All My Great Ideas Are Really From Pinterest: February 2014

Friday, February 21, 2014

Vanilla Panna Cotta

The other weekend the boyfriend and I were out at dinner at a great restaurant in Beaver Creek. When the dessert menu came, they had panna cotta (one of my favorites). After placing our order for this wonderful dessert, we were told they didn't have anymore that night. Heartbroken we settled on chocolate cake, which was great, and on the house.  Since I was craving panna cotta, I decided to find a recipe online and try to make it at home. It turned out to be such an easy recipe.  

What You Need: 

3 tablespoons water 

1 tablespoon powdered gelatin 

4 cups heavy cream 

1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise 

1/2 cup sugar 

Mixed berries 

Directions: 

In a small bowl, combine the water and gelatin and let soak about 10 minutes (do not stir).  

While the gelatin is soaking, in a medium saucepan, heat the cream, one half vanilla bean and sugar to a simmer over medium heat. Stir occasionally to dissolve the sugar. Once it simmers, turn off the heat and add the gelatin mixture, stirring to dissolve the gelatin.  If the gelatin doesn't dissolve all the way in 3 minutes, turn the heat back on to warm it until the gelatin dissolves. Pour the mixture into 6 to 8 ramekins or dessert cups. Chill, uncovered, 2 hours.

To serve, dip the cups in hot water for 10 seconds, then turn upside down onto dessert plates (or, serve in the cups). Surround each panna cotta with berries.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Goodwill's 4th Annual Good Exchange Fashion Show and Clothing Swap

It's been quite a while since my last post, but I have a good reason. I was in charge of my first big event as the Events Coordinator for Goodwill Industries of Denver on February 6, 2014 and I was working a lot.

If you are familiar with Goodwill, you probably know we collect donations from you, and sell them in our stores. What you probably don't know is what we do with the money we make in the stores. Even I didn't really know until after I started working at Goodwill just how many programs help the community that are funded by Goodwill.

One of the biggest programs we have is to help youth in Denver area schools think about their future. We help them apply for scholarships, teach them interview and resume skills to find jobs, and give them mentors to help them when things get hard.

Goodwill's Good Exchange Fashion Show and Clothing Swap is a great event that helps a group of students from local high school pursue their dreams of a fashion career. This year we had 14 students from Denver School of the Arts, CEC Middle College, and Northglenn High School (where I went to high school!). the students were split up into 2 teams, and each student was given an international fashion capital to use as the inspiration for their design.

This year our event was bigger than ever because we had Tim Gunn, co-host of Project Runway, and host of Project Runway: Under the Gunn as our emcee for the night! We also had Denver native Mondo Guerra, winner of Project Runway: All Stars and mentor on Project Runway:Under the Gunn, as our head judge for the 4th year in a row! The event was a huge success and we had more than 800 guests in attendance to see Tim, Mondo and our student designers.

Here are just a few pictures from our amazing photographers at the event.