Ice cream cone cake pops!!

The spring festival cake walk is this week and I volunteered to make some goodies. My first endeavor is something I've been wanting to try for a while. I love how realistic they look in person. They don't look fantastic in my photos, sorry about that.

I learned a lot and had a great time making them. I'll post a tutorial in the near future!!

Easter Cake Pops! Win some here!

This afternoon my friend and I spent a few hours in the kitchen making these cuties for Easter. (yes I know my sheep don't have ears...long story) Anyway, I announced on my facebook status that I was making them and I wasn't planning to share a single one. That of course invoked some comments and one of them that a friend left inspired me to be a kind and thoughtful sharing person. She tried to guilt me into giving her one with her sad story. So I thought.....sounds like a GREAT idea.

Here is your chance to get a half dozen of these in time for Easter.

Rules:

1. Must be local. Okay...to be more specific, you have to be someone who either I'll see on Saturday afternoon or Sunday or who is willing to come pick them up. I'm giving them away but I'm still too busy/too lazy to make a special trip. Oh, and I'm not going to try to ship them.

2. Tell me why you deserve them. If your story isn't true, it has to make me think it's true. The more pathetic the reason the better.

3. One submission per person. All submissions must be received by 2pm 4/23/11 (local time).

4. If you don't qualify under number 1, but want to share your story anyway, please do. I'll award the best story publicly here and give you a big hurray and then give the pops to someone with a great story whom I'll actually see......

So there you have it. I know what you're thinking....this it totally rigged! Only people who know me really have a shot of winning. Yep. You're right.

Can't wait to hear your story!!!!!

Jungle Baby Shower

A good friend of mine had a baby a few weeks ago. Amongst all the wedding chaos, I didn't have a chance to post the shower that I threw for her in April.

She had a boy, and her nursery theme is jungle animals. I liked the idea of carrying it over into her shower theme, but just focused on animals in general. I also thought it would be fun to use things as decorations that were actually useful to care for little Kaleb instead of things that would be thrown away.

There were a few others who were helping with the shower, and they contributed to a group gift with me. That was how we "funded" the decorations. I got busy looking on the internet for jungle themed items. Most things were toys (which she had a lot of already), or nursery decorating items. Then I remembered a fun idea from family cruises. Towel animals!

I got to work looking for towel origami instructions online, and using new baby blankets, bath towels and wash cloths I came up with these cuties. 

Dog

Pair of monkeys

Elephant

Turtle (which didn't look as turtlish as I had hoped) and a mini Seal complete with a juggling ball

I also made this snail out of diapers combining the diaper cake idea and a towel snail idea. I think he turned out pretty cute!

Then I added in some animal friends that could be played with

And to go with her jungle nursery- a lion laundry basket

and an elephant storage box, which we used to house the rest of our group gift- addressed animal thank you cards, bath items, etc.

I made banners from new clothing. Boy- with sleepers

Kaleb spelled on onesies (both were animal print fabrics)

and a laundry line of socks and newborn hats

These hard to resist pom poms (Martha Stewart) were the only decorations that weren't reusable. But seeing as though the ones I made for my little one's first birthday were then used at two additional events...maybe they are reusable)

The shower was a brunch. I had help making the food. I made these cute signs out of folded cardstock and wooden animals from Michaels- already painted.

We also seved yogurt, Dole fruit juices, and raspberry spritzer lemonade.

The tables had towel animals as centerpieces, and an animal board book.

The monkeys hung over the buffet table.

Each of the guests received a bag with a little book of recipes of the dishes served, and could also put their treat to take home in it.

At first, a few guests passed on the cute little cupcakes. Then someone who knew they were cakepop cupcakes (Bakerella) volunteered to take home whatever didn't get eaten. Someone decided to try one out, and after that, I don't think many made it in the bags....I heard that there was one guest who did well getting them in the bag, but they were gone before they reached home. I just LOVE these cupcakes.

I'm not a fan of most shower games, so we kept it to a minimum. I provided each table with several cards with questions to answer that the mom-to-be would benefit from. They were to be answered on the back. Then for our game, we sat in a circle before the gift opening. Each person in turn read a question out loud, and the person to their right read their answer. Most answers were quite humorous advice-since they didn't relate to the question asked. I collected the cards and put them together in a book tied with ribbon while the gifts were opened.

I bought a pad of cute boy print 4x6 cardstock and glued the questions to the printed side of the paper (it wsa cute rough or embossed paper, so printing onto them wasn't an option). Then I punched two holes in each card to pull the ribbon through. This was done ahead of time, so it was easy to bind and give to the mom-to-be as part of her gift.

I think it turned out really cute, and everyone loved it- especially the recipes they got to take home! Who doesn't love a good brunch recipe?

