A shower for my future sister-in-law

Since it is only about 10 days until my brother's wedding, I figured I should try and share some of the pre-wedding festivities that have taken place.  The bachelorette party was really fun, but you know how the saying goes...let's just say we had a blast in Vegas.

A few weeks ago the sisters and mothers through the bride-to-be a bridal shower.  It was really fun planning the event, we especially enjoyed the trial run of our cocktail idea found on pinterest.  Popsicles in champagne!  They were so good!

 We loved using all of my moms teapots as floral centerpieces.  The dresses are the favor filled with m&m's.  

 Here is the bride with her mother, grandmother, and nephew.

 Some more decorations.

 Delicious cupcakes.  Strawberry lime for one and raspberry champagne for the other.  They were so good!  By the way, my wonderfully creative mom made the cupcake stands herself.  I love her creativity.

 I know shower games are loved by some and hated by others, but I personally enjoy them.  I like new versions of games or doing something unique.  For this shower, we decided to have a memory game with a "Newlywed Survival Kit."  Some of the items were practical, others comical, and some related specifically to John & Kristin.  I will leave it to you to figure out which is which!

 The guests trying to remember what was on that tray.  It was pretty funny hearing what some people said during this part and while the tray was shown around the room.  I won't name names, but someone in the room said about KY, "oh, that is why I had no idea what it was."  It was pretty funny, yet uncomfortable at the same time.  

I love this picture because without even trying, I was able to get the Bride in the shot.  Try and figure out where she is if you can.

 More of the guests.  I love my Grandma...she is so cute!

 The bride and her friend, Erin.

 Jacque all smiles for the camera.

 There is a tradition on my moms side of the family for women in the family to make a cross-stitch square.  My Grandma then incorporates it into a beautiful quilt.  She decided to make John and Kristin a big one for their bed.  This is the best shot we could get at the time since it was so big.  The square I made is on the top right of the quilt.

 Here is the bridal party all together for the first time!  Can't wait for the big day!

Baby Shower Dessert

One of my friends from my Girl Scout Troop is about to embark on the wonderful journey of motherhood.  She is the first one in our group to have a child (and she was the first to get married !)  I volunteered to make the dessert for her baby shower since my sister and I are very interested in baking.  She has been working on finding great recipes for quite awhile now and also perfecting her cupcake skills.  The cake pop idea is new to us so we thought the baby shower would be a great opportunity to try out our work on a bunch of people.  

I needed to come up with a way to display the cake pops.  Originally we were thinking of sticking them into cupcakes so each person would have the cake pop with their cupcake, but the pops were way too top heavy.  I scoured the internet for photo ideas, but really nothing stood out to me that would work for the vision in my head.  I decided instead to just head down to Michaels and search for something that would work.  

This is what I came up with:

Fake flowers pushed into styrofoam inside a white basket.  Perfect idea since I will be able to reuse the flowers, if needed and the styrofoam!  I gifted the basket to the mother-to-be.

The cake pops this time around were picked out by the mother throwing the party.  She wanted a baby head and a chocolate cake.  Previously we have only used box mixes and frosting for the trial runs, but this time we wanted to make it extra tasty and make it from scratch.  We went with this great chocolate cake that had hot coffee in it.   It turned out delicious!  For the frosting we tried a new frosting recipe that was a chocolate cream cheese.  Sooo good!

Once the cake and frosting were ready I followed the same procedure for making cake pops.  You can go here to read the basics for making the pops.

Here they are almost finished...just need eyes =)  Candy necklace piece for pacifier, candy melts made into nose and bow.

Blue eyes for the mom-to-be...thanks to my mom for improvising on the eyes.  It was suggested that I use an edible marker for the eyes but it didn't work on the surface.  Last minute scramble and my mom saved the day.  She happened to have a squeeze tube of icing and food dye!

This little guy was the best one...and later eaten by my best friend =)

We placed the little girl pops in the field of flowers, with the styrofoam keeping them secure.

Andrea goofing around before she ate the best pop

Here is a pic of the frosting being made.  It really was sooo good.  I hope we find an excuse to make it again soon=)

Besides the cake pops, we decided to also make cupcakes, even though we weren't asked to.  I baked them and made the frosting this time around and my sister and mom did most of the work on the paper designs.  They did such a great job!

I really enjoyed making these, hopefully we can do this again soon!