your wedding. Incorporate something meaningful into your vows, have the DJ play some special songs, or put an inside joke on your wedding cake.

Do Something Else With Your Life
Wedding planning can be absolutely soul-sucking. It can also start to leech into every aspect of your life. (I bet you noticed me blogging and tweeting more about weddings while I was planning mine…) Make sure you have a hobby that has nothing to do with your wedding. This will be something you can do to escape when the stress gets to be too much, and it will be something you can come back to once you’re married, and you no longer need to worry about things like budgets, cake tasting, and bridesmaid dresses.

Use Your Love of Spreadsheets
Organization is extremely important, and the more anal you are, the better. Use spreadsheets for budgets, to-do lists, and itineraries. Google has some good ones to get you started, but I ultimately created my own for my itinerary. I gave it way more detail than it needed, and then emailed it to our wedding party, families, and vendors (and handed out paper copies during the dress rehearsal and on the day of the wedding). Because of the itinerary, everyone knew where they needed to be when, and I didn’t have to worry about keeping track of people the day of. Take a look at my itinerary here. You’re welcome to make a copy and use it as a template for yours, or just laugh at how ridiculously long it is.

Get Pictures/Video!

Everybody says it, and it’s true. The day’s going to go by in a flash, and you’re not going to be able to remember most of it. You’re also not going to get to be everywhere at every time. Pictures and video are a great way to be able to remember every aspect of your wedding, and gives you the chance to relive it as many times as you want. And believe me, for the time, stress, and money that day will cost you, you’re going to want to look back on it.

…After all that, I might as well post my wedding videos, right?

Tara & Alexander – The Wedding from David Zimmermann on Vimeo.

Tara & Alexander – The Reception from David Zimmermann on Vimeo.

Any questions, stories, or additional tips? Leave them in the comments! Let’s turn this post into an amazing wedding planning resource!

Fun Food

Patience is a Virtue

I’ve recently begun learning how to make ice cream. The biggest things I’ve learned? Be patient and follow directions. Now, this is hard for a lot of us geeks. We want to throw out instructions and recipes and say “we know a better way!” However, I’ve learned it might be better to learn the basics before I start to customize the recipes and get fancy with myself. Or else my ice cream making experience may end up a bit more like this:

So, I attempted to make a Nutella swirl ice cream similar to that I had in Rome. I followed the recipe exactly, but felt that I could get to the most important step (eating the ice cream) quicker if I froze the mixture for 2 hours instead of putting it in the fridge for 8. Needless to say, it didn’t work. The next day, I tried again after fully letting everything freeze and cool, and it turned out perfect. Patience is worth it!

Give the recipe a try for yourself (and keep an eye out for many more ice cream/sorbet recipes to come)!

French Vanilla Ice Cream (from the KitchenAid Mixer Recipe Book) with Nutella Swirl:
2.5 cups half-and-half
8 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
2.5 cups whipping cream
4 teaspoons vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup Nutella

In medium saucepan over medium heat, heat half-and-half until very hot but not boiling, stirring often. Remove from heat; set aside.

Place egg yolks and sugar in mixer bowl. Attach bowl and wire whip to mixer. Turn to Speed 2 and mix about 30 seconds, or until well blended and slightly thickened. Continuing on Speed 2, very gradually add half-and-half; mix until blended. Return half-and-half mixture to medium saucepan; cook over medium heat until small bubbles form around edge and mixture is steamy, stirring constantly. Do not boil. Transfer half-and-half mixture into large bowl; stir in whipping cream, vanilla, and salt. Cover and chill thoroughly, at least 8 hours.

Assemble and engage freeze bowl, dasher, and drive assembly as directed in attachment instructions. Turn to STIR (Speed 1). Using a container with a spout, pour mixture into freeze bowl. Continue on STIR (Speed 1) for 15 to 20 minutes or until desired consistency. Fold in the Nutella until thoroughly swirled. Immediately transfer ice cream into serving dishes, or freeze in an airtight container.

Yield: 8 cups

Geek Etiquette

Persist.

Austin Madison, a Pixar animator, wrote an open letter to creative people needing a bit of inspiration. This was tweeted out from Pixar on Tuesday, and I think it’s something almost everyone needs to read at some point or another.

(Source: Letters of Note)

Gift Ideas

D20 Pillows for a Cause

(cross-posted from Zaxy.com, because I feel everyone should know about this!)

Perfect for those late night D&D sessions!

 

 

My buddy Justin from Pixelated Geek has started an awesome new project I wanted to tell you about. He created sweet D20 pillows (available for $29.99 at ThinkGeek) which are awesome for those crazy adventures you have in dreamland. But the pillows are not just awesome for its shape. Justin has pledged to give 10% of the profits to two charities: Child’s Play, and one he created himself that will focus on scholarships and micro-loans to “fund adventures and projects that will aid the geeky world”.

He has plans for a full pillow dice set (and other fun geeky shapes!), but needs your help to spread the word before he can do that. Get a pillow for yourself and a friend, and know you’re doing some good at the same time!

Interested in learning more about scholarships and micro-loans for your projects? Email justin at pixelatedgeek dot com for more info!

Geek Etiquette

A Playground for Grown-Ups

Want to relive the days of playing in a ball pit without getting kicked out of McDonald’s? Then you better hope they actually build these adult playgrounds:

This makes me want to contact the local parks department and start raising money for a grown-up playground. Or at least rent a bouncy castle for my next birthday…

(Thanks to Tori for finding this!)

Fun Food

Transformers Cake Beats Your Cake

The Cake Boss is accurately named, because holy cow. This cake is amazing.

The Bumblebee cake ways 2,000 pounds, and in true Michael Bay/Transformers fashion, includes explosions and pyrotechnics.

Who wants to be parent of the year and make THAT for your kid’s birthday party?

(Source: BuzzFeed)

Events

The Future of Geeky Hostess

I’m so thrilled to be back in Seattle and out of the shiny claws of the wedding industry. Now I can put my focus on Geeky Hostess and all of the amazing things I have planned for it!

Keep an eye out for:

-Recaps and tips on how to keep your wedding delightfully geeky

-The introduction of “Mr. Geek” and his posts

-More original content, recipes, and party ideas

-The Geeky Hostess at BlogHer, PAX, and GeekGirlCon

-Profiles on Seattle-based companies with a “Geeky Hostess” spirit

I look forward to all I have in store for the blog, and thank you for coming on this ride with me. If you have suggestions, questions, or comments, don’t hesitate to contact me at tara@geekyhostess.com.

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