A Royal First Birthday

My Little Miss turned one this month and we threw her a Royal Ball!

Before you give me too much credit for creativity, you must know that most of my creative genius lies in my ability to scour the Internet for ideas, and put them together in a cohesive fashion.

I sent out Royal invitations asking all the little Lord's and Ladies to arrive in style. (and had fun using my wax seal) I couldn't find printed paper that I was in love with, so I used some pretty paper with crowns on it, and added vellum. I hand delivered the invitations.

I also included a note for the parents that was written from their child's "Fairy Godmother". It included more information on the party, including what they needed to bring, how they should dress, etc.

I borrowed an idea for a birthday banner from http://paperflowers1.blogspot.com/2009/01/homemade-birthday-banner.html. It reminded me of royal banners. I printed the letters on regular paper in the color I wanted and cut them out. I used 12x12 paper for the pink- cut into fourths. The green printed paper is also 12x12, and cut into an 8x12 size. I folded the top back about 1 1/2 inches and used double stick tape to attach it to a 1 inch ribbon. I didn't cut the ribbon to begin with. I attached it to a few chairs as I taped each piece onto it, then spread them out how I liked them and then adjusted the length of the ribbon. The banner pieces stayed in place just fine.

I wanted a personalized cake topper- and not just a candle. So I spend a few days making this cutie patootie topper. I borrowed ideas from here http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=31584205 and here http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/2009/10/all-partied-out.html. (I frequent Jill's site. Love her!)

The finishing touches!!

I absolutely loved these tissue paper pom poms....inspired of course by Martha Stewart http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/article/pom-poms-and-luminarias. I made mine with 10 sheets of tissue paper to make them more full.

To add more whimsy...I thought paper pinwheels would be fun. We made these a few years back for an activity, and I immediately thought of them for our buffet table.

I borrowed two tables from our church nursery, along with little chairs for the little ones to sit at. There was enough room that mom's or dad's could sit with them. Each guest was also given a sippy cup with apple juice in it, which they took home.

That covers the decorations!

~On to the party~

Most baby's take a morning and afternoon nap, so I decided to have our party be a luncheon and held it at noon, a time when most baby's would normally be awake.
Because I would be hosting a lot of little ones that were under the age of two, as well as adults, I wanted to be sure there would be food that all ages and stages could eat. One way to guarantee that there would be something for everyone was to offer normal baby snacks, such as Cheerios.
I wanted a way to serve them that was fun and creative. I ran across this site http://theparteaplanner.blogspot.com/2007/10/isabelles-first-birthday-party.html and thought she had a great idea! This is my version of it.

I served fresh fruit, including bananas cut in half in their skin, all natural apple sauce, and Colby-jack cheese cut into little flower shapes a little bigger than Cherrios.


I also offered turkey and cheese sandwiches for the toddlers. We cut them out into flower shapes as well.

For the adults, we had a veggie tray, chicken salad sandwiches, and Chinese chicken salad served on mini croissants.



And M&M's. I bought the Valentine bags after Valentines day when they were clearanced, and had my boys separate all the red ones from the pinks and white.

Little Miss had her own cake. I used whipped cream frosting and strawberry cake- since I didn't want her to slip in to a chocolate coma with her first taste of REAL sugar.

I made banana bread mini muffins for the under one set, with a low-sugar cream cheese frosting.

I saw these on Bakerella's website and just couldn't resist!

http://www.bakerella.com/make-your-cupcakes-pop/



I hesitated at first with the idea of serving them to the rest of the guests, who would be adults. But they were a hit. I made 60 of them, and there were only about 26 adults there. Most of them had two each.

They are very time consuming to make, but I think they are well worth it. You can make them several days before your event, because the candy coating keeps the cake moist. I made mine the day before, but did a practice run a few weeks before the party- and a week went by before one of the cupcakes were eaten (weird..in MY household??) and it was really moist and fresh.

As the guests arrived, they were invited to play with toys in the family room. We set up our little tea party table and two chairs off in our morning room where we took individual pictures of each child with Krisha. Those will be included in the thank you cards.

We ate lunch about 15 minutes into the party- allowing a little time for guests to arrive. Little tummy's were growling already
The baby's all finished eating at different times (and some never left the table), so they went back to play for a while. Meanwhile, we finished up the pictures with Little Miss, and all the adults just visited with each other.

We then gathered back at the table to sing happy birthday and eat dessert! While everyone was busy eating cake, the family room was turned into a Ball Room!

We filled it with 18 inch balls from Target. Each guest took one home with them.
We did a group photo of all the little lords and ladies...which was a feat! There were eleven in all.
It turned out quite precious!
We don't open gifts at birthday parties at our house to avoid issues with sharing and reclaiming brought gifts. But Little Miss had a great time opening them later.


Happy Birthday Little Miss!